December 6, 2022: Our first taste of fog, a partially submerged building, and a marina that reminded me of an off-season summer camp.
(continued from Grand Rivers, KY to Buchanan, TN (Paris Landing))
It was foggy when we woke up. Not the kind of patchy fog that drifts in and out and disappears soon after sunrise. This was the kind of thick fog that blankets the landscape, making you wonder if there’s really anything out there. We could barely see the Coast Guard station across the marina and had no sight of the bridge or what lay beyond it.
Here’s the Coast Guard Station when the fog had lifted enough to see it. The water was completely still.
Tools on Board for Navigating in Fog
I had zero experience boating in the fog, although Do It Now was equipped with the tools that could make doing so relatively safe:
- Radar display on my chartplotter(s) could show me targets as I traveled. Targets could be as small as buoys or as large as land masses. I’d been practicing with my radar in limited visibility so I did have a clue about how to interpret the targets that appeared. I felt pretty confident that radar would prevent me from driving into something solid.
- Chartplotters showed me channels and navigable water. If I kept the little boat icon inside a channel or deep water, I’d be fine. I had plenty of experience doing this, not only on the boat with a chartplotter but on a helicopter with a moving map GPS — which was pretty much the same thing but with different maps.
- Horn to toot every two minutes as required (I believe) by boating rules and regulations. My horn was good and loud. All I had to do was watch the clock and give it a toot on every even or odd minute.
Other boaters routinely relied on at least the first two items to drive in the fog. I’d read accounts of Loopers doing this. It wasn’t unusual and it wasn’t illegal.
But did I want to drive my new boat in the fog? No. So we waited, hoping it would burn off.
Here’s Alyse with my pups on her lap, enjoying her morning coffee while we waited for the fog to burn off.
Departure Time
I shot this right around the time I decided to get moving. By this point, the fog was patchy and we could see across the river.
Of course, neither of us wanted to spend the whole day and probably another night in wet, dreary, and cold Paris Landing Marina and if I didn’t leave my 10 or 11 AM, that’s what we’d be doing. It made no sense to make it a short day to another marina or an anchorage. Eventually, it was a “now or never” decision and when the fog lifted enough to see across the river, I decided to cast off.
We departed at about 9:40 AM. In the entire time we’d been at the marina, we hadn’t seen a single person there.
The Cruise
The cruise was not very enjoyable. We started out in patchy fog that, at times, got very dense. I displayed radar on one of my chartplotters for the whole day. In some places, I needed the chartplotter to keep me in the channel because we simply could not see channel markers until we were very close to them. When the fog was really dense, I slowed down. When visibility improved, I sped up, but only to about 7 knots. The lake had a current of maybe 1 knot so that reduced our fuel efficiency.
The fog was patchy most of the time, giving the landscape a layered look in some places.
At around 11:30 AM, we passed the ruins of a partially submerged building. Keep in mind that Kentucky Lake was formed when they built Kentucky Dam up in Grand Rivers. Before the lake filled with water, there were towns and roads, and railroads in the area. Although the ruins we passed were identified in one book as an “abandoned marina,” it was no such thing. The Old Danville Grain Elevator had been a six-story grain transfer station that took cargo from barges on the river and raised it up to the level of railroad train cars. Now, of course, most of the building all all of the railroad facility is under water. It was eerie to see, especially since we could motor right by it.
The Danville Grain Transfer Elevator is partially visible, rising up from Kentucky Lake.
We drove for hours, sometimes in clear areas, sometimes in patchy fog areas, and sometimes in dense fog areas. I kept an eye on my ETA for our next marina, which was Cuba Landing in Waverly, TN. At one point, in dense fog with water as smooth as glass, a fishing boat sped by us.
At about 2 PM, we had to pass under a bridge with just 24 feet of clearance. My boat only needs 16 feet of clearance under normal circumstances, but I have a windsock on a long pole that might increase my height to more than 20 feet — and maybe even as much as 24 feet. The bridge would not open to clear a windsock and I didn’t want it to anyway. So I throttled down to idle forward, left Alyse at the helm, and went out to lower it. It was only attached with bungee balls, so it wasn’t a big deal. I tilted it way down so it was lower than my VHF antenna. Then I got back behind the wheel, throttled up, and went under the bridge. I’d leave the windsock down for the rest of the day.
We arrived at Cuba Landing Marina just after 4 PM. I got on the radio with someone at the fuel dock who gave me directions to get to my slip, which was on the farthest dock. The instructions required me to hug the fuel dock and then avoid the island, etc. The slip was covered and was kind of dark when we got in there. No one came to help, but it wasn’t a big deal. The water was calm with no wind or current and it was easy enough to get the boat where it needed to be.
Here’s our Nebo log for December 6, 2022. Download a PDF log file with more info. Track Do It Now on Nebo.
At Cuba Landing
After tying up, we all went to the office, which was back by the fuel dock, to settle my bill for the night. It was a long walk. The bathrooms were near the office so I didn’t expect to be using them much. In fact, after paying for the slip and chatting for a while with the guy who worked there, I didn’t go back there at all.
There was a courtesy car, but it wasn’t available. It might be available later that evening; it belonged to one of the people who worked there. (Or maybe owned the place?) It was okay — we had food for dinner — although it would have been nice to visit the local restaurant which apparently specialized in pie, which is one of my weaknesses.
We had dinner and I took my pups for another walk. The whole area was wet with dense trees and undergrowth beyond the parking area. Everything had moss growing on it. For some reason, it reminded me of a summer camp in the forest, but off-season, when no one was there to use or maintain it. My pups scared off two deer that were just inside the woods. In the near distance, I could hear the sound of cars and trucks passing on the interstate highway.
Here’s the entrance to Dock 5, where we were parked. I’m pretty sure there were a few liveaboards there, including the folks in the houseboat parked right next to us.
We were just getting ready to retreat to our sleeping spaces when there was a knock on the side of the boat. A woman was there with a set of keys. She’d just gotten back from a day trip to Knoxville and we could use her car if we wanted to. We thanked her but declined. She then chatted with us for about 15 minutes about all kinds of things, throwing around the F-word like a pro. She left us after telling us which boat was hers and assuring us that the keys were left outside the boat on a table whenever the car was available.
Feeling as if not much could top that, we turned in for the night.
(continued in Waverly (Cuba Landing) to Clifton, TN)
