Pebble Isle Marina -- Home Base "for now"

Friday, August 25 was another great travel day.  Low humidity, high/wispy clouds, no wind and nice temperatures.  We had 31 miles to travel from Paris Landing Marina to Pebble Isle Marina.

Our goal when we left Nashville was to arrive in Pebble Isle Marina in New Johnsonville, TN within 8-10 days.  In addition, prior to leaving Nashville on August 18, we left one of our vehicles at Pebble Isle marina so we would have a vehicle to drive back so we could re-group, wash clothes, go thru mail, plot our next trip, etc.

We laughed when we got in the car that we were looking for the navigational beacons to guide us up the highway -- all we had to do was stay between the lines on the road!!   In addition, it was different for us to be on dry land -- we will have to get our "land legs" back under us rather than riding the waves on the boat!!

The Tennessee River continues to be magical as we move through its waters.  I failed to mention in a previous blog that it is very easy to see at least 12-14 miles ahead or behind you as you move down the river.  This river is incredibly beautiful in every way.  The water is still wide and deep as we navigate south.

One of the most unique pictures we have seen so far was the remains of an old L&N railroad bridge -- you'll see that there is only about 1/3 of the bridge still standing.  In addition, right past the railroad bridge, there is a big building in the middle of the river that is an old abandoned building that was used to ship grain on the Tennessee River before the Kentucky Dam was built in 1944.  The story on this grain building was that it was built to well that attempts to destroy it failed so officials decided to leave it.

L&N Railroad Bridge remains

Grain Building in Middle of TN River

We also see another "car ferry" -- it's not marked on any of our navigation maps nor guide books. It didn't have a name like the one on the Cumberland River, but we had to stop in the middle of the river for this ferry to cross in front of us -- who knew we'd have to watch for cars in the middle of the river!!!  This ferry must not get a lot of traffic -- it had 2 motorcycles on it -- it left the shore, then a car came up so the ferry turned around so the car could also get on the ferry!!

Car Ferry 

At this point on the river, we start seeing cliffs on our left -- so this is the first we have seen hills on the Tennessee River.  Gorgeous houses are built along the cliffs -- some having hundreds and hundreds of steps going down to the river.

It's not long before we see the 600-foot smoke stacks for the TVA Power Plant in New Johnsonville -- so we are nearing our planned destination.  At 2PM, we arrive at Pebble Isle Marina.  We check in and plan to remain here for about a week.

As it turns out, with the heavy rains of Hurricane Henry reaching Tennessee starting Wednesday, August 31, we will slightly delay our next trip down the Tennessee River and plan to leave on Sunday or Monday of Labor Day weekend.

 We traveled a total of 244 miles and 25 hours of "running time" in 8 days.

Pebble Isle Marina -- transient dock area

Cloud Nine docked on transient dock

Paris Landing Marina

This area of the Tennessee River is so picturesque.  I cannot say enough about how beautiful the scenery is and how deep and clean the water is --- we could live here in a heartbeat.  We traveled about 38 miles from Kenlake to Paris Landing.  We are now back in Tennessee!!  After we checked into the marina, it was about 4PM so we decided to go back into the lake and try our first anchor.  So we went into a nice cove and nestled our boat within Land Between the Lakes.  The scenery is unbelievably gorgeous.  There are all kinds of wildlife, including birds, deer, fish, White and Blue Herons and even an eagle.  We decided to “take a dip in the water”.  It felt great so we floated on our noodles for a while.  We had a perfect view for another unbelievable sunset.  With it being so flat, we knew it would get dark as soon as the sun went over the horizon so we decided we needed to get the anchor up and start our ride back to the marina before dark.  While we were waiting on the sunset, I decided to sit on the back swim platform and enjoy the scenery.  Little did I know I needed to have a fly-swat handy.  I have never needed a fly-swat in all my years of boating because the flies were so bad!!  Luckily we had one handy and I killed at least 20 files.  Finally these flies realized I had cat-like reflexes and if they wanted to live another day, they needed to go elsewhere.  That’s the only explanation I have as to the reason why they left!! 

Beautiful Anchor Spot

Splash of Mud from the anchor.  Time to Clean up.

Grey Heron sitting high welcoming us to the Marina

The marina was very nice, updated and looked new.  There was no restaurant there, so we had to “rough-it” and make something to eat on Cloud Nine!!   In addition to many sailboats there, there were also two 65’ yachts there.  One was over $2.3M and will be leaving soon for UT Football games then on to Florida for the winter.  This yacht was bought in Canada and they hired a Captain to drive the boat to Paris Landing.  That sounds like a great “job” for Gene and I to do – drive yachts from one place to another – well someone’s gotta do it – why not us!!   

