We slipped lines from Columbus Marina just before 7:00AM on Tuesday, December 16, the rising sun bright and low enough to make us squint while the 25°F chill did its best to infiltrate the pilothouse and the generator did its best to keep our heat working. Stennis Lock came up almost immediately, fully prepped thanks to a heads-up from our dock neighbor, Tick-Tock, who clearly enjoys being helpful—or at least demonstrating that their VHF skills are on point. As the sun climbed and the day settled in, the salon finally began to warm, coaxing the thermometer to a balmy 56°F and convincing us that shutting down the generator wasn’t entirely reckless. We cruised through Bevill Lock together—a tiny convoy of two—until nearing Heflin Lock, where Tick-Tock pressed on, and we chose the quiet charm of an oxbow to anchor for the evening. By 3:17PM, the hook was down near Warsaw Bar, and leftover “freezer chili” bubbled on the hob, proving that sometimes happiness really can be reheated.

Wednesday morning, we weighed anchor just after 7:30AM, slipping Stinkpot carefully back into the gentle flow of the Tenn-Tom. About an hour later, we were approaching Heflin Lock, arriving just behind a barge tow that had cleared the lock about thirty minutes prior. The lockmaster’s loquacious and effusively cheerful VHF holiday greetings and lock instructions sent Stacey on a brief emotional rollercoaster while she tended the lines and fenders. She could not hear the transmission, but she knew one was happening, and she was convinced by the length and rising intonation she could barely hear through the side of the boat that something was terribly wrong. Fortunately, it was just a southerner who was excited Christmas was coming, but learning that did nothing for her pumping adrenaline. I reassured her as the water dropped under the boat, and the lock’s gates were open by 9:10AM. We spent the rest of the day southing toward Demopolis, the river offering calm waters, occasional bird sightings, and an unobtrusive sense of time. Just before the lock in Demopolis, we turned off the river into Foscue Creek and dropped anchor just beyond the Coast Guard station at about 3:30PM, celebrating with BLTs on homemade sourdough, watching the light mellow across the river while feeling that rare satisfaction of an easy day done well. If only they could all be so smooth and frictionless.

The following morning found us underway again just after sunrise, mindful that this stretch of river offers few stopping points and that daylight is, in December, fleeting. Edna-2, our old favorite anchorage from the Great Loop, no longer held the same appeal—its protective green buoy missing, shoaling encroaching like a bad neighbor. We pressed onward and, around 2:00PM, dropped the hook at Barron’s Landing, near the long-gone Lock Number 2. The wind, initially from the south, nudged us gently against the half-knot current. As anticipated, it swung northwest, leaving us mere feet from fallen trees at the stern, an accidental demonstration of either skill or luck—or perhaps a carefully orchestrated combination of both. By nightfall, the wind settled entirely, and we drifted off to sleep in untroubled calm.

Friday’s run was shorter than we had hoped it would be. We had been underway before 7:00AM and ran almost to Coffeeville Lock, only to find stacked commercial traffic would occupy it until after sundown. Rather than commit to a night run, we backtracked to Okatuppa Creek, anchoring in the “alternative” anchorage across the river, where the hook was down by 1:40PM in a spot generous enough for Stinkpot to swing freely. Dinner was a comforting mash-up of savory roasted chicken thighs and green bean casserole.

With the sting of being turned around by a barge tow parade still fresh in our minds, we got underway Saturday before sunrise, around 6:30AM, greeted by sea smoke curling from the river. Rounding a bend, the pretty swirls and wisps of steam rising off the river gave way to a full-on wall of fog. Slowing to nearly nothing, we relied on GPS and AIS for guidance, eventually reaching Coffeeville Lock as a tow was completing an up-bound lockage. Passing into the lock in his wake, we made fast to a floating bollard at 7:49AM; we were downriver by 8:08AM and finally in waters that could be called tidally influenced for our first time aboard this boat—sea level. The day stretched long, the anchorages sparse. We even briefly went aground trying to get into what was, at one time, a well-regarded anchorage. Finally, at Alabama River Cutoff, where the mild current held us exactly where we wanted to be, we had the hook down for the day.

