016: TJ Hooper

While we are on the subject of maritime disasters, it would be a good time to give a shout out to our son Jack, who is a first year law student at the University of Michigan.   Jack is now the only “L1” student in the law school band, which is called, “TJ Hooper and Learned Hand.”  What is the connection with maritime disasters?   The band name is based on a famous admiralty law case.   A quick and relevant read here:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_T.J._Hooper

Our friends on Sol Maria need to get as close to Mobile, AL as they can by November 25^th so that Gavin’s cousin Peter and his wife Sandra can fly home back to Wales.   Accordingly, they need to “push hard.”   We really appreciate travelling with experienced cruisers, and having sailed from New Zealand and done most of the G/L, you don’t get much more experienced than Gavin and Lica.   The night of the 13th, reunited:

Kathy (KatMat), Lica and Sandra (Sol Maria):

Matt (KatMat) and Gavin and Peter (Sol Maria):

On November 14^th, Hygge (with a newly humbled skipper) and KatMat left the docs with Sol Maria at 6:30 a.m. to head over to Kentucky Lake and up the Tennessee River.   

We left with no specific destination in mind, but I still had to calibrate that Garmin autopilot.  Going over the charts with Gavin the day before, it looked like Kentucky Lake had the depth and size to run the calibration routine.   Luckily this time, all went smoothly and we were back with a functioning chart plotter and autopilot.  No more traveling sideways/backwards according to Garmin.

Saw some interesting things.

Lot's of RV's parked under carports, well RVports:

An old grain elevator:

 

Not many marinas on KL, but here is one:

Fall colors:

 

The video version:

https://youtu.be/96kvwULkP2M

Sol Maria radioed us that they wanted to anchor just off the main channel in Birdsong Creek (approx. 79 n/m from our starting point) and the Garmin showed us getting there around sunset.   I had a client board meeting to attend that night via webx and didn’t want to mix anchoring, running the generator, etc. with that obligation.   Besides, a few miles up the creek was another “must see” stop, Birdsong Resort and Marina home of North America’s only freshwater pearl farm. Nancy was interested in seeing it.  In order to get there in time to see the museum/tour we had to speed up, so we cranked up the RPM’s and passed Sol Maria by.   

Birdsong Creek was a narrow and winding channel, so we had to thread our way carefully between the channel markers, but we made it in without incident.   The people at Birdsong Resort and Marina were nice, the facilities were not what one would typically describe as a resort.   We didn’t even use the bathrooms there.   The electrical pedestal we plugged into had no cover over the outlet!   That said, we did tie up and I was able to attend the board meeting.    

As for the pearl farm, Nancy found the museum and tour very interesting.  She had a lot of interesting information to relay that you can find about here:  https://museum.tennesseeriverpearls.com/

But a few highlights:
-Founded by a John R. Latendresse who was in Japan after WWII and became fascinated by the cultured pearl industry and married a Japanese woman.

-He searched high and low for the perfect spot to grow fresh water pearls.

-They are cultured in mussels, not oysters.

-They don’t use sand as an “incubator” they use shaped pieces of shells (the shaping determines the final shape of the pearl.)

We made their FB page!

So did our flotilla buddies from Fika (which is Swedish for "coffee break", so kind of the same concept as Hygge (art of cozy living):

 

Dave