Slow Boat to Mobile

11/15/2013

The lesson today kids is that if you have 250 dollars until December third you anchor out a lot. After I left Florence I took three days to go 50 miles. I had a doctors appointment in Corinth which meant two days in a marina and a few gallons of fuel.

I stopped and spent a night at Bear Creek.

Sunrise at Bear Creek

I spent two night at Wetstone

I left Grand harbor for the last look at the Ohio River watershed on 11/12. I hit Bay Springs Lake 38 miles down the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. I am 412 miles from Mobile Alabama.

I am still here at Bay Springs and it is a beautiful place to spend a few days. This a pretty place but alas no cell service in most of the anchorages. What a great opportunity to learn some important things about yourself.

My anchor got hung up when I had to reset it and as usual there was 30 minutes of  @#$%#@%&% and then relief. After three years on the water I decided to make a trip line. This is a line tied to the front of the anchor and attached to a float so that if the anchor gets hung up you can grab it with a boat hook pull it up and use the line to pull the anchor out backwards.

The last few days have also been record low temperatures. Got the long handles out known up north as long under wear or long johns. Ran the the old Honda and the electric heater but it has to go off at night so carbon monoxide doesn’t get you. Temps went down to 22 degrees and the cabin to 38 degrees. This was like old times coming down the river. The condensation freezes on the inside of the windows. God I love it so. The challenge, the risk, the chance to look at yourself face to face under crappy conditions.

I decided to spend yesterday looking for a Wi-Fi Hot Spot. I found one at an anchorage I used two years ago. The lake and the anchorage have that Michigan look with sand and hardwood.

I spotted a Common Loon probably migrating from the Great Lakes to the coast. They will get there a few days ahead of me.

Not bad huh….

Front comes in tomorrow and rain is following. Midway Marina with great hot showers is 20 miles and three locks down. Winds will come up 15 mph out of the south so a decision will be made early in the A.M.

That’s the skinny. Now for a late breakfast.

This is Dr Brad standing by on 16.

This blog is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

You Don’t Know What You Got Til It’s Gone

Left Pickwick State Park after the retreat on 5/16. Since then I have gotten as far as Goose Pond Marina in Scottsboro Alabama but not without problems. Getting ready to leave the park I noticed the battery meter was low. I checked the batteries with a tester and they were in fact low. I thought I had some bad batteries. I knew these would give out eventually but I was hoping they would last in to at least July.

Behold, not the batteries at all but a burnt out on board charger. Not good news at all. In my infinite wisdom I thought well temporarily I will buy a regular charger and charge the batteries each day and limp along conserving power on the fridge, pump and so forth until I had the money to get a new on board charger.

First I wanted to know if the charger could be repaired and what went wrong. This began my education in 12 volt on board charger 101. I eventually found out that the charger I was using was built for a different boating lifestyle.

 These chargers are made to be used to charge batteries at rest. Some one brings back their boat after the day and plugs it in, or turns it on, and leaves. The the charger if used on my boat would charge my three batteries. As you might imagine I don’t stop and leave the boat. I use 12 volt power constantly on gauges, alarms, pumps and communication. The sport charger can’t handle this. The sport charger basically has a nervous breakdown and it ain’t pretty .

I use three series 29 batteries

and have about three hundred amp hours of power to use for 12 volt stuff. Well without getting technical to keep them charged with my little portable takes a lot of time. You have to put quite a bit more energy into a battery to gain back what you use. Thus it’d be a big pain in the behind as well

the fact I have to shut everything down to charge.

So, long story short I need a charger that allows the batteries to charge while being used. I need a charger that can over ride the batteries and provide its power directly.

Thus the three stage on board charger

“ And the answer is…”

$300 plus shipping for the charger. Most likely $300 for three mid level 29 batteries and the bonus is staying at a marina to do the installation and in fact go into a second month to have the money for both. Well It appears I will be staying in Alabama for awhile.

Will do the work and go see my sis. I will be going Greyhound. I just need to get to Chattanooga. A month in a marina is cheaper than a week. Just gotta find a place with good showers Laundromat and such.

Well other than that, “ How was the play Mrs. Lincoln?”

Had some good anchorages and stayed over the holidays at Joe Wheeler State Park. Joe Wheeler was an interesting man. Check him out. I command you.

Well here are some pics

This house boat does not get out much.

This is the Wilson lock. This lock is a 95 foot lift. Remember the J C Whitten lock at 85 feet. On the bottom right is a 50 foot houseboat. Wow!

Rain falling about 4.5 miles up river near Goose Pond.

Big wide expanses of river from Guntersville toward Goose Pond

This may not look like much but this where the Marshall Space center loaded rocket parts onto a special ship for river and ocean travel to send to Florida during the space program in the sixties. They had good batteries on board.

Well this is Dr. Brad standing by on 16 somewhere out here-

PS All colloquialisms are on purpose and so are any misspellings or grammatical errors. So there!

Hot as Hell…

Temperatures are in the 100’s for the weekend. The heat index at present is 107 degrees. However I have worked long enough to purchase  a Honda 200i Companion generator.

Isn’t she a beauty. This little puppy will run the AC , the whole shebang.

I also finally got my homemade 65 watt solar panel hooked up when I got this

8 amp controller

I have successfully charged my trolling motor battery as well as these two huge 6 volt batteries I have hooked up to make a humongous 12 volt battery with a couple of hundred amp hours. I am in the process of putting some serious electric in the aft cabin. I am also going to wire a switch to run the refrigerator and stay off the house batteries when I am out.  I even will run a small inverter to charge some electronics that can’t use 12 volt hookups.

I’ll tell you this. Below is the best gas can ever in the world, anyplace in the universe, bar none, swear to God, would walk over a dying nun to get sort of good.You can fill anything and it will not spill a drop. You put it straight up and down and fill the tank and it shuts itself off and sucks the gas in the nozzle back into the tank. This is some groovy stuff. Check these guys out on line

 

This June also brought out the bass tournaments. These guys where nothing like that sob I wrote about awhile back. They were serious down to earth pro types and real good amateurs. Boy howdy did these guys bring in the fish. One tournament had the big fish at 8.97 pounds. I have never seen a bass that big. Here are some pictures of one tourney.

And in the end let us not forget the penultimate fishing guy.

and the beauty of the river

By the way my phone crapped out and I lost all my contacts. I have nobody’s phone number. Send mail to doc-brad@hotmail.com and lay it on me if you still have the strength.

This is Dr. Brad standing by on 16 .