Happy Destiny: 5/31/2022-Ft Loudon Marina to Sunset Cove Anchorage-58 miles 1 lock

Happy Destiny with the Lamberts aboard is on the move again! Welcome aboard.

We arrived at Ft Loudon on Sunday evening and spent the past day and a half preparing Happy Destiny and Trudge for this years adventures. There were multiple last minute items to take care of including cleaning, putting boat numbers and name on Trudge, provisioning, checking systems and spending a couple of hours with our hired electrician to go over the details of the newly updated electrical systems. Thanks to our good friend, Belinda, for coming down with us from Ohio and helping, and, most of all for bringing our car back home so that we have MUCH less running and driving at the end of the trip :-)

A beautiful boat in the transient slip at Ft Loudon Marina "Telico Lady"

We woke up this morning and while Renee made a final quick run to Home Depot for a couple of things Erik readied the boat for departure. After bidding Belinda farewell for her drive back to McConnelsville we disconnected our lines from Happy Destiny’s home dock and started on our way at about 10am.

Leaving our slip at Ft Loudon Marina to start our voyage

Immediately outside of the marina is Ft Loudon lock and dam which would be our only lock to get through for todays planned trip. We had radioed to them as we were departing and the lock master had the doors open for us we got there.

Renee securing the boat to the floating bollard inside the lock

Exiting Ft Loudon lock onto the Tennessee River

After a 72’ drop we exited onto the Tennessee river. The flow out of the dam was significant enough that it gave us quite a push down river for the first 10 or so miles. We cruised along nicely at about 12mph with the engines only turning 1500 rpms. The cruise was nice and it was a quiet day. This area is pretty rural but there are a lot of nice homes to look at.

Time for Renee to catch some rays

hot and thirsty cows

It's always fun to see fellow Marinette boats along the way

As we were heading down river we called five or six of the marinas along the way to see who had the best price on fuel. We found that Euchee Marina which was only about 3 miles from the spot we were shooting for to anchor out for the night had the best price beating the next competitor by 30 cents a gallon. Definitely worth shopping when we are talking about the quantities of gas we will be using. We arrived at Euchee Marina about 5pm and got in and out of there pretty quickly after letting Riva out to potty and pumping 91 gallons.

Just a few miles further down river was ‘Sunset Cove’ anchorage which had good reviews on Navionics. The reviews said there was a sandy beach with good dinghy shore access; important to us with Riva. The “sandy beach” was not exactly what we had envisioned in our heads, but, it did offer a good spot to go ashore and there was a primitive campsite there with a small clearing on the otherwise heavily wooded shore with dense undergrowth.

Take me for a ride mama and papa

Riva on her way to shore

After getting the boat anchor set (on the first try!!….yay for our new 35 lb delta style plow anchor purchase) we fired up the grill and cooked chicken breast, squash and zucchini. Not Erik’s best grilling results tonight as the chicken got a little over cooked; booo for dry chicken :-(

After dinner we lowered Trudge (the new to us dinghy) and put the trolling motor and battery on. We motored into shore and let Riva do her business. It was about an hour before sunset and although low in the sky the sun was blazing right at us and very hot while standing on shore. We got back into the dinghy and did a nice slow ride around the the side of the large cove that was getting some shade relief. Aside from the frequent surfacing and jumping fish the main wildlife we saw was when we startled a deer along the shoreline that took off making a ruckus (ok, maybe the deer startled us as much as we did him/her). We got a few good pictures of the boat at sunset, which did not disappoint! They rarely do.

Must have been a hot tiring day; Renee may have been sleeping on the dinghy ride...lol

Returning to the boat, we enjoyed each other’s company while relaxing on the aft deck. The temps lowered after sunset nicely allowing for our usual evening cup of coffee (along with a bowl of ice cream 🍨). The night sky was perfectly clear with only a very small sliver moon. Before heading to bed we turned off the boats anchor light and went up to the bow to experience an amazing star filled sky. A nice end to our first day back aboard!