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. ​

These blog updates always seem to come together over the course of days and even weeks, and often, by the time I finish them, the original context—and even the opening sentences—no longer seem to properly precede what comes next. Such is the case with this one. We are currently in Decatur, AL, on our way back down the Tennessee River on the very same dock in Decatur we will stay at a mere two paragraphs hence in this missive. All this following an amazing few weeks of travel by water and by car, and a solid week of enjoying ourselves in Chattanooga. We stopped here for the night and ended up spending an extra day to wait out nature’s chilly bluster—and as I record these words on Tuesday, December 2, we are huddling inside Stinkpot while the 20-amp receptacle 130 feet from the dock is providing just enough electricity to keep us warm while the temperature descends into the 20s tonight (that’s Fahrenheit for our foreign friends). Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, which is one reason Stinkpot carries no cannon.

When last I scribed here, we were in Florence, Alabama. We left there on a lovely Thursday morning, locking up to Wilson Lake almost immediately. We ran the length of the lake, and Wheeler Lock told us we’d need to wait about an hour for a barge tow to lock down, so we anchored behind some mooring cells near the lock around noon. The tow emerged from the lock at around 12:40 PM, and we weighed anchor and moved into the chamber. Within 30 minutes, we were on Wheeler Lake. We made our way to Wheeler State Park and anchored just beyond the marina for the night. It was a gorgeous setting.

We are on the Tennessee River, heading ultimately for Chattanooga. Since leaving Nashville, we have had some amazing cruising. Our first day out, running back down the Cumberland River, we made it a long day. We locked back down at Cheatham Lock, and returned to the city dock in Clarksville. We determined we might have missed a good restaurant or two on our previous pass, and we were right. No sooner did we pull alongside the dock, we were met by Mike and Brandi, who helped us get our lines on the cleats, and in chatting on their Carver, they confirmed having had an exquisite meal at The Mailroom up the hill. With that in mind, we walked to the commissary in question and, too, had a lovely meal of selections off their appetizer menu.

As I write these words, we are underway on the Mississippi River just south of Chester, Illinois, where we just weighed anchor and are working our way south. The river is on the low side: many of the anchorages we would be depending upon are not even viable for our nearly 5-foot draft.

Fair warning: this blog does not contain lots of scintillating details of exciting places we’ve been and things we’ve seen. We’ve seen a lot of often-lovely riverbank and eaten well aboard. The places we could go ashore along this stretch of the journey do not line up well with places where we can anchor or tie up Stinkpot, so we’ve been making miles and enjoying the river scenery as it goes by. This installment is a simple cruise log with some culinary exploration. Since Stacey had a realization some time recently that she forms memories around food, so I am trying to record what we eat and where to help jog the memory later on. There may not be crêpes suzette at the café outside the Louvre in this installment, but we've really enjoyed this mostly-quiet time aboard. 

We left Alton on the morning of Thursday, September 18th. We had to delay our departure to wait for the fuel dock to open at 8:30AM. At 8:40, we started engines and moved over to fuel up and pump out our waste tank. We took on 274 gallons of diesel at $3.81/gallon (with the looper discount). At about 10:20AM, we said our good-byes to our friend, Greg, the dockmaster in Alton and pointed downriver to lock through our last two locks we’d navigate through on the Upper Mississippi River: Mel Price Lock and Chain of Rocks Lock. We snuck past St. Louis and spent the night at anchor in a bend just outside the greens navigation buoys, dining aboard on pasta.

We knew where we were going Friday, and it was not to be a long day, so the impetus to get an early start was lacking—the Kaskaskia Lock permits overnighting on their outer lock wall and has a strong gravitational force for boaters coming through the area, and we were feeling it. Even if the wall were full of loopers, we could always anchor in the pool below the dam, so it seemed like a good, easy plan. Arriving at the lock at 2:30PM, I called the lock as we turned onto the Kaskaskia River. The lockmaster replied, and I asked about the wall. He informed me that no one can tie up or anchor nearby due to the dredging of the lock. I thanked him and we spun on our heel back into the Big Muddy, continuing south.

