Day 34 – 35
We left our peaceful anchorage at Butler Cemetery on Thursday morning (much to the glee of the nearby hot-tub owners, I’m sure) and headed for our next stop, which was Fort Loudon Marina, just outside of Lenoir City, TN. The riverside scenery began to change from rocky cliffs and mixed woods to flatter, rolling pastures – with some working farms. Very peaceful and bucolic. Steadily, as we’ve headed up river, we’ve noticed the lake homes growing more and more grand.
We had another wonderful trip, which ended with a lock-up in the Fort Loudon Lock. We traversed this lock with quite a bit of turbulence, but no problems. Although Steve had to run the stern-thruster so often to keep the stern off the lock wall as we rose, that he completely drained its rechargeable battery and it stopped working just as the lock gates opened for us to exit. Lucky timing for us! Just past the lock and dam is Fort Loudon Marina. Steve called ahead for transient reservations and received some rather vague entry instructions. Each time we enter a marina that’s new to us, we enter very slowly and rely on our binoculars to (hopefully) determine the location of each marina’s transient docks. This time we’d been instructed to “come straight into the marina and we’d see the fuel docks in front of us”. The fuel docks were located far inside the marina, so we had to come quite a distance in to finally spot them. We’d told the marina rep we didn’t need fuel or pump-out, but she said we’d receive instructions on where to tie-up by pulling up to the fuel docks, and also pay for our visit at the same time. However, as we neared the fuel docks, we saw they were fully occupied by two large boats that had arrived before us. Steve slowly circled the marina’s entry several times as we waited for the boats to move. Eventually we realized one of the boats was permanently tied there. The other boat had just begun filling up and obviously held a LOT of fuel! As we waited, we watched a pretty, late-model 27-foot Ranger Tug come around us and finally pull into a small transient slip, after several unsuccessful attempts. It was obvious the captain of this boat was a newbie and was having difficulty dealing with the prevailing winds in the marina. His first mate had dutifully hung bow and stern fenders on the starboard side of the boat, preparing to tie up. But on his third attempt into the slip, he was halfway in when the wind blew his stern around the end of the dock finger and we heard a loud boom as his hull bounced off the corner of the dock! I didn’t see it happen, but Steve saw the whole thing and said the boat had hit hard. ☹ After waiting for almost an hour, the fuel-thirsty boat finally left and we were able to pull up to the dock. We normally try to tie-up on our port side, but this time had to tie-up starboard, so I made a mad dash to transfer the lines and fenders from port side to starboard as the wind blew us about. It was a challenge for us to get secured, but we finally did. Steve received instructions from the harbor master on where we were to put our boat and we headed that way. Though very shallow, there was a finger available for us right beside the poor Ranger Tug that had hit the dock earlier. I’ve noticed that many representatives of these marinas have length-estimation challenges (men, of course), and often tell us a dock finger is far longer than it actually is… That proved to be true with this tie-up, as well. The rep had said “all of our fingers are 55-feet”. However, our 57-foot boat stuck way out beyond the end of our finger, so much so that we had to get creative with tying it up. Fortunately, we had some help awaiting us at our dock finger to catch our lines. After we got tied and plugged up, the captain of the Ranger Tug showed us the damage that was done to his boat when it hit earlier. A big old gash was taken out of the paint, but the hull did not appear to be dented, which was a statement to the strength of this boat! Sure enough, we found out this captain and first mate had just purchased the Ranger Tug and that was its maiden voyage with them helming. No wonder he was having trouble with it in that wind!
Calhoun’s restaurants are famous around the Knoxville area, and we lucked-out when we discovered one of their locations was right there at Fort Loudon marina. We had a nice relaxing dinner there and turned in early.
A front came through overnight, so it was much cooler and drier on Friday, 10/16/20. We drove Fort Loudon’s ancient courtesy van into Lenoir City for supplies, then returned for boat-cleaning day. Steve on the outside and me on the inside. I was working away in the salon when Steve knocked on the outside of the boat. When I looked out the window, he told me to come out because our friends Rodney and Julie Wilson had just arrived! We knew Rodney and Julie from our old sailing days on Lake Pickwick, almost 20 years ago. They were in the area in their RV (they are HUGE UT Vol fans), and just happened to drive through the Fort Loudon marina. Julie looked out the window and spotted Steve cleaning our boat. Steve said he heard a woman shouting, “Steve! Steve Linn!” He looked up and there they were. We are Facebook friends with Rodney, so they knew we’d moved onto our boat, but hadn’t seen it yet, nor did they know where we were on the TN River. They parked their car and came aboard Legacy for a visit. It was great to see them! We caught up on things for an hour or so, and made plans to purposely meetup with them in their RV and us on our boat in the near future.
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Position: N 35° 47.909, W 84° 14.245
Distance traveled: 37.9 NM
Total distance traveled: 518.4 NM
Time underway: 5 HRS 7 MIN
Total time underway: 67 HRS 34 MIN
Total marina nights: 29
Total nights at anchor: 6
Locks today: 1
Locks Total: 8