Paris Landing Marina and in Daylight

Paris Landing Marina at Night

Also the US Coastguard keeps their barges here loaded with the navigational buoys (red/green cans) that mark the deepest part of the river channel -- a critical part of navigating the waters to avoid getting in shallow water.  Since the Coastguard is located at this marina, the navigational markers coming into this marina were exceptional.....

US Coastguard barge

Thursday night had a nice breeze all night so we didn’t have any dew to wipe down the next morning!!  That is always a plus!!  Since the sunrise was so beautiful the day before, we decided to get up early enough to experience another unbelievable sunrise.   

Below are sunset pictures.

My on-board Photographer (and Captain)

Gene is still struggling with hangnails…and making an ordeal about it.  He wants another manicure.  I re-introduced him to a fingernail file and told him to “get after it”.  Although disappointed, he followed directions well!!!  Soon, we were ready to un-tie and head to our next destination – Pebble Isle Marina.

Cloud Nine at Night!!

Kenlake Marina -- Our Next Stop

As we left Green Turtle Bay Marina, we went through the canal that connects Lake Barkley and Kentucky Lake.  It is about 1-1/2 miles long and is a very busy through-way.  As we entered Kentucky Lake/Tennessee River, the water was the largest body of water I had ever seen.  The Tennessee River is so much bigger and deeper than the Cumberland River -- it is absolutely gorgeous.  We decided to significantly change the number of miles we would travel in a day -- and we wanted to stop and visit most of the marinas on the Tennessee River -- so we traveled about 18 miles on Wednesday!!  It was a great ride -- the weather to travel could not have been more perfect.  It was about 80 degrees, sunny, low humidity and light wind. 

On Wednesday, August 23, we arrived at Kenlake Marina.  Many marinas on the Tennessee River are protected by huge rock walls so water currents and waves/wakes wont erode the banks of the River nor rock the boats in the marina. By the time we arrived at the marina we were, of course, ready to eat!!  After we got checked in, we headed to the restaurant and had the best hamburger ever!!  We were also fortunate to have a covered slip so we didn't have to worry about the dew getting our boat wet at night!!  

There were literally hundreds of sailboats at this marina.  Gene was an early-riser and took some amazing sunrise pictures including the sailboats. 

We met the owner of the marina – he bought this marina about a year ago and has some pretty impressive plans to expand the marina including more boat slips, an additional restaurant for upscale dining, a smoke-house, showers for transient boaters (like us), laundry facility and more.  We will definitely make another visit to this marina in the future.

A few years ago, a barge hit a bridge on Hwy 68 -- right at this marina.  The bridge had to be re-built.  It was built higher so sailboats could get thru it without having to take their mast/sails down.  Also you'll notice another large barge heading toward the bridge ---- he made it thru safely!!

We took a long walk that evening thru the Kenlake State Park.  It was a gorgeous state park.  Everything about this section of the Lake is so amazingly beautiful.  

Tennessee River View at Kenlake

Green Turtle Bay Marina Destination

Last Saturday morning, August 19, we left Clarksville Marina at 8:40AM.  It was sunny and 71 degrees and low winds....a perfect day for traveling.  We had 95.8 miles to travel so we needed to pick up the pace from yesterday.  It's hard to fathom it taking 7-1/2 hours to go 95 miles -- but when you are traveling at about 12-15 MPH, that's how long it takes.....needless to say, we were hot, tired and hungry when we arrived at Green Turtle Bay at 4PM.

Cloud Nine Docked at Green Turtle Bay Marina

Along our trip, we passed several huge barges - larger than the ones we saw the day before.  We also went thru 2 "wildlife refuges", they both extended for about 10 miles each.  They had over 8,800 acres  along with nearly 250 species of birds and thousands of ducks and geese that spend the winter there.  We saw hundreds of birds -- one of the most interesting  was an "albino" Heron.  We have seen Blue Herons before, but these white ones were amazing and there were so many of them.  We also saw one bird that we gave a "8.7" score as he was flying above the water and dove straight down probably 40 feet into the water to successfully capture his lunch!!  He didn't seem to care we were traveling close enough to where we almost made him our lunch -- or "hood/bow ornament"!!  We also saw an eagle, but course our camera was not "locked and loaded" so we didn't get a picture of him. He was amazing to watch fly.

