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Stage 6:Nashville TN - Pensacola FL
An interesting incident happened on the Tennessee River:
It was just another lovely day, when I happened to glance in the cabin and saw 1/4 inch of water covering the cabin sole. LEAK! Luckily I was in a not too wide section of the river, and beached her in minutes.
I thought this could only be a failure of a join at the waterline
on my AF4
Breve, and potentially very difficult to find and
even more difficult to fix. Plus it meant that I could no longer
trust the integrity of the boat I'd built. These thoughts were
well back in my mind as I had shifted into automatic mode and
was busy hauling everything, including the furniture, out of the
cabin and mopping up the standing water to try and locate the
leak.
Nothing - once dry, it stayed dry. I waited. I hung out the linens
to dry in the sun and waited some more. Still nothing. I climbed
out of the boat and inspected it from the outside. There was a
ragged hole in the hull about the size of a silver dollar about
an inch above the waterline up in the bow where the battery compartment
is. What partially submerged object I had struck and never felt,
I don't know and never will, but I was elated; this was very good
news indeed! If you're going to hole your boat, this is where
you want it.
A little MarineTex to fill it, masking tape and a block of wood
to fair the MarineTex, and I was on my merry way again: down to
where the pelicans play, Spanish Moss drips from dead trees, snow-white
egrets stand transfixed at the water's edge, and dolphins gambol
in my miniscule wake.
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Down the Cumberland, Tennessee, Tenn-Tom, Black
Warrier, Alabama, and Mobile Rivers to the Gulf |
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Hole patched over. |
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Well, I was warned. |
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Wildlife on the Tennessee. |
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Big River, little boat. |
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What the heck is this? |
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The ubiquitous Herron.
[Does not enlarge] |
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On the hard in Bayou Chica...awhhh, look at
that little thing. |
*****
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