We left the week of the 28th to check out a bunch of marinas that will be our home for next summer into fall.  Before we left, we had the boat pulled for a bottom cleaning and some repairs.  No one wants a dirty bottom you know :).

Pulling the boat

You forget how big she is until you have some humans standing next to her.

Big girl….little humans

Her bottom was pretty nasty

Dirty bottom

Another dirty bottom picture

We were having the zincs replaced (remember the talk we had about the zincs inside your boat?).  We were going to have the zincs on the trim tabs, the bow thruster and the plate on the back.  After careful inspection we found that the bow thruster one was gone (hmmmm, maybe that is why is seemed like is wasn’t working properly), the ones on the trim tabs were not too bad, but we replaced them anyway, and the back plate was A-OK.  So after one last look and a hug, we left our baby in the capable hands of the marina crew.  We knew they would take care of our girl and fix whatever needed fixing.

We started out on our adventure of checking out 12 marinas.  Gary made the list, and I completed my anal worksheet on each marina.  A check list with things like, do they have laundry facilities?  Do they have a bath house?  Do they have Wi-fi/cable? Etc, etc.  All sorts of information that will help us decide which marina we want to live at.  I complete one of these sheets, along with taking pictures at each marina we visit, because after I visit 12 marinas, I can’t remember what had what.

We started our travels with the furthest marina, Tellico.  We have some friends that keep their boats there so we knew we’d have some good camaraderie if we could get a slip.  Too bad that marina was already full, with a waiting list.  So that one won’t do.  So on to the next.  Here are some hi-lights of those marinas

One of the marinas actually had a silo in the middle of their docks

Silo

because the Tennessee River was created by erecting damns and the flooding the land.  So the river flows over farms, roads and bridges.

How about this for a work barge?

Work Barge

Just climb right up!

This guys spruced up his pontoon boat, even went camo with it so he could take it hunting!

Camo Pontoon Boat

I think they need to get the sickle out and clean up this dock

Dock needs a hair cut

Wow!  That is a big lawn decoration

Lawn art

At this marina you could put up your own mail box so you could claim residency.  No state tax in Tennessee!

Just throw up a mail box

This guys must have partied to hard at the Halloween party 😉

Rock on Skelliton

Then we saw this boat at one of the marinas

What the heck, no bow, no stern

It looks like it is in a little need of repair

Front of boat, see the stove?

Here is the stern

See the orange raft on the top of the roof?  We think when they tried to lift it out of the water the cables must have cut right thru the boat and just sliced off the bow and the stern.  I bet they cried when they saw that :(.

Then we had a greeting party at one of the hotels we stayed at.  I think he was a sleepin 🙂

Our greeting party

Luckily for us the gas prices decided to take a little nose dive

Cheap gas.

All kidding aside, we visited some great marinas and it will be a tough choice for us to make.  All in all, we had a good time and we made it back to the boat safe and sound.  We found the boat back in the slip but found out the next day they had quite the time getting the boat in the clip.  One of the things they were fixing was our steering, it had a leak.  They had to order the part so they decided to just pushed the boat back in the slip.  Needless to say it had to be one of the windiest days ever.  The neighbor next to us had eyes as big as saucers I am told.  I’m glad I wasn’t there to watch.  Eeee, gads!

Now we just have to look through the data and decide where we want to spend next summer.

Oh oh, Gary is yelling at me to turn off the master head.  Looks like the next blog entry will be fixing the toilets!  Stay tuned….