What Polar Vortex??

We went back to the boat last week with the forecast of bitter cold temps. Not sure about bitter, it was in the low 40's during the day and upper 20's at night. The boat was plenty comfortable and the water temps warm enough for the reverse cycle heat to work just fine, not sure how long that will last. We don't really winterize the boat but keep the block heaters plugged in on both engines which keeps everything below deck nice and warm. In fact, when we left Sunday morning the ER temp was reading 82. Wednesday through Sunday every 3 weeks will be our MO for the next few months until we can move in full time.

We spent last Thursday doing a bit more exploring of the area to find hardware stores, Wal-Mart, liquor stores etc. We made it as far as Paducah and found a really good BBQ joint also.

Friday we took the boat over to the fuel dock to top off for the winter and found we only used 126 gallons since Evansville, very happy!! We went out on Lake Barkley for an hour to warm everything up and get ready for the oil change. It was sunny and in the low 40's but the full enclosure on the fly bridge kept us nice and toasty.

The duck hunters here take their shelter very seriously. Funny thing was, just to the left of this camp were about 30 ducks in the water...they must know the hunters schedule!

After our short cruise it was time to get to work in the engine room. We have a pump plumbed into each engine and the generator so getting the old oil out goes pretty quick. The pain is adding the the new oil into the engines. The fill port is at an odd angle so you can only add a small gulp at a time before it overflows, At 7.5 gallons per engine and 10 minutes for each gallon it takes a loooooong time in cramped quarters. Jill was a great helper from up above bringing me new oil and hauling the jugs of old oil to the dock but there's not much room for both of us to work in the ER. I'm going to have to come up with a better way of adding the new oil in the future. Here's a view of the holy place where I spent about 3 hours....

That evening after a couple of docktails to get the feeling back in my legs we headed over to Patti's to check out their Christmas lights. Boy do they do it up right! It wasn't fully dark while we were there so we didn't get the full effect, we'll save that for our next time down when we're more in the spirit. Hard to do when it's still before Thanksgiving. Jill did get to spend some time in Santas throne before he showed up.

The view toward Kentucky Lake from Patti's

Also on this trip we hauled down a trailer full of stuff from home to make our stay here a bit more comfortable. The marina is going to remove one of the extra wings on the dock to allow us to get the boat all the way in. This will still give us plenty of deck space for our outdoor living. We plan to be here for about a year and will have a "dock" sale to get rid of the stull when we leave.

Note the Christmas lights (on a timer)

Next trip down is early December and the marina's Christmas party. Looking forward to meeting some of the folks here. The docks are pretty empty this time of year.

Oh yeah...about that polar vortex...at least it waited until we got home. This was my view heading to work Monday morning!! I was not at all happy to still be in Cincinnati and working. The boys at work said I had my grouchy pants on...they were right.