Staying at Pickwick while your boat is out of the water

Eight minutes from Safe Harbor Aqua Yacht. A whole house, not a motel room — for the part of the Loop nobody plans for.

If you are coming down the Tennessee toward the Tenn-Tom, Pickwick is where a lot of Loopers stop moving for a while. Sometimes on purpose.

You cannot really live aboard when the boat is on the hard. Up a ladder, no water, no head, and the yard starts early whether you slept or not. Most people find that out the first morning.

This is a three-bedroom house on a wooded acre in Counce, eight minutes from Safe Harbor Aqua Yacht and eleven from Grand Harbor. Full kitchen, screened porch, and a deck. It sleeps eight, which is more room than most crews need — and after a season aboard, that is the point.

People book it for four reasons:

• The boat is in the yard. Bottom paint, running gear, a survey, a repair that turned into three. You need a bed and a kitchen within a few minutes of the boat, for longer than you planned.
• Crew is changing over. Someone flies in, someone flies out, and for a couple of days there are more people than berths.
• You are waiting — on weather, on a part, on a lock, on the yard.
• Family is joining you for a leg, and they would like a real shower and a room with a door before they get on the boat.

Two things worth more here than they would be anywhere else. There is a washer and dryer — after a season aboard, that may be the most useful thing in the house. And you can have parts shipped here. Anyone who has tried to get a package delivered to a marina knows why that is on the list.

There is a full kitchen, which after months of cooking in a galley underway is not a small thing. It is quiet — a wooded acre, not a resort strip. And it is close enough that you can be at the boat in the morning without planning your day around getting there.

Who you are renting from

I am not a management company. My name is Jesse — I am a pilot, and I am buying a boat to do the Loop myself, which is how I know what the yard-time problem feels like before I have had it.

I also built Can I Loop?, a free tool that checks whether a specific boat clears the Loop's hard limits — air draft, water draft, length. I mention it because I would rather tell you I own both than have you find out on your own.

If something about the house does not work for how you are actually traveling, email me and ask. I answer my own email.

Practical

• Safe Harbor Aqua Yacht Marina — 8 minutes
• Grand Harbor Marina — 11 minutes
• TWRA boat ramp — 7 minutes
• 3 bedrooms · 2 baths · sleeps 8 · full kitchen · screened porch · deck · free Wi-Fi
• Private wooded acre in Counce, Tennessee
• Washer / Dryer
• Pet Friendly (with approval)