Little did I know how prophetic my last sentence of the last post was. For most of the trip we have had a small leak in the hydraulic fluid for the throttle and transmission controls. Dave ordered new gaskets to fix it and decided to change the fluid before we left. Not a big deal. He was shocked to find the 1/8" aluminum pressure tank that contains the fluid had corroded and there were 50 or so small holes in the tank that were the cause of the leak. This should NEVER happen, and he believes the cause was defective materials in the first place. To quickly find a replacement for the tank would be a fairly big deal. We called a servicer of the equipment and we couldn't just buy a replacement tank (looks like a 1 foot length of 8" diameter pipe), we would have to buy the entire unit, most of which we didn't need. That scenario would cost many hundreds of dollars and take several days. Based on recommendations from the marina we drove around to some local businesses that day to see if we could get the tank we had repaired, but no go. That night we called Lester, another neighbor on the dock, to see if he might have some insight as to where we could get the tank fixed or replaced. Lester came to get Dave at 7:30 am the next day and spent most of the day driving Dave around to half a dozen places, ultimately Nashville, and found a replacement for $20! 
Gotta love that southern hospitality! So, despite the suspicions of some that we would never leave, SeaChange finally departed Cuba Landing on 12-13. It was a bit cold, but it felt good to be moving again. This lighthouse seemed a bit over the top for the river.
Or maybe not.
We are now travelling up river against a 3 mph current. This means we are only going at a speed of about 6 mph.
TN River mm 155, 40 miles.
One can only take so many beautiful anchorages, so for some variety we tied to a barge for the night.
Just kidding. Actually, there is quite a bit a debris in the river so we wanted to be anchored before dark. The water where we were by that time was 50' deep, too deep to anchor. Fortunately there was a barge near by and we tied to it. You aren't really supposed to do that but we didn't have much choice. Plus it was Saturday night in the Bible belt, so we figured everyone would be at church Sunday morning and we would leave before anyone noticed us.
The water slapping the hull that night was incredibly loud and kept both of us awake most of the night.
We made a clean getaway the next morning.
Clearly we are in a flood plain. There are quite a few homes on the river ranging from mansions to rusted out trailers, often right next to eachother.
12-14 TN River, mm 196, 41 miles. We tried to anchor again the next night but this time the current was strong and the river bottom appeared to be rock, so the anchor wouldn't take hold. Fortunately there was another barge to accomodate us. The current was so strong here that it took an hour and about 8 attempts to tie up. Another noisey night with little sleep.
Today was rainy and cold, so after two sleepless nights we are at Aqua Yacht Harbor Marina. We have left the Tennessee River and are on the Tenn-Tom waterway (you should be able to click on the photo to read about it). We have also crossed into Mississippi.
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