Arrived in Gold Point Marina about 1940 hrs after leaving Scottsboro at 0630 hrs. It’s been a long day. But we made it!! The Great Loop is complete! More tomorrow, we’re beat, going to get something to eat, and go to bed!
Good Saturday morning! We must be running on adrenaline! Awoke at 0500 and roaring to go! Where to today? Oh, that’s right, we’re in our home port! Wow! It was not easy getting “home.” After getting a phone call Thursday evening from our Chattanooga boating friends (thanks Randy and Marti!) informing us of the closing of the downtown portion of the TN River because of the Head of the Hooch rowing competition, I began researching the closure. According to USACoE Local Notice to Mariners (LNM) the event closes the TN River to traffic from 0600 - 1800 hrs over the next three days! However, the Head of the Hooch promotional literature states the river will be closed from 1200 - 1800 hrs. So, Thursday evening I called the event organizer seeking clarification and explaining our situation. The organizer said as along as we could make it through downtown by noontime everything would be okay. The Admiral and I then began to determine the distance to be traveled and calculate the average speed we would need to maintain in order to get through downtown Chattanooga by noontime. We concluded we would need to average nearly 20 mph over the 86-mile run, including locking through one lock! It looked doable as long as we were underway at first light, and everything worked perfectly! Well, we underway slightly before first light at 0630 CDT and made the lock only about 10 minutes off schedule. Unfortunately, the lockmaster did not immediately lock us through and by the time we emerged from the chamber we were 40 minutes off schedule. We needed to travel the next 38 miles in 45 minutes! Our schedule was additionally affected when we met 6 pleasure crafts heading downstream and needed to give a slow pass. Oh well, we tried. Knowing we couldn’t get through downtown until 1800 hrs, we traveled the remaining miles at 8 mph (6.5 - 7 knots) and arrived at downtown Chattanooga about 1600 hrs. We tied off to the downtown dock, cleaned up a bit, and waited out the time until the river re-opened.
Sunset was 1843 hrs and we wanted to get to the marina in daylight. Once the river was reopened to traffic, we pushed off, idled our way through the downtown area and then hammered down to Chickamauga Lock, the last lock (and the first lock) of our fantastic journey. We got to the marina and tied up about 1940 hrs, in the dark! We did it! We completed the Great Loop! This was an incredible journey. We tested every skill we collectively possess. It was a team effort; I could not imagine doing this trip alone. I had a great partner and Admiral!
I will write more in the coming days as we re-adjust to a land life, and we process the enormity of our accomplishment.
The recurring question posed to us is this: what are you going to do now? Our answer: we don’t know but we’ll figure it out!
We want to thank the many friends and family who have followed us along the way, have provided encouragement and intelligence. It took a team to do this trip.