M/V ILLUSIONS                              TX TO WV TO TX CRUISE 

TX TO WV TO TX CRUISE TRIP 4 LOGS Visit to Nashville and Nearby Areas, and The Attack on America September 4 – 13, 2001 Travel from Houston to Nashville, Tuesday, September 4, 2001      Angela and I, accompanied by her two sisters, Blasita and Malena, flew from Houston to Nashville on Tuesday, September 4.  We had lunch and bought groceries and unloaded our luggage at the boat.  We changed clothes and went to the Opryland Hotel to show Angela’s sisters the large and unusual hotel and to have dinner.  We drove downtown to see the sights before returning to Cedar Creek Yacht Club on Old Hickory Lake for the night. Travel up the Cumberland River, Wednesday, September 5, 2001      On Wednesday we ate breakfast and left our slip on the Guest Dock to stop at the fuel and dry storage dock.  We dropped the dinghy and left it for Jerry Gunter to do an annual service on the outboard.  At 9am we pulled out into the Cumberland River at Mile 233, approximately.      It was necessary to make arrangements with the lockmaster at Old Hickory Lock to pass through the lock at Cordell Hull Dam.  Those arrangements had to be made at least 24 hours ahead of time, or before Friday noon to lock through on the weekend.  I called before we left Houston, and we had an appointment for 3:30pm.      Temperatures in the area were still high: about 90 degrees F maximum for the day, with varying levels of humidity, clouds, and breeze.  We were fine outside in the morning or evening, or when we were moving.  Otherwise we were hot.  We had some clouds Tuesday and Wednesday, but we had some pretty blue skies, too.      Angela’s sisters had never been through a lock, so we planned the trip to let them have that experience.  We could have gone downstream and passed through the Old Hickory Lock, but the scenery below there was not pretty.  The overnight choices would have been limited to the Municipal Dock in downtown Nashville, where we had stayed on our trip up to Old Hickory Lake.  We really wanted them to also experience an anchorage, and those factors led us to plan the trip upstream.      When we first began to see the exposed rock walls and bluffs alongside the river, Blasita and Malena were thrilled and very expressive in their delight at the sights.  The river was beautiful, and we could not exaggerate the majesty and wonder of all there was to see.  We have included some photos that attempt to portray some of the loveliness of the trip, which will, I’m sure, fall short of really conveying the true beauty of the river.      We passed rocky bluffs on the left, then the right, then flats with no apparent rocks nearby.  We passed two power plants: one steam plant and one abandoned nuclear plant.  We saw birds and animals, fish and fishermen, a few small boats, and lots of logs alongside the river in the flats.  We saw no barges, except those being unloaded at the power plant, and no tows at work on the river.  We saw no cruising boats going upstream and only one coming downstream.      The river became narrower as we approached Carthage, TN and the lock and dam just upstream of there.  We saw the top two feet or so of the old lock wall at Old Lock No. 6, and we saw the top 16 feet or so of the land wall for Old Lock No. 7, where we had spent the night on our earlier trip up the river.  We marveled at the very deep water right up to the rocky bluffs; and we wondered about the differences in the rock faces, each of which was different and interesting.      We calculated that we would be early, and we discussed calling the lock and advising them we would be there sooner than we had estimated.  I had been told by another cruiser the lock operator would show up right at the appointed time and no sooner, but he would wait for you if you were late.  I decided to wait for him, if necessary, since they are willing to wait for us; so I didn’t call.  I also expected he might be early, for whatever reason.        As we approached the dam, our speed at 2450 RPM declined from 15 to 14 to 13 to 12 to, finally, 11 knots.  We were not in a hurry, so I left the RPM at one constant rate.  The current was much greater than it had been on our previous trip.  We passed a depth gauge on the bridge at Carthage and read the level at 5 feet above normal (normal pool was 445 feet above sea level).        Interestingly, the depth in the river just below that bridge was usually (normal pool) less than the minimum maintained by the Corps of Engineers.  The chart showed a blue color there instead of the usual white that indicated 9 feet or more.  I wondered if it were due to an extremely rocky bottom at that point.  We had more than we needed, obviously, on both of our trips to the area.      At 3pm we arrived at Cordell Hull Lock and Dam.   I explained to Blasita and Malena, through Angela’s interpretation to Spanish, that life preservers were required if they went out onto the decks.  They could stay on the bridge without them.  Well, they didn’t mind at all wearing those bulky life preservers; they  wanted to be out on the decks as close to the action as possible.  They were thrilled.             The lock operator had called us on the radio about 2:40pm to check on our schedule.  We told him we thought we would be there at 3pm, and he said they would be ready for us.  Sure enough, the lock doors were open for us, and the green light was on.  I called the lock on Channel 16 and asked permission to enter the lock.  