The large Barge carrying Sand

There is only one "working ferry" on the Cumberland River and it is in Cumberland City, TN  We had to stop and wait for this ferry, carrying 2 pickup trucks and 2 cars, to cross the river to the other side.  The ferry's name is "Lucille II".  Apparently she is a very busy ferry, and there aren't any bridges close by so that is the only mode of transportation if you want to "get to the other side"!!  That was quite cool to see.

Lucille II -- the Ferry

As we approached the mouth of Lake Barkley, I presumed the water would open up to a huge body of water -- while it somewhat did, the navigational buoys were not where they should have been and our GPS map on our boat stopped at the TN/KY state line -- oh crap...oh crap...oh crap.  We had to quickly re-group and pull up Garmin on our I-pad.  Thank goodness for "Plan B".....and my very organized Captain Gene!  The next 20 miles or so were treacherous...shallow water, the river channel was within feet of the shoreline....trees and other debris in the water.....that was not the most fun part of the day, but no one was thrown overboard nor yelled at, and nothing got torn up.....so it was just part of the adventure. 

They must not have a speed limit on Lake Barkley -- every boat there (whether a pontoon, jet ski, fishing boat, pleasure boat, etc) was traveling at the speed of light.  They were certainly more confident in these waters with "trees in the middle of the lake" than we were.  There were many times we looked at the depth in the middle of the river channel and it was 8-10 feet.  We are use to water being 100+ feet deep.  So this is a big adjustment for us.

Another interesting landmark was the Kentucky State Prison located right on the banks of the Cumberland River / Lake Barkley.

We were happy to reach our destination, Green Turtle Bay Resort and Marina.  We stayed here for the next 4 days.  For dinner the first night, we had a nice meal at the Thirsty Turtle restaurant.  The bath house is very nice here and much easier to take a shower in the bath house rather than in our boat (less clean up and wipe down for me)!!   We spent time Saturday morning tidying up inside the boat, getting our TV set up so we can watch local channels, cleaning up our back cuddy where all our food, clothes, tools, etc are stored in plastic tubs!!

The dock we are staying on is called the "transient" dock.  For boaters that travel, these transient docks are located close to the restaurant, office and bath houses as most folks only stay here for a few days before moving on down (or up) the river.  This time of year, there are many boaters that have started traveling south and plan to stay in South Florida or the Bahamas for the winter.  And most of these folks are from somewhere north like Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio.  We so enjoyed meeting these folks (they are known as "loopers") because they travel from the North down the Ohio River, on thru the Tennessee River, down the Tom-Bigbee River that gets them to the Gulf of Mexico in Mobile.  From there they travel east along the panhandle of Florida and stop in a Marina somewhere in South Florida or the Bahamas for the winter, then the next spring they will travel north up the east shoreline of Florida in the Atlantic Ocean, up through South Carolina, Boston Harbor, New York City, thru the Erie Canal, into Canada and back to their home. They are so interesting to talk with and we thoroughly enjoyed meeting them and spending time learning about their adventures.  Several of the couples have made the full loop 1-4 times.  They truly love traveling on their boats.

The number of sailboats was incredible.

On Monday, the slip our boat was in was the PERFECT spot to view the Eclipse.  So we didn't have to go anywhere.  The eclipse was incredible.  As it began to get dark, the birds stopped singing, the Cicadas came out and started chirping, the turtles made their "nighttime bed", and everything got so quiet.  It was an amazing experience.  

On Tuesday, Gene and I had a couples massage -- we are at a resort -- so we needed to take advantage of all it had to offer -- right?!!  It was Gene's first massage -- think he could get use to that -- we were so pampered and spoiled!!  We also experienced our first "storm" so we had to practice putting our covers on our boat to keep the water out of the boat.  

On Wednesday, our last day at Green Turtle Bay, we had a manicure and pedicure.  Also Gene's first experience.  He thoroughly enjoyed that -- he has done nothing but talk about his manicure and when he chips a nail or has a hang nail, it turns into a major ordeal!!!  He wanted to turn around and go back for a do-over when he had his first chipped nail -- I quickly introduced him to a well-known device called a "nail file" --- we were not turning around for a chipped nail!!!!   