Scanning the river charts, I found few anchorages that seemed like they would provide us the needed overnight protection from commercial river traffic. I decided we’d just roll with it, and see where we ended up with around 4 hours of remaining daylight. It didn’t take long—perhaps another hour—and I spotted a place near Chester, Illinois where the reds along the left descending bank moved out into the middle of the river on a long straight stretch, and there appeared on the chart to be sufficient depth behind them for us to anchor. It looked good on paper, and even better once we left the channel and sounded out the area. We anchored for the night and enjoyed a grilled chicken dinner, courtesy of our new, snazzy electric grill.

As they say, once bitten, twice shy—Saturday morning we didn’t tarry. We were underway just after sunrise and began shuffling onward downriver. After a solid day’s run, we once again looked for a place to anchor and ended up “rolling our own” again—this time on the right side (referenced to the descending bank) of the river sheltered by a wing dam and some well-placed red buoys. For dinner, we enjoyed the leftover grilled chicken atop a tossed salad, turning in early for our last day on the mighty Mississippi.

Sunday morning, we weighed anchor with coffee in hand and made short work of running the river to Cairo, Illinois where we turned up the Ohio River against just under a knot of current. We locked up at Olmsted Lock in the mid-to-late afternoon, going from the low water that had been plaguing us since Chicago up to a well-managed pool level courtesy of a waterway whose source is not being impacted by drought! We meandered a few miles more upriver and dropped the hook for the evening near Sharps Bar, once again dining aboard on the pasta leftovers from Thursday night.

Monday we again got underway soon after coffee to continue our trudge upriver. We had been unsure of where we’d be stopping so we could fly to Maryland for the Annapolis Power Boat Show, but plans began coalescing. We would fly out of Nashville, Tennessee on October 1. This means we’re going to Nashville! I started planning our run up the Cumberland River. The shortest, busiest route is through the Kentucky Lock on the Tennessee River. We did that last time we came through here. We waited six or seven hours to lock through. I didn’t want a repeat of that. I called Barkley Lock and asked if they had a feel for the afternoon’s traffic—we wouldn’t be arriving much before 5:30PM. The lockmaster was very upfront with me that he had no idea, so rather than risk it, we anchored at the mouth of the Cumberland River behind Towhead Island to wait for first light. We again dined aboard on an appetizer selection I managed to pull from the pantry.

As planned, we were up with the sun on Tuesday, September 23 and quickly underway. Stacey brewed up some iced coffees and I pointed the bow up the Cumberland River. By 2PM we were locked through Barkley Lock with four other “looper” boats onto Lake Barkley. We were the only boat in the ad hoc fleet that deigned to continue on instead of docking at Green Turtle Bay Marina. We ultimately called it quits for the night in the very quiet Poplar Creek (Kuttawa, Kentucky) where I prepared country-style pork ribs (A.K.A. chunks of pork shoulder) served with beans and rice.

It had rained off and on since about 1PM, so even though this is the first stop in days where we could easily launch the dinghy and go ashore for a walk, it just doesn’t seem worth the trouble. This is a beautiful place to see from the water, and we are, for the moment, content with that. Nashville beckons….

Wednesday we awoke and did not rush to get underway precisely—the scenery had us both absorbing the place as much as we could while we made ready. At 8:05AM, we weighed anchor and continued upriver, anchoring for the day in another beautiful spot behind Dover Island in Dover, Tennessee where we enjoyed leftovers and bedded down early.

It wasn’t the fuel filters. The fuel leak mentioned in the last blog entry, I mean. It persisted in a low-grade fashion. I wasn’t sure at first, as one wouldn’t be with a slow leak—and the fuel lines feeding that engine are largely out of reach and view, so all discovery is by feel. Not ideal.

