Search for the Lost 1800s Cabin | Sailing Adventure!

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00][music] [music] >> Everyone moves away >> [music] >> these [singing] days.

[00:00:26]Got to [music] keep moving on.

[00:00:33]Running [music] from the dawn.

[00:00:37]>> [music] >> There's no shame in the life of a tree.

[00:00:42]Rooted firmly, [singing] growing free.

[00:00:46]Part of ages [music] when we'll stop under shelter of the oak.

[00:00:53]>> [music] >> You're watching Cumberland Rover. My name is Nick, coming to you with another adventure on the Cumberland River today.

[00:01:05]Got the 12-ft skiff and we are headed out downwind, down the bay in search of an 1800s cabin.

[00:01:14]Now, I have been to the cabin before and it's really pretty neat, but that was many years ago and I don't remember exactly where it's located. I have a general idea, but we've got a little bit of a search on our hands. So, let's get underway.

[00:01:34]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> With a stout breeze out of the west, my skiff is moving right along on broad reach. For this adventure, I'm running the big 54-sq-ft lug sail instead of the usual 31-sq-ft lug sail.

[00:02:48]Because winds are stronger than anticipated, I've got the sail reefed, which just means part of the sail is furled around the boom to reduce power.

[00:02:59]But even with the reef, we're charging ahead nicely and that's good because it's at least a couple miles to the cove where I think the cabin is located.

[00:03:11]The first waypoint is the point that divides the bay into north and south forks. We're bound for the north fork where I'll begin my search for the cove.

[00:03:33]Nearing the point and the north fork of the bay, I get the daggerboard down and head upwind. We are now close-reaching, one of the perks of this larger, more triangular sail. It sails upwind a lot better than my little 31-sq-ft lugger.

[00:04:03]The wind is more sporadic on this fork of the bay with big gusts and then lulls, but I do my best to keep the boat moving upwind.

[00:04:14]I know the cabin is located somewhere near a small cove on the far shore of this fork, off towards the right side of the boat.

[00:04:23]The problem is it's hard to pick out terrain features from this distance.

[00:04:29]Everything just looks like one big green blob of trees until you get close.

[00:04:36]I'm hoping something will look familiar to me as I near the eastern shore.

[00:05:00]I am in the right fork of the bay. I'm pretty sure of that much.

[00:05:05]Now, it's just a matter of figuring out which cove the cabin is in. There's several little coves up ahead and I'm not sure which one it is. So, we're just going to have to poke around and find out.

[00:05:47]Sailing as close to the wind as I can, I come up just short of making the first cove. There's no option but to drop the sail and row.

[00:05:58]Might as well begin the search on shore from right here.

[00:06:03]And actually, I've got a good feeling about this spot.

[00:06:07]It turned out there weren't nearly as many coves to choose from as I had remembered. So, unless I'm way off, this should be Lost Cabin Cove.

[00:06:30]>> [music] [music] [music] >> All right, I think this is the place, [music] but like I said, it has been years and years since I found this old cabin. I say probably 1800s cabin from what I remember, maybe late 1800s, early 20th century, but old and still standing.

[00:07:15]From what I remember, you could have slept in it if you want.

[00:07:19]You could have, you know, laid down a camping mattress and stayed the night, although uh the structural integrity of the thing was maybe a little bit questionable. But anyways, I originally found this place back when I was exploring out of my grandpa's old 1973 Boston Whaler 13 Sport, kind of like a fishing boat yacht tender hybrid, cool old boat. I still have it, actually.

[00:07:51]But from what I remember, I beached the boat in a cove. And I think this is the cove and walked up on the ridge, walked out on the point towards the water, and there was the cabin among pretty thick brush from what I remember.

[00:08:08]So, I think this is the place, but I'm not sure because it was so long ago.

[00:08:13]We're going to go up the ridge now and have a look around. See what we can find.

[00:08:48]We got some sort of landscaping type of plant right here.

[00:08:54]Kind of looks like daffodil grass, but I don't think it's that. It's a little too big, but maybe the leaves of some kind of flower. So, that cabin may be right around here. That's usually kind of a giveaway whenever you find non-native plants like, you know, landscaping flower bed type of plants that people would plant near their home.