About noon on Wednesday, we left Green Turtle Bay and moved from the Cumberland River  on Lake Barkley to the Tennessee River on Kentucky Lake.  We learned a valuable lesson not to travel more than about 40 miles a day – the 95 mile trip up the Cumberland River last week was entirely too far to travel by water in 1 day. We were headed to Kenlake Marina.

And Away Cloud Nine Goes Again....

First Travel Day is 'in the books" and it was AWESOME

Well we survived the first day and it was an incredible day.  We left out of Rock Harbor Marina in Nashville at 10:50AM after topping off the fuel for our 48 mile journey. It was a beautiful Friday morning for just about anything (it was sunny, low winds and 81 degrees), and it was a perfect day for us to be aboard Cloud Nine.  We turned left out of Rock Harbor and just a few miles on the left we saw Alan Jackson's house.  It was incredible....see below.

Alan's house was at the widest and most beautiful area on the Cumberland.  Sadly we didn't see Alan at his house today! 

Just a mile or so further, we met our first "barge".  That was "interesting".  It was carrying multiple barge loads of sand and coal.  Its wake was huge, but we made it thru without any issue.  Whew.....

About 2PM today we approached the "dreaded" dam/lock we had to go thru.  If you remember my last post, I was sweating bullets having to go on the front of the boat and loop the rope around the bollard to secure us in the lock.  We had to wait about 20 minutes for the Lockmaster to raise the lock so we could enter.  Then the huge horn blew signaling us to enter the lock.  My heart was beating a thousand miles a minute, but we looked like pros.....at least to us we did!!  The lock dropped us about 40 feet then we proceeded down the Cumberland River.  We saw the mouth of the Harpeth River -- we had no idea the Harpeth was in Cheatham County -- it was beautiful -- it's not so pretty nor deep in our hometown of Franklin, TN.     This is Cheatham Lock

The next noteworthy sighting was when we saw a volleyball net in the middle of the Cumberland River.  Apparently they play volleyball on a sandbar in Cheatham County!!  It's hard to see, but believe me the volleyball net is there---in the middle of the River!!

At 3:50PM we reached today's destination at Clarksville Marina.  We had an amazing dinner, now listening to Kenny Chesney radio on Cloud Nine and writing about our day.  During dinner, we critiqued our day and laughed so long and so hard, folks were staring at us!  That was the most we have laughed in a long time - tears were flowing! 

We plan to leave no later than 8AM on Saturday.  We have almost 100 miles to go tomorrow and it took us 4-1/2 hours to go 48 miles today so we need to giddy-up and get going early tomorrow.

More from Lake Barkley and Green Turtle Marina tomorrow night!!

The Adventure Begins.......

Our dream is about to come become reality.   It’s hard to believe all the planning, re-planning and numerous to-do lists will happen in less than 36 hours!!  We purchased our boat, Cloud Nine, in July 2014 with the intent, at that time, of taking the boat to the river when we retire to see how much we enjoy traveling the waters.  We retired in April, and have spent the last few months making final plans to “get this party started”!! We have had Cloud Nine docked at Center Hill Lake about 70 miles east of Nashville for the past 3 years.  We moved our boat to Rock Harbor Marina on the Cumberland River in downtown Nashville on July 19.  We have had some general maintenance completed and now we are ready to go!!

We have been through tons of lists that will enable us to be as ready as possible – our food is packed, beverages are on ice, swim suits (the bulk of my wardrobe!), clothes, bumpers, tie-off lines, cleaning supplies, life jackets, maps for distance, maps for depth and more maps, etc.

We will leave from Rock Harbor Marina Friday morning, August 18th, and travel down the Cumberland River toward Clarksville where we will spend the night at Clarksville Marina.  26 miles after we leave Rock Harbor Marina, we will venture through our first lock.  I (Kathy) have never been through a lock before and I have been volunteered to be the one on the front of the boat and loop the rope around the bollard (2 loops counter-clockwise) to keep us “attached” inside the lock until we are ready to exit the lock.  I have extreme angst about completing this task, but if we want to travel the rivers, going through the locks is a requirement!!  So it’s a good thing I have to face my fears within the first hour or so and get that over with.  After we get through Cheatham Lock, we will continue to Clarksville Marina.  We will spend the night and re-fuel there.  The next morning, we will continue north through Lake Barkley and spend the next 4 nights at Green Turtle Bay Marina which is on the northern end of Lake Barkley -- where we will experience the Great Eclipse on August 21. 

We will update the blog as we get to various marinas and have access to wi-fi.  We will include pictures of our trip and share notes of our adventures.  Enjoy “our ride”.