8/2017 to 9/2018 – Seventh Sun III wintered in Knoxville, TN. due to continued family crisis.
We hired Sam Evans as a captain to take our boat back to Counce, TN where we had departed our loop progress in May of 2017 for the sidetrip to Chattenooga and then Knoxville. We then had a great deal of work done at Lee Spry Marina. We then had the boat moved to Grand Harbor Marina.
6/5/19 – 6/9/19. We visited the boat in Grand Harbor, TN to get more maintenance done on the boat and tour the Muscle Shoals Music Studio. We arranged more work to be done on the boat before our return to head south down the rivers.
10/22/19 – We arrived in Grand Harbor having stopped for the night in Elizabethtown. We had dinner at Freddies and headed out on 10/23 after dropping off car and hitting a grocery in Corinth. We hit the Whitten Lock and waited for 1½ hrs. We had 8 other boats in the lock with us. We all traveled to Montgomery and Rankin Lock then to Midway Marina. We were having trouble with batteries so had to run the generator to keep house electric going. TJ Jones drove an hour with 3 new house batteries and then found out the alternator was not working. TJ took the alternator with him to replace. I got take-out from Midway Marina for dinner.
10/24/19. We took the
courtesy car to Walmart and had lunch at Fort BBQ. TJ returned with new alternator about 5:30 and
installed. He said that there were only
two in the US and this one had been delivered from Memphis by a 16 year-old boy
for $100. Everything was working well
except now it
had begun raining hard.
On 10/25/19 while still raining we fueled up, pumped out and headed out to Smithville Marina to separate from the large crowd in the lock formation.- We left at 12:30 and arrived at Smithville Marina around 2:30pm. Smithville Marina looked like the movie “Deliverance”. There were half sunken and very beat-up boats and most of them had people living on them….I’m sure it was very economical. We used their truck to find a local spot for dinner at Mel’s Diner. The place was very crowded and served large portions of fried southern foods!
10/26/19 - We left early the next morning around 7:30 in winds gusting to 30 to 50 mph. We had gusts, rain and whitecaps in the river but the locks were open at Wilkens, Amory and Aberdeen and arrived in Columbus Marina around 1:00pm.
10/27/19 – We left Columbus Marina at 7:30am and the Stennis Lock at 10:00 and the Bevell Lock at 1:45. We anchored at Cooks South Bend anchorage MM227. I cooked pasta and had a quiet night with only one anchor out.
10/28/19 - We left Cook’s Bend anchorage at 7:30 to catch the Heflin Lock at 8:00am. We were out of the lock by 8:30 and arrived at Kingfisher Marina in Demopolis at 1:30. We got fuel and headed into our slip. We took the shuttle with Pam and Mike from Sea C Rider to eat at SVH Bistro and had a nice meal and pleasant company.
10/29/19 – We left Kingfisher at 7:00 to hit the Demopolis Lock. We had a good travel day though there were lots of logs and 2-3 mph current. We traveled around 14mph and covered about 99 miles ending the day at Bobby’s Fish Camp where we took on more fuel. A sailboat “It’ll Be All Right” shared their horror story from a recent storm. Dave and Penny from Southern Cross and Carl and Mackie from Endorphin Voyager arrived for the evening also.
10/30/19 - We took off early morning following Southern
Cross in a heavy rain and fog. It was
great to have a leader. We covered about 80 miles and decided to
anchor in the Tensaw River. It was a
great location with easy holding and a slight current holding us straight.
10/31 – We left Tensaw River around 9:00am and caught up to Southern Cross and Endorphin Voyager and followed them again all day into Mobile Bay. This is a very commercial area with many moving boats and barges. The other two boats stopped at the Convention Center and we headed on to Dog River Marina. We had high winds and very choppy water which made a long and bumpy ride. We had a hard time docking even with help. After we finally were tied up, we took the courtesy car to dinner at the Mariner. It was very windy all night and their docks were not in great shape.
11/1/19 – We left Dog River at 11am in high winds and we had
a hard time getting off the dock. We
headed across Mobile Bay to Fairhope, AL in choppy seas. We arrived around 12:30. We were under cover but with miniscule
fingers. We got a rental car around 4:00
and drove into Fairhope. We went to a
gallery opening and then back to Sunset Point for dinner. The next morning, we went back downtown for
breakfast at Jill Wins. We went to Office
Depot to print a temporary AGLCA flag as our burgee. I took a couple of walks around
Fairhope. It is an extremely nice town
to visit even though our marina was too far from downtown. We had dinner at McSharpy’s Irish Pub and met Fairhope
Fire Department Treasurer, Mark Poilluci, and his wife.Our 2nd burgee is below and then our printed and lamenated temporary burgee is on the right.
11/3/19 – We left the Fairhope Docks around 9:00am and arrived at Lulu’s Restaurant—she is Jimmy Buffet’s sister. One mile later, we had an alarm go off. It turned out to be the port engine overheating. We shut down that engine and headed off to Saunders Boat Yard just ½ mile behind us. We tied to the wall and tried to contact the staff to notify them. Southern Cross and Aquaman were docked here and we were invited to ride along with them to a Looper gathering at The Wharf for about 20 people. The Wharf is a very nice marina with good amenities like the restaurant where we ate, the Villagio.
11/4/19 – Saunders contacted us early and came to the
boat. We had to move all the items under the couch so that we could get both engine hatches open and then find somewhere to store that stuff, we added water to be able to run the
boat on one engine to Orange Beach Marina.
Saunders will work on the cooling pump on the port engine.
We left the boat in Orange Beach Marina and we drove back home.
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