TAKE OFF DAY

by Bob Van Leer 

  Sunday morning was take off day. Sam took us out to the marina and we fired up the engine for the start of the trip. We had never been through a lock in a dam and our introduction was early.

  Just a few hundred yards below the marina was Chickamauga Dam with the busiest lock on the whole river system. This was the first of seven dams we would go through.

   We had never been through a lock before and really didn't want to learn in a lock crowded with other boats. Fortunately for us, boaters didn't appear to be early Sunday risers. We left at 9:30 a.m. and we were the only boat in the lock. The locks operate 24 hours per day and there is no charge. We radioed the lockmaster that we were first-timers and he gave us special instructions. It turned out not to be a difficult task.

  In the walls of the locks are floating bollards that rise and fall with the water level. The procedure is to tie up to one of them and keep the boat from banging the lock wall as the water level lowers (or rises). The line is not firmly tied but one end is left loose for letting go easily in an emergency. If the bollard would stop moving, you want to get loose quickly before you wind up hanging above the water (or under water if the lock is filling).

  Chickaumauga is not one of the largest locks - it is 60 feet wide and 360 feet long and the normal lift is 48.5 feet. The average lock time is 40 minutes, but it took us only 20 minutes. We had a marine radio which was very useful in contacting lockmasters at the dams.

  Our first day's run was short, just over 40 miles to Hale's Bar Marina. This was to give us an easy day for a shakedown and also, there was no convenient marina with a place to stay for a long way downstream from there.

  This was not planned as a camping trip. We brought along sleeping bags in case we got caught somewhere, but did not have to use them. The temperature was over 90 degrees every day and camping out in this kind of weather and fighting the insects was not what we had in mind.

  Our first overnight stay was an introduction to the problems of getting around when we stopped on land for the night. On the river we had power and could move, but on land we had no wheels. Not all marinas have lodging. At some, as was the case at Hale's Bar, nearby motels send over courtesy cars. On another trip, I might take along a moped.

  We stayed at the Acuff Country Inn and the owners also showed us southern hospitality. They took us to a store to pick up supplies, and the next morning took us to a restaurant in the nearby town of Jasper, Tennessee, where we could have breakfast, complete with country ham and grits.