Tennessee: New Johnsonville - Pebble Isle Marina

Day: 103
NM Today: 30
NM Total: 2119
Locks Today: 0
Locks Total: 82

After so many days of overcast skies and a chill in the air, the sun finally came out today.  The temperature rose from 55 Saturday to a high of 85 today.  We left the anchorage at 9:45 - a nice civilized time of day - with Palmetto Paradise and Penny Pinchin' exiting the anchorage shortly afterwards.  As we motored along we could hear the two of them discussing the beauty of the Tennessee River.

Cypress Creek Anchorage in sunlight

 From my point of view, the scenery on the trip down the Tennessee River today was, for the most part, 'more of the same'.  The water is cleaner and lacks the heavy barge traffic making it much prettier than the Mississippi, but after a while one tree looks like all the others.  Every once in a while we see something out of the ordinary like the bridge to nowhere that we passed today.

Bridge to Nowhere and Ferry nearby

Then, next to the bridge to nowhere, we saw this dilapidated building which had no obvious use or access to land other than by boat.

Dilapidated Building on the Tennessee River

We traveled into the sun with no breeze to speak of, so that 80 something degrees felt so much hotter. When I took over the helm for Clark so he could change to cooler clothing, I could feel the sun baking my skin.  We both started out this morning in jeans and regretted that fashion decision in very short order.  As soon as he came back to steer the boat, it was my turn to change into shorts.

We decided on Pebble Isle Marina as our destination for today.  We were not alone in this decision. When we pulled up to the dock, multiple looper boats were here before us.  More showed up after us. One person mentioned that it was "like a looper convention" on the transient dock.  We saw familiar faces, Ariel, Time Out, Tika, Sweet Sensations, Plane to Sea, and many vessels that we had not seen previously.

When we checked in at the marina office, we found that they keep a log book for loopers to sign into with the date they passed through the area.  I flipped through the last couple of pages and was amazed at how many vessel names I recognized.  We looked for a couple of names such as Harmony and saw that they are many days ahead of us in their travels.

After we checked in, I met the owner of Sweet Sensations whom I had not met before.  However, I had seen his boat when we anchored in Little Diversion and saw their catamaran boat there.  As we talked today, I learned that he and his wife are from Trinidad doing the loop.  They have been on the loop for 11 months.

We saw Palmetto Paradise briefly at Pebble Isle as they pulled in to refuel before continuing south on the river.  Although they originally planned to stay here, Penny Pinchin' decided to continue on without stopping.  Palmetto Paradise is on their way to Chattanooga, and  Penny Pinchin' is in a hurry to get home to Alabama.

On our transient dock Clark met a looper couple that started their voyage yesterday, so they are on day 2 of their trip.  We also met two couples traveling together (on two boats) from Wisconsin.  I chatted for a while with a couple from Maine on the smallest looper boat I have seen on the trip thus far called Laughing Gull.  It is a very small tug-style vessel. They left from Troy, New York in August and have been hurrying to catch up with the looper schedule ever since.  Given the number of looper boats at this marina, I would say they did a bang up job of catching up!

When we docked, a man from the boat next to us helped grab our lines.  He and his wife are from Toronto, Canada.  We chatted for a while after we got tied up, and they graciously offered to share the courtesy car with us for a trip to Walmart.  Given we were desperate for produce, we took him up on the offer.  He had the car reserved for 3:00 and by the time we had docked it was already after 2:00, so we hurried around to get our stuff together so we could join them on the ride out.

The road out of the marina is real twisty turny, and it is a long distance to get to anything of interest. We had thought of staying an extra day to go see a nearby state park and some historic sites, but given what we saw using the courtesy car, we have changed our minds and plan to move on to another location tomorrow -- most likely an anchorage.  Some of the other boaters here are "in the same boat" that we are in that they are traveling slowly for the next week to kill time before the start of the AGLCA "looper" Rendezvous.