Fuel leak persisting without our immediate knowledge, we weighed anchor Sunday, September 7, at Buffalo Rock State Park and continued south on the Illinois River, retracing familiar territory from our Great Loop voyage in 2019. We knew it was going to be a long day right out of the gate—and it was. We moved through Peru, where I had played a couple of shows during our Loop at the local boat club and a restaurant up the hill, and proceeded toward Peoria, where we intended to spend the night either on the free city dock or anchored nearby.

As the day progressed and we took turns doing hourly engine room checks, I noted that the sorbents under the starboard engine were slowly saturating with diesel. I could not, for the life of me, find the source. The new filters were not it—of that I was sure. My eyes finally settled on some pooled fuel around a reverse-flared fitting on top of the mechanical fuel pump, and I decided that must be the spot. I made a mental note to reseat the fitting once we were settled in for the night.

As the five-o’clock hour rolled around and the light of day moved toward the inevitable golden hour, we rolled into Peoria. Approaching the city docks, we noted that the one dock Stinkpot could fit was already occupied by a looper boat, Vitamin Sea. We turned our sights to the nearby anchorage, hoping to find our rest for the day. As I proceeded into it, I watched the depth gauge dropping, and before I could get into reverse, I could tell by our lack of speed that we were no longer “technically” afloat. I jammed it in reverse and gave it some throttle to back off the mud bottom into deeper water. I began sounding around for enough water to drop the hook for the night—and kept rolling snake eyes. The river levels were simply too low for us to safely anchor here.

On the rivers, “safe anchoring” means being able to get (and stay) outside the navigable channel while at anchor, and the closeness of the two barge tows that passed us while we were scouting for the right spot told me we were chasing unicorns with the current river levels.

With plans A and B dashed, I pulled us back into the channel abaft the second barge tow and continued heading south. Stacey brought me my notes, and the next viable anchorage I had already identified was over 40 miles further downriver. That would not do. We needed something soon. We were tired and hungry.

I centered my planning app on our location and began carefully scanning the banks ahead. I spotted it--Kuchie’s On the Water in Creve Coeur, Illinois—a mere three or four miles downriver on the left descending bank. They reportedly had a dock with 10 feet of depth. It seemed too good to be true!

Buoyed by this revelation, I told Stacey, cautioning that we needed to verify it was still there. The last review was from 2021. If they were still operational, this place was clearly “off canon” for Great Loopers. Stacey whipped out her iPhone, and fingers flying, confirmed Kuchie’s continued existence. Our uncontainable excitement carried us all the way to the dock, where Stacey succeeded in lassoing a dock cleat from the deck for the first time ever—and on the first try.
​
Tied up and happy, we shut down systems as usual, pulled on our shoes, and stepped onto solid ground for the first time since leaving the warm bosom of Joliet’s concrete bulkhead. Across a crumbling—but somehow serviceable—dock we marched, up the high riverbank over time-worn stairs, past happy diners enjoying cold drinks, hot food, and a working waterfront vibe enhanced by the recent arrival of a beautiful DeFever yacht. We made our way inside, walked past the unmanned host podium, and toward the bar. We hadn’t gotten far before a slightly-irritated hostess asked, “Two?” behind us. We turned around, gesturing toward the bar, and she said, “Oh, do you want to sit at the bar? Go ahead.” We thanked her and stepped up to our respective perches and started chatting with Karis—our bartender. Stacey commented on the uniqueness of her name, and she said, “Yeah, it’s like Paris with a K.”

Stacey immediately understood that her name was a point of both pride and irritation for Karis and made a point to use it liberally, which the beleaguered barkeep clearly appreciated. We ordered.

I am not sure frequent readers of this blog fully appreciate Stacey’s relationship with the ambrosia known to astute culinarians everywhere as macaroni and cheese, but suffice it to say, she would bathe in it given the chance. One look at the menu and I said, “They saw you coming.” There, among the burgers, sandwiches, and seafood platters, was an entire “mac and cheese” section. At the top of the list was an American Fusion dish so curious, so unlikely, that Stacey gasped—Jambalaya Mac and Cheese.

Karis immediately piped up, “Oh yeah, that’s the best thing on the menu.” Nothing else needed to be said. Stacey ordered it.

