Haulin' on Old Hickory Lake

VFW Post 9851 and the Music City Powerboat Association (MCPA) held their 4th annual Haulin' on Old Hickory Poker Run on 2 August. The MCPA donates part of the proceeds from the event to the Relief Fund at the Post. As a member of the VFW Post, I joined several other Post and MCPA members on a lunch run to downtown Nashville on Friday, 1 August. The Post members road on a 31 foot pontoon boat with a 350 HP motor (note my pontoon has 40HP). I road on the upper level and had a great view of the Cumberland River. To get to downtown Nashville we had to go down the Cumberland River and through the lock at Old Hickory Dam. The upper left picture shows some of the MCPA boats getting ready to enter the lock. A large number of these boats are over 30 feet long, have 2 huge engines (454 cubic inches each) and go close to 100 MPH. The upper right picture shows the approach to the lock at the dam. The lower left picture shows the lock doors opening. Once in the lock , the doors were closed, and we were lowered 60 ft. The dock door opened and out we roared. The pontoon boat was doing 30MPH and we were rocked by the wakes from the MCPA boats as they passed us doing 50 to 70 MPH on the river. It was a grand 25 mile trip to Nashville and the lower right picture shows our approach to downtown. We tied up at the end of Broadway Street and about 50 of us went to lunch at Joe's Crab Shack. After lunch we headed back to Old Hickory Lake

When we got back to our host, Anchor High Marina and Grill, I was able to get a ride on a boat owned by Tim Baldwin. Tim is the President of MCPA and also a member of the Post. We roared up and down the lake at over 70 MPH. That is at least twice as fast as I have ever gone on the water.

On Saturday was the Poker Run. About 40 of these high speed powerboats registered for the run. The boats had to stop a 5 locations and pick up a sealed envelope with a card inside. It was 36 miles from the start to the furthermost point and then back, so they probably ran for about 10o miles. I was stationed at Cherokee Marina and was tasked with handing out the cards as each boat passed my station. I had a long pole with a heavy duty clamp on the end. I extended the pole out so some one on the boat could grab the card. I got a close up view of all the boats as they came in for their cards.

A big banquet was held Saturday night at the VFW Post and a great time was had by all. The poker hand was won with 4 kings which was worth $500. All I got was a T-shirt and free meal.