Thank You Nashville

It was a cold and miserable day when we left Green Turtle Bay. It was 35 degrees F and blowing about 20 knots when we left early in the morning.

Did I say it was cold? It was cold.

We traveled up Lake Barkley past the Barkley Lock and Dam we had come through a couple of days earlier.

Lake Barkley follows the old river bed of the Cumberland river on its way to Nashville, Tennessee. The river was dammed up by the Tennessee Valley Authority who funded the Barkley lock and Dam in 1966.

The Tennessee Valley Authority is a federally owned electric utility corporation that provides low-cost electricity to seven southeastern states.

The TVA was created by Congress in 1933 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

The TVA also provides flood control, navigation, and land management for the Tennessee River system.

The dam was built by the US Army Corp of Engineers to help with navigation on the river and to prevent extensive flooding.

We were moving Selkie to a marina closer to Nashville, Tennessee. We were looking forward to the next few days touring the Nashville area to visit friends and family and see the sites.

Libbie and I have never been to Nashville except in passing, so we were looking forward to taking some of the cultural activities there.

We had a two hour run to go from Green Turtle Bay to Eddy Current Marina.

Libbie’s sister, who was traveling with us and generously allowed her car to be used as ground transportation left Green Turtle Bay a half hour before we arrived at Eddy current Marina and was there to pick us up when we arrived.

We drove down to Nashville and met some California friends for lunch close to the grand old Opry.

We then headed to the hotel.

The next morning, we had reservations for a tour of the Grand Ole Opry in the morning, an iconic venue for Country and Western Music. It was an interesting tour and well worth the price of admission.

Seeing the back stage and dressing rooms reminded me of my old high school drama days when I was a stage manager and lighting director for a few excellent high school productions. I loved it.

We then visited family.

The main highlight was being able to see my 96 year old aunt. She is as sharp as they come. I still can’t get anything past her.

But another highlight was just getting to know my oldest cousin and his family. We had grown up almost a state apart. He is 11 years older than me, so we really never had the opportunity to spend any time together except for the occasional family reunion until now.

He is a retired preacher, and reminisced about his time in the music business, playing keyboards and singing in the Grand Old Opry with some artists who you may have heard of. His wife was equally fun to talk to.

His daughter and son-in-law also joined us and whereas they are tremendously accomplished in their fields, I was astonished to hear that she had also performed at the Opry while in high school. They are a very musical family.

One more thing: my cousin being the oldest cousin carrying on the Sheldon name has the Sheldon Family Bible.

It has a lot of genealogy of my dad’s family recorded over the centuries, generations worth in beautiful script handwriting.

The bible was published in 1802, 25 years or so after the Revolutionary War, and 10 years before the War of 1812.

It was a huge privilege to finally hold this Bible.

We had a great time with my cousins. I’m grateful to have been able to spend time together with them.

The next day we got up and did a little bit more touring of the Nashville area and focused on getting more provisions for Selkie.

We wrapped the trip up with a tour of the Green Briar Distillery, which prove to be very interesting.

We also went downtown to Broadway and toured the Honky Tonks there.

The next morning we left the hotel headed back to Selkie, and loaded all the provisions on the boat

We said goodbye to Libbie sister as she headed back to Chicago.

We settled in on Selkie.

I did some servicing of the generator. As it turned out, it was a good thing because I found that there was a fuel leak on the generator.

The fuel leak occurred when the mechanic who commissioned Selkie in the springtime, bled air out of the fuel lines for the generator as part of the recommissioning process.

He cranked down on the appropriate fittings correctly, but there was a washer that was failing and eventually caused a very small leak.

The small leak caused maybe a cup or three of diesel fuel spill over the period of the next couple of months. But a little bit of spilled diesel goes a long way, and it made a mess.

Luckily, diesel is nowhere near as dangerous as gasoline, and does not easily combust in the source of an ignition source like gasoline will.

Diesel’s ignition source is actually pressure in the engine cylinder. That’s why you don’t need spark plugs on a diesel engine.

We were lucky to find the problem, and we cleaned up the mess. We found the leak and fixed it after a couple tries. We buttoned the generator back up.

Unfortunately, in the process of buttoning the generator back up, I accidentally hit a switch on the voltage regulator that turned off the generator part. When that switch is off, the generator engine runs fine, but the generator doesn’t energize.

I knew exactly what had happened as soon as I turn the generator on and switched it to the generator to charge and there was no voltage.

Libbie in her calm and collected fashion helped me get the generator back apart so we can flip the switch on and then button it back up once again.

Everything operates great now.

It was an adventure to remind us that we need to stay on top of maintenance items so that Selkie remains in good shape.

That evening, we made new friends at Eddy Current Marina Resort.

Some of these folks had been in this marina for a decade, and they knew a lot of things about the area. They were very hospitable, something that we find to be common on the Loop.

One of our new friends was a Volvo mechanic and he was very generous in finding a washer from his shop 6 miles from the marina to replace the one that had been leaking on the generator.

We expect to see more of at least two of them down in Florida when we’re in the keys.

The next morning we took off and headed back down the Cumberland towards Barkley Lock and Dam, and then turn into the canal connecting Lake Barkley and Kentucky Lake.

Kentucky Lake was created in 1944 when the Tennessee Valley Authority funded the Kentucky Dam to impound the Tennessee River.

Kentucky Lake stretches 184 miles south from Kentucky through Tennessee.

The canal connecting Lake Barkley and Kentucky Lake created one of the world’s largest man-made bodies of water by linking up the two lakes.

The area of land that separates the two lakes became known as Land Between the Lakes. It’s a beautiful area

The winds were a little stronger than expected as we headed south up Kentucky lake. It turned into a six hour bash heading into the wind that blew straight down the lake at about 30 miles an hour bash on Selke is a lot better than a bash and some other boats we’ve been on and she held it just fine.

We were pretty tired when we pulled into the anchorage at Panther Bay on Kentucky Lake. We had just entered the state of Tennessee when we did that.

We made dinner.

Libbie tried her hand at fishing with thousands of fish jumping all around us, but unfortunately she had no luck.

We went to bed that night excited to be moving down Kentucky Lake towards our destination at the end of the month in Mobile, Alabama.