Captain's Log, Supplemental: Caught Short

Sunset walking in Columbus, MS

We've been here for a week, and we're staying another two nights at not inconsequential expense. Not because we want to. We'd much rather get moving. We decided to extend our stay here at the Columbus Marina because overnight temperatures are dropping into the teens and twenties for the next two nights. As I'm writing this on Sunday, December 14, the sun is setting, the wind is blowing 17 MPH, and it's 34°F and dropping to an expected overnight low of 19°F. This is probably not the best night to sever our connection to utilities. So despite having been here a week (at the weekly rate), we trudged back to the marina office and bought two more days at the daily rate (Columbus Marina unapologetically charges the daily rate if you add on to a week's stay—we could literally pay an extra $10 and stay for a full month, but we don't really want to remain past the cold snap). 

I confess that I'm writing this immediately on the heels of our most recent edition going live. I'm going to try making my missives more manageable to see if I can do a better job of getting them together in a timely way—the last one encompassed a month or more and required me to order and caption over 50 photos after selecting them from a sea of hundreds. Continuous cruising has a way of turning this blog into a near-relentless task, so in an effort to simplify the production, I'm going to try to change up my methods before I scream Uncle and give up altogether in a fit of pique. 

​So how did we get here to Columbus? Wednesday, December 3, we left Decatur, AL as expected. We locked down at Wheeler Lock and continued to Wilson Lock, but once there we were told we would not be able to lock through for a couple hours while a barge tow was locked through. Daylight was fast coming to an end, so while we were offered a spot to tie up outside the lock to wait, we generally avoid operating after dark. With the daylight fading, I tried turning on our navigation lights that we would be needing to continue after dark; the circuit breaker immediately kicked, indicating the presence of a short circuit somewhere in the system's wiring. Gah!

Since operating after dark without working navigation lights is dangerous and illegal, we immediately needed another plan. All this was coming to a head while I was also communicating on the VHF with a nearby barge tow to avoid playing a dangerous round of chicken while our plans were in flux. We made our way to a nearby cove suggested by the tow captain to anchor, but found the water to be prohibitively deep. Looking at the charts, all of the reasonable anchoring spots in the area were in very deep water—over 60 feet deep! We made a Hail Mary phone call to Steenson Hollow Marina on the opposite shore of the lake and within minutes had a dock reservation with good power for the (chilly) night. We pulled in as the sun was setting, tied up, powered up, and gratefully paid the man. It was a cute little marina in an adorable setting. We settled in for the night, exhausted, and scarcely stepped off the boat.

Thursday morning we got underway early, were quickly locked down, buzzed past Florence into Pickwick Lake. It was a damp, cold, overcast, dark day—the kind of day I usually would be using our navigation lights. I felt very self-conscious about not having them, but it couldn't be helped. They are not legally required between sunrise and sunset unless visibility is limited, and while it was dreary and a bit dark, visibility was adequate. We settled in at anchor about an hour before the sun would've set, if it had showed itself. Our anchor light was working flawlessly, despite being on the same breaker as the navigation lights (a clue!). 

Friday we weighed anchor just after 9:30AM and started making way south to the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway (Tenn-Tom). We nearly ran the daylight out, anchoring just after 3PM on Bay Springs Lake, just before the John Whitten Lock, the first lock on the canal. Saturday saw us up, at 'em, and through the lock early, weighing anchor just before 7AM and joining two other boats—a DeFever 44+5 sister ship called Sea Cow, and a 40' Carver called I Swear—for a long run at a handful of locks. Once again, we ran the daylight out, anchoring around 4PM just off the river. 

At 9AM last Sunday, we weighed anchor and ran the final gauntlet to bring us here, arriving a bit after 2PM. This really felt like a necessary stop with all the gremlins that were creeping out of every crevice and crack in the boat.

Since we've been here, I have isolated and bypassed the short circuit in the navigation lights—partially rewiring and relighting (with new, brighter bulbs of the correct color temperature) all the navigation lights, replaced the courtesy light over the sundeck (a required temporary workaround to get the stern light working after isolating the short to the stern light run). I re-plumbed the raw-water anchor wash-down so that it did not use copper pipe (which saltwater would corrode through) and rededicated the copper run to a freshwater wash-down, as originally designed. I put weather stripping on the pilothouse doors and the salon door to help keep us warm when it's cold, and greased the door slides. I replaced the rusted, frayed steel cable on our dinghy davit crane with Dyneema-type line (rope). I added a voltage-sensitive relay (VSR) to support proper charging and prevent improper discharging and premature battery aging—and topped all the batteries with distilled water. I have one other semi-major undertaking I'm hoping to pin down before we drop lines, but rather than jinx it by adding it to this enumeration, I'll leave the description of that less-than-savory upgrade for another scintillating Captain's Log. ​