Gulf Shores

Early September 2016 we hauled Cloud Nine 800 miles down to Gulf Shores,  Alabama. We stayed 10 days at Lulu's Homeport Marina. The Marina is located at Mile Marker: GIWW 155.0 mi. EHL by water or 200 E 25th Ave, Gulf Shores, AL 36542 by land.

We cruised from Lulu's to Mobile bay to the west and Perdido Pass to the east. We also used it as a home base to drive to Biloxi and New Orleans.

Here we are headed towards Perdido Pass and my first foray into the gulf. Perdido Pass is a busy narrow pass with strong currents. It was actually a bit scary for a river rat like me.

Here we are returning to Lulu's from Mobile Bay. Lulu is Jimmy Buffet's sister and along with the Marina there is an outside play area for kids and the Bar\Restaurant with live entertainment. This place stays busy.

Got a kick out of our neighbor "Blue Heron" They had a Great Blue Heron fishing off of their dock finger most every day we were there. 

Heading west to Oyster Bay to watch the sunset.

Sunsets on the water are one of nature's most beautiful settings.

The evolution of our cockpit surround. We bought a hanging shower enclosure and found that if we unzipped it completely it provided privacy for about half the cockpit. We purchased a second one and zipped them together, providing privacy for the entire cockpit. It still needs a little bit of tweaking. 

Lake Cumberland

We arrived close to sunset at Holcombs Landing State Park boat ramp after a crazy drive in the countryside around Lexington and a nerve wracking non-launch of our boat at Lee's Ford Marina and Resort. I was sure that a strap was going to snap and our boat was going to shoot off the trailer and go flying down the way to steep access road. By the time we finally got her in the water we were looking for a nice anchorage pretty fast. We spent the rest of the week in the same cove. We had the Moon coming up every night at one end of the cove and the sun going down in the other. Talk about the beauty of nature!

Our evening view for the week. Great weather and beautiful sunsets. We only left our spot twice during the week. Once to stock up on ice and beer and once when a thunderstorm broke loose our bow anchor. We looked around in the same cove for a possible better spot and ended up back in the same spot.

When it was finally time to leave our efforts to make sure we were securely anchored almost cost us our stern anchor. I had apparently gotten it well stuck in the rocks. After various different maneuvers and about a half hour I finally got it loose.  

On the way back to Franklin Furnace someone may have thought that they saw a UFO. We lost our saucer shaped tv antenna somewhere along the way. All in all a great couple of weeks on the water. We got to try out a cockpit shower surround and hope to improve on it. We were amazed by how comfortably we could spend so much time on our Rossi, looking forward to more.

Charleston

Our first cruise of the year we hauled out Cloud Nine and trailered her 60 to miles Gallipolis, Ohio. We left early to hopefully meet up with the Columbus Sail and Power Squadron at Winfield Lock and Dam. That was the last time we saw them till we got to Charleston.

Unfortunately most of the boats are standard planing hulls and need more speed to get on plane than we can achieve at wide open throttle loaded for cruising. It appears our days cruising with the Squadron may be in the past.

One of the first things you see in Charleston heading upstream is Haddad riverfront park and amphitheater, it has free weekend  concerts.   Then there is of course the lovely golden domed  Capitol building. This was the first time i had ever seen it from anywhere other than the interstate.

We stayed at the Charleston Boat Club right underneath the 35th and 36th street bridges. The marina was in pretty good shape considering that just weeks before, the docks had been up in the parking lot, due to major flooding. We were given a covered slip just downstream from the office.
A section of the covered slips had their roofs destroyed the previous winter when a snow plow sent tons of snow off one of the bridges crashing down on the roofs.

Some boat club members came over to check out our Rossi and invited us to a party that the club was having. One of the things that I enjoy most about cruising is the kindness and hospitality you see from total strangers. Not to mention lots of good food and drink. The view of the Capitol building from the party dock was really nice.

We were blown away by how many Stern Wheelers there were in several locations on the river. It was a beautiful run back to the Mighty Ohio. At the mouth of the Kanawha is point Pleasant of  Mothman fame. We will have to go back some time and check out the museum.
Next stop Gallipolis to haul her back out and down to Lake Cumberland.

Spring of 2016

This spring I have been very busy getting things ready before hauling Cloud Nine down to her new slip on the Ohio river. I used the hole for a rod holder that had been covered over to put the post for my Weber Q grill.
I purchased  an Eccotemp L5 tankless water heater and mounted it on some leftover fiberglass from the head door. I plumbed a shore water inlet to the sinks and the water heater. I mounted the shower head on the dinghy crane.
As I am writing this post I am patiently waiting for my L5 to be returned from the factory. I am hoping very much that it performs as advertised when I get it back. I was having problems with it not staying lit and experiencing frustration with Eccotemp's customer support.

We found some nice exterior fabric an Jo Ann's Fabric and reupholstered some existing cushions and the passenger seat. So far everyone really likes our choice of  fabric.We also replaced some old lettering and updated the new home port.

Personal Modifications

     The winter of 2015-2016 has mainly been quite mild so far, lots of mild weekends for working on the interior of Cloud Nine. The previous owners have made many nice modifications most of which I will keep in-place. Many of the modifications that I have done so far are electronics oriented. The Humminbird chart plotter from my previous boat is much more functional than the sonar unit onboard, so I decided to switch them out. Also added a sound system, a amplified TV\FM antenna and a 12 volt TV with a DVD player. 