The lockmaster seemed surprised and told me the green light was on, come on in.      We pulled into the lock and moved all the way forward to a floating bollard on our starboard side.  Lock dimensions were 400 by 84 feet.  The locking went smoothly, lifting us to the level of Cordell Hull Lake, a 59-foot lift under normal conditions.  The lockmaster said they were running three generators and the water was higher downstream as a result.  He estimated the current below the dam at 7 – 8 mph.      There were several pretty coves just above the dam, but they were not recommended in Fred Myers’ cruise guide.  They were not mentioned at all, so we didn’t know they would be good or not; so we proceeded upstream to one of several recommended anchorages.  Fred’s cruise guidebook was very interesting and helpful, and we recommend it to all that cruise the Cumberland River.      At Mile 327, approximately, we pulled into Duke Hollow, our anchorage for the evening, at 4:30pm.  It was an excellent place to anchor, with depth about 12 feet and plenty of room to swing.  There were no houses in view, and we were far enough off the river to avoid any possible wakes from passing boats.  The anchor held at our first attempt, and we never had to move or adjust anything as far as the anchoring was concerned.  Wind was 5 – 10 mph out of the east, and it changed to the west overnight.      Mileage for the day was 94 miles in 8 running hours.  We had turned the generator off during most of the day; then we ran it all night.  We grilled salmon and had a fine evening at the anchorage.  We taught Angela's sisters how to play Sequence, a board game we all enjoyed. Travel down the Cumberland River, Thursday, September 6, 2001      Malena waked up early and went outside to videotape the fog, which was considerable.  It dissipated by 9am when we pulled up the anchor and left the anchorage.  First, though, we had an emergency in the form of a water leak under the galley sink.  We had had a leak there on our trip up the Monongahela River, but we had been able at that time to stop the leak by resetting and tightening the connection.  At this time the connection was badly cracked, like the failed connection under the forward head sink in 1999.  We disconnected the line and plugged it in a makeshift manner, which stopped the leak and deprived us of cold water at the galley sink.  Malena and Blasita were proud of us after seeing how we reacted and how we worked together to deal with a problem such as that.      We left a little late, and we arrived at the lock 20 minutes or so after our scheduled appointment of 10am.  The lockmaster was ready for us, very polite and friendly.  We again had quite a current and high water below the dam.  The current helped our speed that time, as we were then going with it instead of going against it.       Due to the cold water being discharged from the dam, the air above the water was being cooled.  We experienced very cold temperatures in short bursts as we passed through pockets of cold air.  Sometimes we were also in the shade of rocky bluffs, and the ambient temperatures were cool.      We saw many beautiful and interesting sights along the way back downstream.  I decided to stop and photograph a few of the unusual features we had noted on the upstream trip.  These included fractures in rock walls and trees growing straight out of rock walls with overhanging rock above the trees – things I thought were particularly fascinating.  We did stop, and even turned around and went back, and took photos that show some of those features.      At one of those spots we found a raccoon in the hole in the rock wall where the tree grew straight out from the wall.  The raccoon decided it was time to move on, but he was clever at moving from one place of concealment to another.  One of the fascinating things about being outdoors and cruising on inland waters is the communion with nature in its many forms, animals being one of them.        Due to the current, we covered the same distance on Thursday in a shorter period of time.  We recorded 6 running hours on the day, 14 for the Trip, with the generator usage at 24 hours total.  We filled up with fuel and pumped out the waste tanks at the Yacht Club.  Fuel usage was 255 gallons, or 1.34 gallons per mile.                                                                       Jerry Gunter had been there and serviced the outboard engine, so we lifted the dinghy back to its cradle on the after deck hardtop.  We covered it and motored back to our slip on the Guest Dock between M/V   MISS MARY NELLE and M/V SAGITTARIUS . Both were local members preparing to go to Florida for the winter.  We took photos of some of the other boats and the clubhouse at Cedar Creek Yacht Club.  The weather had changed from fog in the morning, to clearing and a nice day that was occasionally cool, to hot and somewhat hazy in the mid- to late- afternoon.  We shut the engines down at 4:30pm. Travel to Nearby Areas, Friday – Monday, September 7 – 10, 2001      We drove to Knoxville on Friday and stopped for lunch at Calhoun’s Restaurant at Ft. Loudoun Dam.  I had made arrangements to meet Ron and Eva Stob there, and they arrived by boat.  They had become very well known in the cruising community for writing a very good book called "Honey, Let’s Get a Boat...".  It’s about cruising ‘The Great Loop’, which means traveling by boat around the USA in a pattern generally like that shown on our Great Loop Map.  