November 4 & 5, 2009

November 4 & 5, 2009

Grand Harbor Marina, Iuka, MS

We were up and getting fuel early this morning – the fog had dissipated and things were favorable to go. Mark and I had decided to take some time to do a side trip and continue up the Tennessee River – at least to Joe Wheeler State Park, Alabama. We had heard how beautiful it was and we had some extra time.

Unfortunately….. as Mark was fuelling up, the fuel cap with the safety chain fell into the water. Apparently, the size and age of our fuel cap, makes it a hard item to replace. The marinas in the area did not have a cap that would fit, so temporarily, Mark has found a PVC pipe fitting to cap off our starboard side. This took so long that we stayed Wednesday night at Grand Harbor. Then we made arrangements for Chip Lucas to dive under the boat and look for the cap. He said he could do it on Thursday morning around 9:00. We were up and ready, but Chip didn’t dive until 1:00. He searched for a good half hour and after all of that we still had no fuel cap. He found a SeaRay cap and his expensive pair of sunglasses that he had dropped a few days ago. So we will look a little “tacky” until we get to Florida where we hope to pick up a proper cap.

However, we did not waste our time while we were idle. There’s always something to do on a boat. Mark went through the steering hydraulics, replaced the fluids, found and repaired leaks in the system. He is optimistic that we will have better staying power with our steering. I decided that I had time to put another coat of Sikkens on the tow rail, and gloss on the handrails. Six hours later, I was done. I guess it was a little too cool on the port handrail because it is cloudy this morning. Shoot!

A boat, Shingebiss, from Newport, MN came into the harbor and we visited with Steve and Liz. They started out from MN when we did and have had their own set of adventures. I’m sure we will see them again. I don’t mean this in a bad way, but it was nice to talk with people that talk like us.(:-0)

We went to dinner at Freddy T’s after cleaning up. We had deep fried dill pickles with ranch dressing – must have liked them – they were gone in minutes!!

After being delayed for two days we decided that we probably will not go up the Tennessee River. That will have to be a trip for another time. Besides I would want to go all the way to Chattanooga so we could see the “Grand Canyon of Tennessee”.