More milestones passed, but when will it start being fun?

We left Aqua Marina Friday under a cloud-literally.  The Pickwick dam was holding water at 2 feet above normal pool to help reduce the flooding taking place on the Mississippi. That meant to us that the already troublesome 52 foot clearance bridge was now only 50 foot clearance; making our 52 foot mast even more difficult to go under.  We had practiced all day Thursday using the dinghy to heel the boat over and each time we tried it, we found a new improvement on the system.  Finally, we had it consistently working well to heel us over the required amount. But we still had to decide if we could safely make it under a 50 foot bridge.  After much practice, I was convinced that I could heel the boat over a full 3.5 feet, which barely cleared the first bridge.

 This is how we rigged the dingy so that we could fill it full of water with two bilge pumps and heel the boat over.

                                                    Happitat heeling over at the dock.

The urgency to leave was that there was rain in the forecast for the upcoming week and that rain would almost certainly raise the lake level even higher, making it impossible for us to leave for perhaps  weeks if we couldn't leave Friday! Early Friday morning, I checked with the lock masters and learned that the lake was down to only one foot above normal. Once we got past the first lock, we would be out of the TVA system and the Tenn Tom pool levels were at normal levels and were expected to stay that way, barring an unusual amount of rain. That, combined with the dismal weather forecast and our confidence in heeling the boat over allowed me to make the final decision to go for it.  It was now or much later.

I could have had the mast taken down and made all of this less of a problem, but the cost is about $500 to take it down and put it back up; plus, carrying a 52 foot mast on a 34 foot boat would be a considerable nuisance all the way down the river.  Also, if I succeeded in learning to heel the boat over, that skill would serve me in the future to get under low bridges or over shallow sand bars.  So I was quite determined to leave the mast up if at all possible.

So the first day, we cleared 5 bridges that were lower than my 52 foot mast height! We finished the day just shy of the first dam on the Tenn-Tom, anchored in a protected cove off the river.  It rained and stormed some, but the winds weren't bad and we slept well.  I was glad to get up next morning to find that the anchor had held and we were still where I had left us last night.

Saturday we went through three locks before settling into the Midway marina for the night.  Some pretty severe storms were predicted and that nice, solid dock seemed safer than an anchor.  And it was.  But we still had a pretty miserable night of it anyway.  When we first pulled in to the marina, Alison smelled diesel fuel again.  I found a fuel hose that had been leaking a small amount of fuel that would have accounted for the smell.  I removed the line, put fresh thread sealer on it and re-installed it, then did my best to clean up any fuel that had spilled into the bilge.

  This is where Alison sat as she supervised the flooding of the Titanic to heel the boat over.

                                           Alison in her fashionable rain gear.

We went to dinner at a fine family style restaurant a short walk away, did laundry and came back to the boat after about 10:00. We could still smell diesel, so I searched everywhere for more diesel, but found nothing.  We went to bed finally at midnight.  Almost as soon as I was asleep, we heard a beeping sound. Alison got up and found the carbon monoxide alarm was alarming and showing 20ppm of carbon monoxide in our boat!  That was alarming, so I got up to see where that much CO could be coming from.  CO is only generated, as far as I know, as a by-product of combustion.  If a gas furnace, for instance, has a leak in the heat exchanger, CO will be leaked into the home.  We had nothing burning in the boat.  I looked around outside and no one was burning anything I could see.  I opened the hatches and the CO level went down, which meant the source had to be inside the boat.  When we use the gas cook stove for heat, sometimes the CO will creep up to 10ppm or so, but we hadn't cooked anything in hours!  I was totally baffled. But I couldn't go to sleep knowing the CO levels were rising to possibly dangerous levels.  Since you get over 100ppm of CO from smoking a single cigarette, 20ppm isn't at all dangerous, but since I had no idea where it was coming from, I just didn't know how high it could go. The alarm itself might be giving a false alarm, but how could I know?  The predicted storm was moving in and the rain starting, so I closed the hatches and watched the CO levels for a while.  When they didn't go back up, we went to bed.

Then the storm rolled in and the rain poured down.  There is a window (hatch) right above where we sleep.  On a clear night, it makes for a lovely view.  This window has never leaked more than a few drops other than the sweat that collects when it's cold outside and humid inside.  But tonight, it dripped from several different places and wet Alison's chest and pillow.  She was so tired, she didn't even notice the pillow wetness.  She just threw a towel over the dripping part and went back asleep.

But the night still wasn't done with us.  Sometime later, Alison heard the inverter beeping.  After hearing it for some time, she woke me up and I  got up and turned it off.  It was powering the refrigerator, but the refrigerator would be fine till morning.

So this morning I'm tired, again, but the weather report is for good weather for several days, so we need to make way.  There are locks to pass and bridges to get under, fuel leaks to fix and who know what other challenges await us?