[00:09:23]>> [music] [music] >> Okay, I'm pretty sure this is it. As I came up on the cabin here, a huge buzzard, uh [music] turkey vulture, just poked its head up out of the top of the roof and flew away out of the canopy of the forest. But, we have found it.

[00:09:52]I wish it was in better shape as it was last time, but this is it.

[00:10:03]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Well, that's a little disappointing that it's mostly fallen in, but it kind of makes [music] sense considering it looked pretty delicate when I originally found it all those years ago, but luckily I've walked around [music] to the other side and one wall is still partially standing. So, at least you can get a look at the timbers and kind of see how the thing was built.

[00:11:07]Now, I can't say exactly where this is located.

[00:11:11]Not that probably anyone really cares all that much about it but me anyways, but it is above the Cumberland River back in the hills and hollers and this has always been just kind of a rural community. It's always been woods with a few small farms here and there.

[00:11:30]Uh home to some very old-time American settlers up until the US government acquired it in the '60s and uh created Barkley Dam and Kentucky Dam and the lakes.

[00:11:45]And is now a big tract of woodlands that's open to the public. Back in the 1830s up until the early 1900s this area was a major center of iron ore mining and production refining.

[00:12:02]And not that far from here was a big iron furnace, charcoal-fired furnace.

[00:12:07]So, it's possible this could have something to do with the iron industry.

[00:12:11]It could have been home or a temporary home to some of those iron workers possibly.

[00:12:18]And I'm just estimating on the date.

[00:12:21]Um I don't really know how old it is of course, but uh it sure seems old. It seems like 1800s or early 1900s to me.

[00:12:31]It's definitely a little log cabin that someone lived in one time or another.

[00:12:49]This is a really small structure especially if it was a home. It's only maybe like 15 ft by 10 ft or maybe it's like 16 square, 16 on all sides, something like that.

[00:13:04]And I I talked it over with one of my friends actually the guy who kind of tipped me off to the general location of this thing and we both think it it was a home rather than like a chicken coop or or some kind of farm outbuilding cuz you could easily think that based on its size and how it's built, but we've got this old barrel stove wood stove just a few feet away or a few yards away from the cabin. You know, to me that indicates someone lived here. This was a modest home way out here in the woods.

[00:13:52]Now, I address you from this spooky angle to introduce an alternate theory, the more sensational theory.

[00:13:59]Was this cabin actually a moonshiner's cabin?

[00:14:05]Play the banjo music.

[00:14:12]>> [music] >> This area was actually known for moonshining during prohibition and supposedly Al Capone or some of his henchmen were known to land a land a float plane on the rivers here and pick up loads of that white lightning.

[00:14:35]Yeah, I'm just going to go with the sensational version and call this a moonshiner's cabin. If I was smart, I'd put that in the title, too. People love that stuff. Some of this apparatus just outside the cabin like this big pile of rocks kind of looks like there's something a little weird going on like maybe it could have been involved in the running a still perhaps.

[00:15:01]Now, one thing I do know to look for to date a structure is look at the nails.

[00:15:07]And this cabin does have round nails, so that could date it quite a bit later actually. Find something with square nails, that's old.

[00:15:21]>> [music] [music] [music] [singing] [singing] [music] >> If you like the look of my home-built 12-ft skiff featured in this video, you may want to check out the plans on cumberlandrover.com.

[00:16:43]The PDF download includes 14 pages of detailed CAD drawings and more than 10 pages of written instructions. In addition to all the dimensions and angles you need to know to build the boat, the plans also feature an assembly guide, sail plan, and rigging diagram. I've even included detailed schematics for the rudder, daggerboard, and spars. The Crooked Creek Skiff is by far my most detailed set of plans so far and with that 14-page page count, you could almost call it an ebook. Anyone with basic knowledge of tools can build a Crooked Creek Skiff.

[00:17:26]You just need a little patience.

[00:17:29]Building a boat takes time, but in this case not a lot of money. My skiff can be built very affordably with common lumber and materials from your local hardware store. My view is that boat building is more fun the less complicated you can make it and my skiff is about as simple as it gets.

[00:17:51]You can download the full [music] plans linked in the description of this video.

[00:17:56]Thanks for your support and thanks for watching.