I, on the other hand, ordered a burger and a beer. It was all very good—and exactly what we needed after a long day of trials and tribulations.

Check paid, we momentarily went back to the boat to pull on another layer. The sun was heading down, and there was a nip in the air. Appropriately clothed, we made our way back up the bank to the road and enjoyed a two-mile sunset walk that took us by a rail yard and allowed us to have a conversation with a very timid-but-curious deer. The doe stood not twenty feet away and watched as we chatted with her while she enjoyed her evening meal of wild grasses on the roadside. We slowly moved along. She was still there when we came back by a few minutes later, and we chatted some more. Eventually she scampered into the nearby woods, and we made our way back to Stinkpot and turned in.

Monday, we rose with the sun and dropped lines just in time to join a fleet of looper boats making their way to the Peoria Lock. We fell inline with them and locked down. We had our eye on a 40-50 mile day, but it wasn’t to be. We weren’t an hour or two below Peoria when our starboard engine just died. There are not too many things that will kill a diesel engine that is happily rumbling below decks—it usually comes down to fuel or air, and the air filter was fine. Since I knew we had an as-yet unconfirmed fuel leak, it was clear to me that the leak had worsened and the engine was “sucking air” at the leaky spot I hadn’t yet found.
I had a suspect after feeling around for fuel—a section of flexible fuel line that led from the flared copper lines to the mechanical fuel pump. I deemed it a repair I could not make underway, and we decided our only recourse was to run to the next Stinkpot-accessible anchorage in Havana to deal with it, which we did over the course of the next five or six hours at a screaming 4 knots, arriving a bit after 3pm.

A little Googling revealed that Havana had an ACE Hardware not far from a dinghy dock. The plan was that I would remove the leaky hose section and carry it to the store to match up the ends with what I could find at the store to install a proper piece of fuel hose that I already had aboard. Once at anchor I set to work preparing the dinghy to be launched and then moved to the engine room to “hug” the diesel engine and remove the fuel line. I disassembled the copper line end first and moved to the engine end, and as soon as I had my diesels-soaked (gloved) hand on that end of the line, I noted that the connection was loose. I put a wrench on it and gave it a little more than a quarter turn (with a good bit of grunting) to drive the connection home. I reconnected the line to the copper, noting while doing so that the copper was exerting “loosening pressure” on the opposing end, so the situation would surely repeat eventually. I, then, bled the line, smiled to Stacey on my way to the helm station where I started the engine. It gloriously roared to life. I deemed this a win for the moment that would carry us to a place with land services and retail locations—even if I had to wrench on the connection daily.

I re-covered the dinghy, and we spent a quiet night in Havana dining on frozen leftover chili from the freezer in a beautiful spot secure in the knowledge that we would be underway on two engines in the morning.

Did we really stay for three nights? Yes. Yes we did.

The setting: Joliet, Illinois! The humble burg where ‘Joliet’ Jake Blues was released from prison at the beginning of The Blues Brothers movie. The actual prison where James Belushi’s character played the tin cup was closed years ago, but we couldn’t help enjoying quotes from it during our stay. How did we get there? See? Now there’s a story.

Loyal readers of the Captain’s Log will remember that my most recent entry had us tied up on Sunday, August 31 in St. Joseph, Michigan. This free city bulkhead/dock on the St. Joseph River is a charming place to stop in settled weather, though I imagine that westerlies could bring in a rather nasty, bouncy seiche. This turned out to be a wonderful stop. Once settled in we took position on our aft deck to watch a huge laker, the Manitowoc, turn in the nearby turning basin come through the nearby drawbridge, and pick her way through the ridiculously thick and often dumb holiday weekend boat traffic. I mean we actually witnessed a pontoon boat full of people sitting in the fairway in front of the massive ship taking pictures. They were a single engine failure away from becoming a holiday statistic. I’m sure alcohol was not involved.