Then they moved to East Tennessee about 3 years earlier and began the America’s Great Loop Cruising Association.  We were among the first 150 people, or couples, to join the association; and I had written a couple of articles for their newsletter.  We were excited and glad to finally get to meet them.  We had a very enjoyable lunch and were able to see their present boat at the dock there.        We then drove to my mother’s home in Knoxville, where we stayed for three nights.  She was looking good and feeling good, for which we were grateful.  Part of what we did later on that evening was to make plans for her 80th birthday in January 2002.      At 5:30pm the five of us met my brother, Will, and his family at Calhoun’s On the River in downtown Knoxville.  They all looked well and happy, and the young boys (then 5 and 9) were growing up.  We had met them there in 1998 when we cruised the Tennessee River, and we had fond memories of that cruise.  We enjoyed seeing the new park facilities near the restaurant designed to direct attention to the Tennessee River and its importance to Knoxville.                    On Saturday we drove to Asheville, NC and toured the Biltmore Estate.  The home there was the largest residence in America with some 4 acres under roof.  We had dinner at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville and drove back to Knoxville.      On Sunday we drove to Gatlinburg, TN and did some shopping and sightseeing.  Driving through Sevierville and Pigeon Forge we got a treat: several hundred hot rods were leaving after competing in a "Rod Run" through the three towns on Saturday.  The cars were beautiful, and we got to see them parade by us going in the opposite direction.  We rode the gondola from the ski lodge to town and back.  On the way back to Knoxville, we stopped at a mountain stream so the ladies could get their feet wet.  Then we visited Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.                       On Monday we drove back to Nashville, but we detoured from the direct route.  First of all we stopped at the Melton Hill Lock and Dam, near Oak Ridge, TN.  Angela and I had cruised that lake in 1998, and we wanted to show it to Malena and Blasita.  Second, we went to Fall Creek Falls State Park, near McMinnville, TN.  We saw the Cane Creek Falls there, and we saw a very deep gorge with several other creeks and waterfalls.  The 256-foot Fall Creek Falls were the highest in the USA east of the Rockies, and we were very excited to see them.  Third, we went into McMinnville to see the centuries-old Birthing Tree, so called because of all the births that occurred under its                branches in years gone by.  And finally, we went to Rock Island State Park to see more waterfalls, but found it closed by order of the governor due to budget considerations.  As we left that area we saw many nurseries, and we found out Warren County was called the "nursery capital of the world".      The winding mountain roads in several locations were spectacular and beautiful, and our weather was generally great.  We had enjoyed a memorable vacation, driven about 1,000 miles, and were ready to go home.  We ate dinner on the boat and packed for the flight on Tuesday.  Jerry Gunter had been to the boat and had repaired the water leak under the galley sink, so we had cold water in the galley again. Travel Home and the Attack on America, Tuesday – Thursday, September 11-13, 2001      Our flight to Houston was scheduled for 8:50am on Tuesday.  We were at the gate with boarding passes in hand when the Southwest Airlines agents told us they were not boarding the aircraft, that they were on “Ground Hold”.  I had heard, in the rental car parking lot, that a plane had struck one of the World Trade Center towers in New York City.  At that time no mention had been made of a terrorist attack on the United States.      As we waited and occasionally watched the television monitors in the airport concourse, we began to learn, as did the rest of the world, of the “Attack on America”.  We learned about the second plane crashing into the second tower of the World Trade Center.  (We later learned that another hijacked plane hit the Pentagon in Washington, DC; and that a fourth plane crashed in a remote area in PA.)  The airport announced the FAA had ordered that no flights leave until 5pm at the earliest.      We called Southwest and rebooked for a 6:20pm flight, and I tried two companies for rental cars, which were unavailable.  We went to the baggage claim area and finally located all our luggage.  A man there told me he had contacted all the rental car companies for a car to drive to Houston, and there were none available.  We had lunch at the last place still open in the airport about 11:30am, and then I checked again for a rental car.  I found I could rent a car at Thrifty as long as I returned it to the Nashville airport, so I made those arrangements.  We drove downtown and looked at Vanderbilt University and Music Row while the terrible tragedy was sinking into our minds.  Traffic was terrible, and the streets were all torn up and under construction.      We went back to the boat and watched the television for the rest of the day and night.  When we learned the airport would not reopen that day, we called Southwest and made reservations for a 5pm departure on Wednesday.  We were in shock, like millions of people all over the country and the world, as the horror of the attack became known and was reported on television.      