Great Loop Chronicles Part Seven
Marine
- Sponsor
- OPTIMA Batteries
- Location
- Watts Bar Lake, TN
The Great Loop Chronicles will be an ongoing series, following the travels of OPTIMA Batteries staffer, Jim McIlvaine, as he travels America's Great Loop, a 6000+ nautical mile journey around the Eastern United States.
All the training I was going to receive prior to heading out on the Great Loop was now behind me. The only things left for me to do were to head to Round One of OPTIMA's Ultimate Street Car series at G2 Motorsports Park, try to get to a company meeting in Glendale, Wisconsin and see how much of my training I could forget before heading out on the Loop.
Ultimate Street Car went well, but a freak storm prevented me from getting to Glendale, but not before my checked bags went on an extended trip of their own. My last bag finally arrived in the early afternoon Friday, March 20th, which allowed us to depart Tellico Marina shortly after. We only had one lock to navigate on that day and it went very well for our first effort.
We reached out to the lockmaster ahead of arrival, let him know it was our very first lock as a family and they were very helpful and supportive in making sure we got through without a scratch. The headsets proved their value almost immediately. I believe the lockmaster might've been the photographer, who captured this picture of the Maver Marie II and posted it on their Facebook page. If so, thank you! Most of the content I've been capturing on this trip is vertical video, so having some landscape photos definitely helps for the blog and I'll be making a point of grabbing more of those.
In all the sessions I've attended on the Great Loop at Looperpalooza, there's a recurring theme of not planning too far in advance, because there's just no telling what you might encounter, in terms of weather, boat trouble, etc... We probably took that to the extreme on our first day, because we didn't know where we were going to stop that night, which was a mistake we'd try not to repeat.
We weren't technically on the Great Loop route yet, so all the books we had that mentioned anchorages were thin because this area was considered a side trip. When we called the previous owner, who had a lot of experience in these waters, he immediately said if he knew we weren't starting out from Vonore until the early afternoon, he'd have told us to anchor before the lock, because there's not a lot of options downriver from it.
He made a few suggestions for possible anchorages, but contrary to the advice we were given about longer range plans, we had a "plan" to make it all the way to Pass Christian, Mississippi by April 9th, so I could simply rent a car and drive over to New Orleans for Round Two of OPTIMA's Ultimate Street Car series. In order to meet that plan, we needed to cover some water. I believe the previous owner was consulting anchorages listed on Navionics, which I should've been doing and he made the suggestion for Wolf Creek on Watts Bar Lake, that was more agreeable to the amount of water we wanted to cover that day and still left us about 45 minutes of daylight.
As we slowly approached the entrance to the anchorage, I was keeping a close eye on the depth finder and when it went below four feet, I hit the brakes (our draft is 3.7 feet). We were in trouble now, because the sun was getting ready to set and we weren't in close proximity to any other anchorages. I didn't want to enter and risk grounding it or tearing up the props and I was unsure of what to do. As luck would have it, a fisherman just happened by and Gwendolyn flagged him down for assistance.
He entered the anchorage from the downstream side and reported plenty of clearance. We thanked him and went in ourselves and dropped anchor. I dropped anchor facing the wind and began backing up, without setting my anchor alarm and made a visual note of a dead tree on the shoreline, when I felt we were secure. I stayed up on the fly bridge for about 20 minutes and the wind slowed down, but still pushed us around, but we stayed in place.
We were in about 10-12 feet of water and I let out what I believed was about 50-70 feet of chain. I wanted to let out more, but the shoreline on either side of Wolf Creek seemed too close to do that and I was worried a shifting wind might blow us ashore. When I finally remembered to set the anchor alarm, we were so far out from the anchor, I had to adjust it to about 75 feet to keep it from sounding. It seemed like if we moved enough to set off the alarm at that point, we'd already be blown onto the shoreline and be calling BoatUS for assistance.
We had a big day planned tomorrow and hoped to cover a lot of water before sunset in Part Eight!
All the training I was going to receive prior to heading out on the Great Loop was now behind me. The only things left for me to do were to head to Round One of OPTIMA's Ultimate Street Car series at G2 Motorsports Park, try to get to a company meeting in Glendale, Wisconsin and see how much of my training I could forget before heading out on the Loop.
Ultimate Street Car went well, but a freak storm prevented me from getting to Glendale, but not before my checked bags went on an extended trip of their own. My last bag finally arrived in the early afternoon Friday, March 20th, which allowed us to depart Tellico Marina shortly after. We only had one lock to navigate on that day and it went very well for our first effort.
We reached out to the lockmaster ahead of arrival, let him know it was our very first lock as a family and they were very helpful and supportive in making sure we got through without a scratch. The headsets proved their value almost immediately. I believe the lockmaster might've been the photographer, who captured this picture of the Maver Marie II and posted it on their Facebook page. If so, thank you! Most of the content I've been capturing on this trip is vertical video, so having some landscape photos definitely helps for the blog and I'll be making a point of grabbing more of those.
In all the sessions I've attended on the Great Loop at Looperpalooza, there's a recurring theme of not planning too far in advance, because there's just no telling what you might encounter, in terms of weather, boat trouble, etc... We probably took that to the extreme on our first day, because we didn't know where we were going to stop that night, which was a mistake we'd try not to repeat.
We weren't technically on the Great Loop route yet, so all the books we had that mentioned anchorages were thin because this area was considered a side trip. When we called the previous owner, who had a lot of experience in these waters, he immediately said if he knew we weren't starting out from Vonore until the early afternoon, he'd have told us to anchor before the lock, because there's not a lot of options downriver from it.
He made a few suggestions for possible anchorages, but contrary to the advice we were given about longer range plans, we had a "plan" to make it all the way to Pass Christian, Mississippi by April 9th, so I could simply rent a car and drive over to New Orleans for Round Two of OPTIMA's Ultimate Street Car series. In order to meet that plan, we needed to cover some water. I believe the previous owner was consulting anchorages listed on Navionics, which I should've been doing and he made the suggestion for Wolf Creek on Watts Bar Lake, that was more agreeable to the amount of water we wanted to cover that day and still left us about 45 minutes of daylight.
As we slowly approached the entrance to the anchorage, I was keeping a close eye on the depth finder and when it went below four feet, I hit the brakes (our draft is 3.7 feet). We were in trouble now, because the sun was getting ready to set and we weren't in close proximity to any other anchorages. I didn't want to enter and risk grounding it or tearing up the props and I was unsure of what to do. As luck would have it, a fisherman just happened by and Gwendolyn flagged him down for assistance.
He entered the anchorage from the downstream side and reported plenty of clearance. We thanked him and went in ourselves and dropped anchor. I dropped anchor facing the wind and began backing up, without setting my anchor alarm and made a visual note of a dead tree on the shoreline, when I felt we were secure. I stayed up on the fly bridge for about 20 minutes and the wind slowed down, but still pushed us around, but we stayed in place.
We were in about 10-12 feet of water and I let out what I believed was about 50-70 feet of chain. I wanted to let out more, but the shoreline on either side of Wolf Creek seemed too close to do that and I was worried a shifting wind might blow us ashore. When I finally remembered to set the anchor alarm, we were so far out from the anchor, I had to adjust it to about 75 feet to keep it from sounding. It seemed like if we moved enough to set off the alarm at that point, we'd already be blown onto the shoreline and be calling BoatUS for assistance.
We had a big day planned tomorrow and hoped to cover a lot of water before sunset in Part Eight!