After the “show,” we enjoyed dinner at the Silver Harbor Brewing Company, which was quite good, and then kicked about town for a little while. We had been lamenting that we were out of fruit on the boat, and, as if by magic, a beautiful apple tree appeared on the street next to a children’s museum. We may have borrowed a few more than we could eat in the moment. I’m still not sure what variety of apple they were, but they tasted absolutely…umm…free! We made our way back to the boat to enjoy some time taking in the scene and the breezes from Stinkpot’s covered sundeck.

As evening approached, our thoughts turned once again to our stomachs. I had my eye on a soul food restaurant about a mile away. It was chilly and had been spitting rain on and off all afternoon, but we deemed it an acceptable risk and pulled on our walking shoes. Arriving at All That and a Touch of Soul, we were taken in by the smells immediately. Without waxing philosophical about the Philly jerk chicken and cheese sub Stacey ordered or the smothered pork chops I selected with sides of macaroni and cheese and collards, or even the sample of the braised oxtail that the chef dropped by our table for us to sample, let me just say that I have seldom had a dining experience that was such a perfect combination of gritty, local joint and “why don’t you just roll that whole pot over here for a little while.” I will be savoring that meal in my dreams for weeks to come.

Check paid and our trotters back on the ground, we exited the restaurant into unrelenting pouring rain. Stacey’s apparel revealed her forethought of this situation, but mine, alas, did not. Our quayside arrival had her mildly damp and me resembling a drowned rat. I changed into my pajamas, and we entertained ourselves with some of our St. Joseph’s ice cream haul before turning in for the night.

Thursday morning we again rose with the sun. I began considering preparing us to get underway, but I had one issue nagging me. In studying the charts of the Illinois River which lay before us, I realized that Joliet’s free wall was likely to be our last real connection to land for a little while. Despite Tuesday’s showers, moderate localized drought conditions had depths on the river down a foot or two from normal, and a dearth of ports that had sufficient depth for the new Stinkpot’s deeper keel would necessarily keep us from stepping off for some time. It sure would be nice if our dinghy was usable, since I ostensibly had the missing part in hand to make it so. I proclaimed that we should stay another night so I could do exactly that. Not sensing any objection to that plan, that’s exactly what we did. I spent the day tearing down the 15-horsepower Mercury: draining the lower unit, removing the lower unit, replacing the impeller (which I needed to cut off the shaft), reattaching the lower unit, filling the lower unit with new gear oil, and, finally, changing the oil and filter on the engine itself. It was a long day’s work, but it got done, and at the end of the day, I was rewarded by one of our legendary “app walks.”

As long as Stacey and I have been together, we have periodically done these walks. We pick an area with restaurants we want to try and walk to two or three different places to eat only appetizers. You can tell a lot about a joint by its appetizers. This time we enjoyed average bar snacks and an RC Cola at the Chicago Street Pub and stuffed mushrooms and a “Caprese Panini” (chicken, tomato, mozzarella, and pesto) sandwich at the more upscale Juliet’s Tavern. The former had very personable staff and forgettable food while at the latter, the opposite was true. Ultimately satisfied, we trundled back to the boat in the warming sunshine and began making our preparations for a dawn departure.

With the rising sun Friday, September 5, we began singling up our lines and disconnecting from power. At 7:44AM CDT I started the engines, and we were underway. We locked through Brandon Road, Dresden, and Marseilles Locks and ultimately had the anchor down at the Buffalo Rock State Park anchorage last night around 7PM local time—a long day of cruising, rewarded by some home cooking at anchor at the foot of a beautiful, cliff-rimmed oxbow anchorage. We turned in soon after the dishes were done.

Today did not start off well. During my engine room checks, I found fuel pooled under the starboard engine, blessedly retained inside a fiberglass sump. After cleaning it up with sorbents and checking for loose fuel line connections, I set to finding the source. I noticed some fuel in and around the secondary filters, so I changed them (not done during the commissioning). I’m hoping that was all it was. I didn’t have that all done and the fuel systems bled of air until nearly 11AM. In looking at our itinerary, I made the painful decision to remain here another night. We have a long run ahead of us to get to a reasonable anchorage and prefer to not run unfamiliar waters in the dark. This is a beautiful spot. We’ll sit right here and enjoy some leftovers aboard while I get other work done. Tomorrow we’ll weigh anchor with the dawn and make some miles, hopefully without a fuel leak.

