Home again, home again, jiggity jig

We awoke the next day at Shellmound Recreation area to a beautiful sunrise. Very calm and peaceful and a great location!

We tied up on the T-head of the dock the night before in the dark. The park has nice grounds for walking and bathroom facilities. Quite the view from the dock and you can't beat the price (free)!

Besides lots of bass boats each morning, we've seen no other cruising boats except for the occasional barge passing by.

There a few brave trees turning green on the hillsides now...spring is not far off and with it good boating weather.

The section of river between Hales Bar and downtown Chattanooga is just spectacular:

If you boat or spend much time in Tennessee you will see lots of "Volunteer Orange." This boat took it to a new level with the cowling covering their outboard. To stick with the orange and white theme of the Vols, they have elected to utilize an orange/white traffic safety cone for their cowling!

Dad skippering us up the river for a while. It was finally nice enough to utilize the flybridge which was very nice.

Slowly making way up the river despite the crazy currents from all the rains the week before:

Another of the 4-5 barges we passed on the river:

So we were fighting a VERY strong current all day. Usually I can cruise our Monk at 1,700-1.,800 RPM's and do about 7 knots. Today, we had to do 2,000 to 2,100 RPM's to hit 5 knots! At some points we were only doing 4.3 to 4.5 knots! We figured out why once we started getting close to downtown Chattanooga. The water levels are very high due to the rains, so much so that docks are under water:

This was the only other recreational cruising vessel we saw on the water the entire trip. A Mainship 40 Sedan, I could not resist taking a picture for our boating friend "BillyIII" who owns the same boat- couldn't help but think of you Billy!

I-24 parallel's the river for a brief period downstream from Chattanooga. We opted to stay on the river instead of taking Exit 178.

Dad keeping a watch for pirates.

The flooded downtown Chattanooga waterfront. Those concrete pilings are usually where one would tie off their boat and there is a big wide 10-12' sidewalk beyond it that is all under water.

Lots of construction at Chickamauga Lock resulting in a "busy" entrance to the lock! 6 months ago I would have been totally freaked out to try and navigate this old boat through all of these obstructions. She handles like a dream though and the entrance was no issue at all.

In Chickamauga Lock:

You may notice we are wearing leather gloves in the locks. Here is a picture showing why- rough and slimy concrete that will cut your hands up and make a mess! The lock was actually in the midst of some work and only one of the floodgates was open so it created an unusually strong current in the lock.

Back up on our "home" lake, Lake Chickamauga. After a month away it felt funny to be back up!

The sun was just about to set as we were arriving at Island Cove...a nice end to a beautiful trip up the river.

And finally, home again in our home slip:

So, we are all squared away and back at Island Cove. I cannot say enough how impressed I was with how the boat handled. The trip down the river and back up were the 2 longest trips our Monk has taken in at least 15 years. She absolutely ran flawlessly the entire time. We did not even have to change a single racor fuel filter going there or back and she just ran absolutely perfect the entire time. Our work thus far has seem to come together just as we had hoped and she is a great little boat with classic lines, a rich and homey teak interior, solid mechanicals, excellent layout, and about as cost effective to run as a power boat humanly can be. Our previous boat at hull speed would burn 7-9 GPH (gallons per hour) with her 8.1 Crusader gas engines. If we went fast in that boat she would burn 55 GPH! Living Light, with her little Perkins 135hp diesel only burns about 1.5 GPH which is virtually nothing. We are so pleased with how she has come together and are really looking forward to a great spring and summer aboard her with the kids and enjoying the TN River more. We still have some smaller projects we are going to be working on but it seems, for now, the major/big projects are now complete and she is running like a top and just an absolute joy to own and run. We feel extremely grateful to be able to have her as part of the family and really looking forward to a fun summer with friends and family, enjoying time on the water, swimming, anchoring out, grilling dinner while watching the sunset, meeting new friends, and sharing happy memories together. Life on the water is a great and this summer will hopefully prove to be a great time with our newly refit trawler!

Stay tuned...more to follow!