Mike here (just for a paragraph!)

We’ve been reprovisioning for the past week after “splashing” our boat.  Needing to reinstall our GPS, AIS antennas, and anchor light, we patiently waited for a very busy marine electronics specialist to fit us in his schedule.

Yesterday he spent 6 hours on our boat, performing electrical wizardry that resulted in our chartplotter working better than ever.

Enter Wednesday morning…visit fuel dock for diesel top-off & we’re off…take it away Cap’t Mary:

Departed Green Turtle Bay at 11:15am.  Forecast was a little sketchy, but that seems to be the case every day in Kentucky.  About an hour into our trip, we sailed through our first Kentucky thunderstorm.  It was brief and mellow, but the visible lightning strikes were not comforting to me.  Mike dropped our VHF antenna for a bit.  Afterward, we had great weather with a few minor showers here and there.

Super interesting, and humbling, navigating around Lake Barkley and the Cumberland River.  Really skinny water in areas and serpentines of red and green aids to navigation to which one needs to pay really close attention!  Very common to be trekking along and see birds walking on water right next to you.  The scenery during this trip was truly beautiful.

We had the Land Between the Lakes to starboard, and beautiful places in Kentucky to port.  Ultimately, we came across what looked like a castle.  I looked through the binoculars and saw all the fencing around it; I told Mike it looked like a prison.  Lo and behold, it was the Kentucky State Penitentiary, AKA The Castle on the Cumberland.  Has been in business since 1886 and houses ~856 of Kentucky’s worst dudes.

Because of the iffy weather, we had a few options for where we were going to stop for the night.  After about 30 miles, things were looking good, so we decided to continue on another ~30 miles to Dover Island, an anchorage in Tennessee with great reviews.  We got in around 5:40 (sunset was not until just after 7:00) and found ourselves alone in a beautiful spot.  Put a couple chairs on the upper deck, lit our Thermocell (for bugs), opened a bottle of champers and exhaled.  The anchorage was beautiful, quiet and calm.

Right before we went down below, I looked East and caught the tail end of a rainbow.  I barely got the phone in time to get a snippet of it.  All is well.

Happy Wine Wednesday!  M&M