Left Clarksville at 8:30am in calm weather.  Beautiful, and uneventful, trip down the Cumberland.  We had far more commercial traffic than our trip up, which was interesting.  Most of the vessels that passed were tows and their gigantic barges.  One was the Queen of the Mississippi.

When you come upon a commercial vessel here, you hail that vessel and ask upon which side you should pass them.  The skippers of these boats have been so nice and talkative, and will more often than not let you know what type of traffic to expect behind them.

Again, the scenery today was beautiful:

We traveled 64 miles today going down river.  Made it into Lick Creek around 3:30 and met up with our friends Kent and Heather Sisk, who are also prior sailors.  They purchased an American Tug 34 in Grand Rivers, Kentucky to do the Great Loop.  Kent and Heather hail from Portland, so are left coasters like us.  Dropped the hook in about 13 feet of water (we came damn close to running aground in our entrance to the anchorage).  Had Kent and Heather over for tacos and beer (So Cal bringing good Mexican food to Kentucky).  Was beautiful seeing two ATs on the hook here.  Had an absolutely stunning sunset tonight.

Where to now?  Since this was a side trip…a teaser for our loop adventure, we will now go back to our rented slip at Green Turtle Bay and collect the numerous Amazon Prime packages we’ve had shipped there.  After fueling up (this one will be costly, with about 120 gallons burned) we will get ready for our next trip.  We will likely be taking the Tennessee River all the way down to Chattanooga and then on to Knoxville.  Afterwards, we will cross over to the Tennessee-Tombigbee (Tenn-Tom), and slowly work our way south.  We will be stopping everywhere along the way…both anchorages and marinas, until November 1st arrives.  Insurance rules dictate that we stay at or above 32 degrees latitude until Nov 1st.  In this area, 32 degrees is Demopolis, Alabama.

Update shortly!  Thanks for following us.

M&M