New house, boat work, Hannah, Anna & Haley / Christene & Al

Well, so far in 2008 a lot has been happening. I got back to the marina and re-installed the rudders that I had pulled and rebuilt. It was not a terribly difficult job just time consuming since I was applying fiberglass with epoxy in cool weather. After each application I had to wait until the next day to work on them again. I installed them back into the boat and replaced the packing and worn clevis pins. There is no play in the rudder system now and they work great.

We decided to have the flybridge enclosure replaced on SEASEA so Toucan Canvas from Guntersville, AL came and took down the enclosure and went back to make a new top. While the top was off I decided that it was a good time to strip the flybridge trim and refinish the teak.

At the same time we bought a new house in Athens, GA. It is next door to our other house and we got it in February. It needed extensive TLC and we are just now finishing it up and have a rental contract on it starting May 15. Matt Tingle came by to help me assess the roof.

Goose Pond Marina is host to many fishing tournaments. We were back there for the first one of the year. It was cold but quite a few fishermen turned out. The largest fish was something over 8 pounds. It was interesting watching all of the boats jockeying for position on the docks and ramps.



We experienced our first snowfall on SEASEA during February.

In April, Hannah Brannon, Anna Parham and Haley Allen visited us for a trip out.

We headed for Jones Creek, a place we always wanted to visit, and Hannah and I sounded our way into the creek with the dinghy while Anna and Haley posed for Stacy on the bow pulpit.


The girls were begging for sunshine and we did get a little so they could lay out on the foredeck in the sun.

We did the things we typically do on the boat. Mostly eat, lay in the sun and take naps.

When we left the next morning Hannah decided to hoist the anchor for our departure.

We stopped to go to Mud Creek for barbeque but could not get the anchor to hold on a smooth rock bottom so Stacy stayed with the boat while I took the girls for lunch in the dinghy.

We headed for a second anchorage where the girls played in the dinghy for the afternoon.

The next day the weather came in as predicted and we headed back to the marina rather than stay out another day and then travel in the rain. Hannah and Anna made the best of it and ran off playing in the rain. After a while they decided to just jump in and swim.

All in all I believe they had a good time in spite of the colder than desired temperature and rainy weather.


After spending some time back in Athens working on the house, Stacy's parents came back to the boat with us for a trip up the river to Chattanooga. We left Goose Pond and went through the Nickajack lock before tying up to a dock at Shellmound park.

While we were at the park, they got in their walking (normally they walk in the mall) and Christene re-opened her salon and gave me a haircut on the foredeck.

The next day Christene drove almost the entire way through the "Grand Canyon of the Tennessee" for our arrival in Chattanooga.

While there we were visited by Clarence and Sally Wall. We took a day trip up to Chickamauga Lake and stopped at a restaurant for lunch. We had to lock up to the lake and then back down to get back to Chattanooga.

Later that evening J. Tingle (one of our nephews) also from Chattanooga brought his band "Third Lobby" to the boat for an official rehearsal session. While the band rehearsed, Stacy, Kendra (J's wife), and some of the others hung out on the foredeck.

I was quite impressed with the ability of each of the band members. Even when working on new material, they seemed to just know how it should be played. We have two of their CDs and I hope they will record some of the new music I heard on the boat. We have invited them to come to Goose Pond where we can set them up on the boat and have a real traveling show.

You can view their website at http://www.thirdlobby.com/ or visit their myspace page at www.myspace.com/thrdlbby.

We went from Chattanooga back to Goose Pond in one day since we needed to get back to Athens to complete the work on the house before the rental start date. We are still planning to make our trip up the Tennessee to Knoxville, the Little Tennessee river, Telico lake and back.