On Wednesday we again watched the television most of the day and night for information about the crisis.  We learned the FAA had banned flights for 24 more hours, so we called Southwest Airlines again.  We rebooked for Thursday the same 8:50am flight we had had on Tuesday.  We took Malena and Blasita over to The Hermitage, the home of President Andrew Jackson, which got our minds on something else for a while.  I called Alamo and they had a one-way car for Houston if we paid a $210 drop-off charge; I declined.      I checked with Southwest again, and they said they would not be flying on Thursday as their security plans had not been approved by the FAA, so we rebooked for Friday at the same departure time.  I called Budget again and this time they had a car we could drive to Houston for $72 per day with no drop-off charge.  I reserved it, and we made plans to drive to Houston.  We were paying almost that much a day for the Nashville-only car, and we had no idea when we would be able to fly home.      On Thursday we got up at 5am and drove to the airport about 7:30.  The traffic on I-40 going into town at that time of day was terrible both times we did it.  We paid $139 for the Thrifty car that we could only drive in Nashville, which seems overpriced looking back at it.  We rented the Budget car, upgraded to a minivan for $20 more, and drove to Houston.  We passed through Memphis, TN, where we had lunch about 12:30pm.  Then we went to Little Rock, AR; I-40 was a construction site the whole way in AR.  Then we took I-30 to Texarkana, TX and US 59 from there to Houston.  There were more tractor-trailers on the highways than cars, and the roads were all under construction.  We arrived about 12:30am on Friday morning, got our car out of the storage lot, and bought fuel for both vehicles.  Then we turned in the Budget car and went home.  We had driven about 818 miles that day.      That trip was more of a driving vacation than a cruise on a boat, but we did run the boat for two days.  We also slept on it for 7 nights.  In the middle of the tragedy we had a place to stay, and we were very grateful for that among many other things. Statistics for Trip 4: Miles    190 Running Hours   14 Running Days    2 Travel to/from the boat days    2 Lay Days    6 Total Days in the Trip    10 Generator Hours    24 Fuel Consumed    255 gallons Average Speed = 13.6 mph Average Fuel Used = 1.34 gallons per mile, or 18 gallons per hour Locks    2      On Trip 4 we repaired a shore power cable and serviced the outboard on the dinghy.  We had a water leak repaired, which was under the sink in the galley. Statistics for Trips 1, 2, 3 & 4: Miles    4,351 Running Hours    330 Running Days    41 Travel to/from the boat days    7 Lay Days   15 Total Days in the Trips    63 Generator Hours    297 Fuel Consumed    6,021 gallons Average Speed = 13.2 mph Average Fuel Used = 1.38 gallons per mile, or 18.2 gallons per hour Locks    98         For all four trips, we changed the Racor filters on the CATs four times and on the generator once.  We changed the secondary fuel filters on the CATs once.  We changed the oil and filters on all three engines three times.  We removed and cleaned and reinstalled the port heat exchanger to reduce temperatures in that engine.  We had repairs made to the autopilot, the aft deck lights, the shore power cables twice, the starboard tachometer shaft for the Glendinning, the aft shower sump pump, the port bilge blower, the water line under the galley sink, and wiring and one switch at the upper helm.  We added water to the batteries twice, checked the sea strainers three times, and cleaned the air filters on the CATs twice.      We anchored once in TX on the ICW, once on the Tenn-Tom Waterway, and twice on the Cumberland River.  At Morgan City, LA we tied up to the City Docks, which was free, but we had no water or electricity, so it was like an anchorage in some ways.  We tied up to an old lock wall once and to a tree once on the Cumberland River.  Bobby’s Fish Camp in AL, Brandenburg Marina in KY, and Six and Plum Marina in WV were the same (no electricity or water) except they cost about $10 - 22 per night.  Schenley Yacht Club in PA had no electricity or water for us, and was free; Lighthouse Landing Marina in PA had everything and was still free.  Kentuckiana Yacht Sales provided us with a free slip with water and power in Jeffersonville, IN.  Holiday Point Marina in OH provided us with a free slip and Engle's in PA reduced the cost of the slip after we bought fuel from each of them.  Mike Fink's Restaurant in KY charged us $10 plus the price of dinner for a slip with electricity but no water.  We stayed in marinas the balance of the nights, with water and shore power.  Slip fees in those marinas ranged from $0.50 to 1.00 per foot per night, including electricity, except at Moors in KY, Aspinwall in PA, and Cedar Creek Yacht Club in TN where we had a flat rate based on a longer-term stay.      Later in the week we found we had a bent prop on the port side and a bent shaft on the starboard side and some missing zincs.  The bottom in that area could be hard or soft mud, shells, or manmade objects, like engine blocks.  Trees, logs, and pilings, exposed to the surface or somewhat submerged, also took their toll.  We took the jet boat to the mechanic to have it worked on so it would start.  The maintenance costs were high for that weekend.