10/30/18 Tuesday; What a beautiful day! It would have been a fantastic day to travel and anchor out tonight, if we didn’t have a package being delivered here today. Darn! Oh well. We probably need that wash-down pump fixed before we anchor out, so this is just how it worked out. It’s nice to have some down days after traveling 370 miles in 5 days.
I was entertained all day by trying to get pictures of the Air Force planes flying overhead. We seem to be right on the edge of their flight path. These are prop planes, which you don’t ordinarily associate with the Air Force. But apparently the Columbus Air Force Base is a training base, and has been for a very long time. My dad was stationed here for 6 months when he joined the Air Force back in the early 1950’s. I called him and told him about the planes and how fun it has been watching them. He flew a T-6 when he was here. Today they still fly a T-6 for training, but it is T-6A Texan II. This is from their website:
Columbus Air Force Base is home of the 14th Flying Training Wing of Air Education and Training Command’s 19th Air Force. The wing’s mission is specialized undergraduate pilot training in the T-6 Texan II, T-38C Talon and T-1A Jayhawk aircraft. Each day the wing flies an average of 260 sorties on its three parallel runways. The T-6A Texan II is a single-engine, two-seat primary trainer designed to train Joint Primary Pilot Training, or JPPT, students in basic flying skills common to U.S. Air Force and Navy pilots.
These were some of my photo attempts:
It was really hard to get the camera to zoom and focus fast enough!
It’s mostly cool for me because it makes me think of my dad, and that he was here learning to fly from this very same Air Force Base over 60 years ago. He then learned to fly bombers in Texas, and was stationed in Guam during the Korean War. After the Air Force, he went on to fly a successful career for a commercial airline. He has always loved airplanes. I called and talked to him today, and it made him remember and laugh about his training days both here and in Texas.
The Columbus Marina offers two courtesy vehicles, so we took the truck for a trip around town. We went to Lowe’s on the other side of town to get a bolt. Mechanic Kenny found that there was a random bolt missing on the top of Laverne. Sometimes, Google maps like to take us the scenic route! We went on some narrow residential roads to get there, when upon further inspection, we could have taken some main streets. Apparently The Google was looking for the least amount of traffic? We saw some neat homes, but we zipped past too fast as Mr. Driver was harassing the navigator for trying to get us lost.
When we got to Lowe’s, this Christmas display was smack in our faces as we walked in. And what did I think? Wouldn’t that be AWESOME on Island Girl? Hey – our friends Ron & Karen on Kara Mia took Santa all the way around the Loop. I should take JOY! Captain said no. But, maybe my local Lowe’s in Sarasota will have this, and I could get it for the Christmas Boat Parade? That would be fun. It lights up, after all! And JOY is my word!
Mechanic got his bolt, then we got some groceries and a couple hundred gallons of oil and headed back to the boat. These Diesel engines take a lot of oil. Mechanic figured that since we’ll be here for a few days, and the Girl is due for an oil change, this would be a good time to get that accomplished. And I spied a directional sign to an awesomely named town.
Back at the marina, Jimmy the dockmaster welcomed more boats. He is such a nice southern fella! There are lots of boats coming in and seeking shelter since there is some bad weather forecasted for this week.
For docktails, I found a nice fall recipe to utilize some Apple Pie Moonshine that we bought back in Paducah. This was yummy! Very cinnamony and autumn-ish!
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10/31/18 Wednesday Halloween: 🎃
Yesterday, Mechanic got the weiner dog wash down hose pump replaced and working. But while he was below, standing on his head and using his stretch Armstrong arms to reach around to the pump, an intake hose on the generator broke. Hmm – hoses shouldn’t just break. I guess it was good that he found out that it was brittle and not an awesomely dependable hose! So today’s adventure was all about trying to find a new hose. We tried one place in town, and they sent us to Columbus Rubber & Gasket. They had some hose that would work. YAY! Back to the boat.
On the way, I did capture a picture or two in town. It is a neat old town with some beautiful old buildings and homes. I had been here just a couple of years ago for my job, right before I retired, so I didn’t make Kenny cruise through the historic district.
It turned out to be a very nice day! Especially for the last day of October!!
Mechanic got to work on changing the oil, since that required a lot of climbing in and out, and the weather was good for that. Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy, so it wasn’t a good idea to put this chore off for another day. He also tried to install the new hose, but discovered that he needs new hose clamps. Fortunately, we already had the courtesy car reserved to go to dinner tonight, so we’ll find an auto parts store for those.
Early docktails for Halloween included Patty from Parrot Bay, dressed as a squid. And she had trick or treat candy bags for us!