We are underway on the western shore of Lake Michigan, and we feel amazing and free. Free of the prison that was the boatyard. Free of the halfway house that was our slip at the yard. We couldn’t wait to go, and go we did. Wednesday morning, August 27 at 8:11AM, I started a new logbook on the new Stinkpot—a DeFever 44 Offshore Cruiser built in 1982. She is hull #8—full of charm, full of quirks, and still needing lots of work to correct years of unqualified repairs and “upgrades,” many of which were clearly undertaken by professionals who should’ve known better.

We honestly had no idea when we were going to be ready to go. We still had our venerable 2006 Toyota Highlander Hybrid, Trebek—I never was one to name cars, but Stacey always has, and she insisted I give the car a name after we purchased it eleven years ago. Being a Highlander, my mind drifted to the cast of the movie of the same name. I started thinking about Sean Connery, and my favorite Sean Connery moment—which wasn’t one—was Darrell Hammond’s impersonation of him on SNL’s Celebrity Jeopardy skits. I loved the way he (Hammond) churlishly uttered “Trebek.” I named the car.

A week ago, feeling our departure was imminent, Stacey listed our steed on Marketplace and was so overwhelmed with the response, we were glad when the perfect buyer was among the 15 or so replies that came in during the first 120 seconds the ad was up. The buyers came immediately to look at the car. They loved it and put down $100, agreeing to let us hang onto it until we were ready to cast off, at which point they’d return to collect the car and give us the balance. Tuesday morning, we messaged them, and by nightfall Logan, a brilliant 17-year-old, had his first car to cart him back and forth to school. Wednesday morning, we’d be gone.

Rather than draw this out with an extensive blow-by-blow (that would include a wonderful visit by none other than Sean and Louise that you can read about here), I’ll just make it known here that we sold our Bayliner 3870 in Hopewell, Virginia shortly after the fuel tank replacements were completed. We bought a 1982 DeFever 44 Offshore Cruiser. She needed a lot of deferred maintenance but was in good shape otherwise. The two transactions were completed within a day of each other, meaning we only owned two boats for less than 24 hours.

We rented a U-Haul, added a car trailer to carry our venerable Toyota with us, and on the afternoon of Saturday, June 21, 2025—after a day dockside in Hopewell moving the contents of the boat into the truck in near-three-digit temperatures—we took one last photo with the original Stinkpot.

We’ve now been in Holland, Michigan since Tuesday, June 24. We did make a detour to Georgia to pick up my piano from “the sitter’s house” (our dear friend Mike has been keeping it for me since we sold the house in Maine).

The new Stinkpot required considerable attention before she was fit to launch, but the big splash happened at exactly 1 p.m. on Tuesday, August 5. Before that, we were living in Holland’s Microtel. As soon as she was floating, we moved aboard and began settling in.

It has been a long journey, and there’s still a lot to get done, but we’re on target to hopefully drop lines within a week or two (tops). We are still “fitting” ourselves aboard, modifying the boat to suit our uses, and dealing with some egregious configuration issues—worst of which: the battery banks the previous owners had installed. Eight expensive Trojan T-105 (GC2) batteries were so poorly configured that had we gotten underway we’d have risked fire (at worst) or short battery life (at best). As of this writing, the worst of it is done—fire or shortened battery life will not happen—but we’ll have a much more electrically efficient system once I finish.

After a week aboard, we’re getting comfortable. We brought our toaster/convection oven from the Bayliner and added it to the galley. I’ve swapped out all the galley appliances except the refrigerator: new convection microwave, new induction cooktop, new dishwasher. The (pricy) Force 10 marine range that came with the boat is now for sale (no reasonable offer refused).

I’m updating and wiring the navigation electronics to achieve what I consider the minimum requirements. Soon, we’ll be selling our 2007 Toyota Highlander Hybrid (no reasonable offer—correction—no offer refused) and dropping lines. Where to? No firm plans. We’re going “out there” somewhere—ultimately heading down the western rivers for the winter.

