Friday
10/20 Most Loopers are leaving Joe Wheeler Park today and
heading back towards the Tenn-Tom towards Mobile. The crew of OBSERVER is
doing a side trip up the Tennessee River to Chattanooga. We've heard great
things about Chattanooga and would like to visit and it should make for less
crowding at marinas and locks when we head south if we let the big group from the
rendezvous get ahead of us. We left the dock at 8 am along with three
other boats heading in the same direction. The fog had not yet lifted and
it made for some pretty pictures.
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| "Looking back at the Joe Wheeler Lodge and Marina as we were leaving |
We were close to our
destination for the day when we started hearing "thwack" over and
over again. We thought maybe something was bouncing around on the
flybridge or fenders were clapping against the hull. No - and it kept
continuing. We slowed down the throttle, still "thwack". We
surmised there were frantic fish crashing into our hull. Then we reached
out to our travel buddies for the day on Golden (Gold Loopers). They
educated us that it was artillery fire. We don't have much of that
home on the Danvers River. We pulled into Ditto Landing Marina in
Huntsville for the night.
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| Marking the entrance channel to Ditto Landing Marina |
Huntsville is a great community. Hopped on
the Aldridge Creek Greenway for a bike ride - really nice. Paige from
Golden gave us the heads up that our sister ship American Tug (year older but
otherwise almost identical) was in this marina. This was the very boat we were on at the Annapolis boat show when we signed the papers to purchase Observer. We loved her aesthetics so much that we commissioned to have Observer copy her, including the color of her hull, to the seating and carpet color and the counter material in the galley.
The owner was onboard. John completed the Loop in 2014 in a PDQ power cat (solo).
He bought the American Tug in January of 2017, lives in Atlanta and stores his
boat at this marina. We exchanged stories and tips - very nice guy.
Tonight provided another pretty sunset!
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| Observer all lit up |
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