We saw Bert and his go-fast Grady-White pull in and get docked, so we invited him to ride along and go to dinner with us. We discovered that he did his flight training here at Columbus AFB over 20 years ago, so he was anxious to see the town. He had a couple of ideas for dinner, and wondered if the places were still in business. We told him where we were headed, and he was happy to go along with us. Our destination was Hank’s #1 BBQ. It was only about 4:30, so we were the only ones there. It was just a little building along the highway, all by itself.
It was a fun place and their food was fantastic. They had a potato salad that was incredible. Bert cannot eat mayonnaise and I can’t eat raw onions. This salad had neither. It was taters, cream cheese, sour cream, heavy cream, bacon and seasoning. WOWZAYUM!
Hanks had a lot of trophies, and we understood why. Their smoked, dry-rubbed meat did not need BBQ sauce. Kenny ordered a full rack of St Louis ribs so that we could bring some home for another meal.
We got the hose clamps, stopped at the post office to mail off oil samples, had dinner, and headed back to the marina. We buttoned everything up, check all the dock lines, and prepared for a big thunderstorm that was forecasted to hit us sometime over night. Sure enough, my phone beeped at 5:30am, sending notification of the pending severe thunderstorm. Then it beeped again to warn us about tornados. WHAT?! TORNADOS?! Shoot. I don’t do tornados! It said to seek safe shelter immediately. Oh NO! We don’t have any safe shelter anywhere around here!!
The marina building is up on stilts, and it feels wobbly when the wind isn’t blowing. I got up and got dressed. I figured if we had to abandon ship, I wanted some regular clothes on. But we had nowhere to go, so we stayed down in the bow of the boat and prayed that we didn’t end up in Oz. We were laying as low as possible. At least we’d be sheltered from anything flying and breaking through the windows. But if a twister came, there was really no place to hide. We didn’t have a building, and we didn’t have a car to go anywhere else in. We didn’t know what else to do.
As it all turned out, we never heard a clap of thunder, never saw a flash of lightening, and we never flew off to Oz. We got a lot of rain, but nothing like we’ve experienced at some other times on this trip. The storm just … wasn’t. Thankfully! The rain ended by about 8:00, and left us with a cloudy day. We had a few more times of sprinkles, but it really turned out to be an OK day. We actually could have traveled today and been just fine. But – who knew!?!
Then we had a potential interruption to our trip. We got an e-mail that there is going to be paving of roads and driveways at our home in Sarasota, and …. did we leave a key with anybody for our car that is parked in our driveway? Because it needs to be moved. Oh NO! We had to think really hard about where we hid keys 8 months ago, and talk our neighbor into the house and hope the car keys could be found. It was quite a comedy talking her through various possibilities as we tried to remember what we did, and she searched in places and found nothing. But we were finally successful in locating the keys. The bonus was that the car started after sitting 8 months, and it didn’t have any flat tires either! Whew! Emergency averted. We can continue our 9mph voyage without a time-out. So, the lesson for those of you who have not yet done a long away-from-home adventure like this: Make sure you leave keys to your house and cars with someone.
I spent some time trying to figure out where we will stay along the panhandle of Florida. We’ll be there in just about a week! There are areas around Panama City that were absolutely devastated by Hurricane Michael. There are some long stretches where marinas have been destroyed and are not available, so I’ve been trying to plot an itinerary and find options for places to stay. Of course, how long it takes, what days we travel, and how long we stay along the way all depends upon the weather. We have one crucial weather window to plan for, and that is when we cross the Gulf of Mexico. That will be about a 170 mile journey across BIG water, which will take about 18 hours at our 9-ish mph cruise speed. We don’t want to run Island Girl at her fast speed for 9 hours straight to make that crossing, so we’ll go our slow speed. We absolutely need good weather for that, so that will dictate how long we stay, and how fast or how slow we’ll travel through the panhandle. If we see a good travel window, we’ll pick up the pace to make the crossing. If not, we’ll slow down and enjoy some fresh seafood until the weather cooperates.
As the afternoon ebbed on, we enjoyed a few pre-docktail stories and conversation at our dock before heading over to the gathering place under the marina office for official docktails.
Mike from Parrot Bay headed up the discussion about who all was leaving in the morning – to coordinate not only the Stennis Lock that is right outside the marina, but also to find out where everyone planned to anchor tomorrow night. The next marina is 110 miles down stream at Demopolis, so just about everyone has to anchor out the night they leave here. Most of the anchorages aren’t big enough to accommodate too many boats, so we thought we better get coordinated. As it ended up, there are only four of us going a long distance (65 miles) tomorrow, so we should all be fine. We’ll listen for Mike’s lock update on VHF68 at 7:00am, and be ready for immediate departure if we get the all-clear. It is time to get back on the trail south! We are starting to get anxious to get home. We only have about 14 travel days between here and there! (But that could take us two months – who knows??!)