  

              When I purchased Cloud Nine last September, the owner included the head door which had never been installed. I told him that I would figure out something to do with it. He had built a very nice platform to hold a Honda 2000 and a couple of gas cans across the dual Armstrong brackets. Unfortunately parts of it were suffering from water intrusion and needed to be replaced. Here's what I came up with. I cut the door down to suitable size, placed it rough side up on the brackets and marked where to cut so that it would lay flat. Cut the slots and attached it. The rough surface of the (inside) of the door seems to be pretty non-slip. I ran the AC off the Honda for a while and it stayed perfectly in-place.

                     



I cut the  door with a regular circular saw. It probably didn't do my blade a lot of good.

I placed it on the brackets to see where I needed to cut. I used a small hand saw to cut the strips out for the angles coming up on the motor mounts. The hand saw seemed to work better than the circular saw.

My next project is setting up the Honda for extended run using the boats fuel tank.

Buying Our Pocket Trawler

After years of researching and whittling down the multitude of choices for probably our final boat. A couple of years ago I came across a Yachtworld  article about "Pocket Trawlers" 5 for value and versatility. I was fascinated by the thought of trailerable boats that were seaworthy enough to safely take you to the Bahamas and back. I started looking at C-Dorys and Rosboroughs online. I kept coming back to the Rosborough because of the fact that they have 2 side doors for easy docking and locking.

 

So I joined the Rosborough Yahoo group in July of 2014. The previous groups that I had subscribed to were a Mainship Group, Camano and Schucker. All very seaworthy boats but none trailerable.  

 

Since then we have been to numerous boat shows and seen several Ranger Tugs and Cutwaters. Both beautiful and capable boats, unfortunately both are still a bit out of our price range. Still had never seen a Rosborough in person. We were planning a Gulf Shores, Alabama vacation in September of 2015 so I decided to ask on the group if there were any owners down along the Gulf who would like to show off their boat. No body from the Gulf coast answered, but I got 3 invitations within a one day drive. We decided to take up the offer from a kind gentleman who keeps his boat just off lake Erie on the Detroit river. We made a Lake Erie weekend of it and on August 8, 2015 we got to see our first Rossi.

Our host was very kind and informative, he showed us how the boat behaved in different conditions. Let me drive it and showed us how much storage is available . Getting my wife on the boat finally got her to see the potential of the somewhat utilitarian looking vessel.

 

If we were ever to buy one we would need the proper truck to tow it. Things seemed to be lining up well all of a sudden. My 2002 F150 was starting to disintegrate so knowing what we needed for the future, we purchased a 2012 F250 Super Duty. I love my new truck, although it can certainly feel like a truck with it's beefy suspension and E rated tires, I have read that you can lower the pressure quite a bit from the recommended when not towing. Not sure how that affects wear.

 

 

On August 14, 2015 I saw a 1999 RF-246 listed on the group site and requested more info. The seller sent me some pictures that I shared with my wife. The owner had removed the convertible dinette and replaced it with a twin mattress, I remembered having seen that in some owners modification files and liked it. The boat came with 2 2012 60HP Yamaha 4 stroke outboards as well as a 2012 Shorelander trailer, some nice Gamin electronics and the cockpit hard cover. Overall practically everything I wanted at a fair price. After deciding we could actually swing the purchase we worked out the details with the seller and planned for our 1600 mile round trip in 3 days.

 

On Friday the 4th of September we took off from just outside of Columbus, Ohio heading for Middlebury, Vermont. We arrived at the Middlebury Inn about 12 hours later, the last 150 miles or so driving mostly small state and county roads in the dark.  The next day we met up with the seller and he went over the boat with us, we then went to the local credit union to get the bills of  sale notarized before the banks closed. He then showed us around this lovely little town and showed us the Inn

that was used in the Newhart show for the exterior shots .

 We then went back to his house and he hooked up "Cloud Nine" and we followed him to the Ft. Ticonderoga ramp on Lake Champlain. We did a short sea trial and became the proud new owners of the 1999 Rosborough RF-246 Cloud Nine. He said that the previous owners had named the boat, I told him that we liked the name and had no intention of changing it.

 From there we headed towards Syracuse, about 200 miles towing an 8000 pound plus boat and trailer taking the scenic route through the Adirondacks for the first time. The white knuckles calmed down after awhile and we spent the night in a Hotel outside of Syracuse. The next day we headed home and hoped to put Cloud Nine back in the water in Senecaville Lake outside of Cambridge, Ohio. But after 500 miles we didn't have the energy to deal with Labor day weekend  ramp traffic, so we continued home. Three days and 1600 miles later we were back home with our new to us trailerable trawler.

On Labor Day my best friend came over and we hauled "Cloud Nine" back out to Senecaville Lake to put her back in the water for the last few weeks of the season.

 

   Only got spend a couple of days and one night on board for this season. I got to try out the inner spring mattress bed that the previous owner installed and it was quite comfortable. The only issue I have with it, is how difficult it makes getting to the storage underneath it.

We purchased a 6 inch memory foam mattress that I might try there to see how it compares comfort wise and access wise.

Nothing like a good breakfast to start your day out right, the propane stove is awesome for when we aren't at the dock. We are now anxiously waiting for spring. We are hoping to get a slip on the Ohio river for the 2016 season.