Tuesday morning, I woke at my normal time and decided to answer nature’s call on land at the marina’s facilities. When I stepped outside, I noticed the engine room door was open and stuck against my toolbox, which was preventing it from closing on its own. I was surprised by this and immediately worried that I had left it that way since it rained so hard overnight. I stepped back inside and ran the bilge pump, and barely a squirt came out.

Still foggy from sleep and needing to finish my trudge to the porcelain palace, I failed to process immediately what I was seeing.

With nature’s call fully answered, I returned to the boat and looked around the cockpit with fresh, now-fully-awakened eyes. That’s when I started seeing the clues. Both of my toolboxes were unlatched, and one of them had an internal tray removed and sitting on the deck. I know that I have a tendency to be a bit absent-minded, so I started second-guessing myself. I looked into the tray that was left out, and it was completely dry inside. It had rained just before we went to bed Monday night. If I had left it like that, the tray would be full of water. Thinking back, I distinctly remembered latching all the toolboxes shut when the storm was bearing down on us. I’m starting to think to myself that someone came aboard while we were asleep.

That’s when Stacey stuck her head out the door as I was opening the engine room door again. I shared with her my hypothesis that I thought we’d had an uninvited guest overnight. No sooner did I have the sentence out of my mouth when I spotted it. Low in the dark engine room, laying on top of the portside transmission, was a baseball cap. It wasn’t mine.

Evidence solidly in hand, I looked at Stacey and said, “I knew I wasn’t crazy.” We stepped back inside and started composing a message to Charles, the city official who oversees the marina. I hadn’t written more than a sentence or two when we spotted him walking across the parking lot. I snatched the classy head covering off the table and trudged over to Charles and told him of our findings. He was immediately alarmed and vowed to call the police and go review the security camera footage, asking me about what time it happened. I told him it had to have been after midnight—the storm was around 11pm, and we were up for about an hour more before we both were out. He asked me if anything was missing, and at that point the answer was, “unconfirmed.”

Charles trundled off toward the marina building to review the footage while I returned to the boat to search for what wasn’t there. A cursory look through my toolboxes revealed that they seemed to contain everything they should—nothing seemed to be missing. I turned my attention to the storage container on the deck where I have been keeping our extra-long wet/dry vacuum cleaner hoses. The only other item that should’ve been there were my bilge shoes. The hoses were there. My shoes were not.

The thief took my bilge shoes. My old, dirty, worn-out bilge shoes. Whenever I get a new pair of kicks, the old pair is relegated to bilge use, and my previous pair of bilge shoes becomes garbage. That is what he stole. OLD shoes!

Around that time, I looked up, and one of our neighbors was noticing that his Jeep (with soft top) had been entered during the evening as well, and little was taken—and again, nothing of value.

Charles was walking toward us across the parking lot. “I saw him on the recording. He was on your boat for about ten minutes. When he came off, he didn’t have anything in his hands.” The spoils of his escapade were on his feet!

“I could see his hat when he went on the boat, but when he came off, he wasn’t wearing it, but he did seem happy.” Around this time, one of Hopewell’s finest rolled up. A nice lady in a spotless police cruiser. We gave her the hat, chatted about the facts of the situation, and then all retired to the marina building to review the video footage together.

This is really the sum total of the story. Nothing monumental happened. We all concluded that the fellow was likely drunk or high, possibly homeless, and almost certainly was walking around with either wet feet or shoeless, given his choices. Nothing of any value was stolen either aboard Stinkpot or from our neighbor’s shiny, red Jeep. We are, however, trying to keep better track of our valuables aboard for the time being and may add some security cameras of our own at some point. Neither of us wants to live with the paranoia that can come with situations like these, but we will take better precautions in the future.

As for the hat? Charles has it. We think he’s going to try to bait a hobo trap with it. If so, we’ll share whatever outcome there is from that effort.

As for me? I’ll be barefoot in the bilges for the foreseeable future.