June 20, 2007

June 20, 2007 – Yesterday was a long day as the weather was good and we left at six fifteen in the morning for a goal of Barkley Lake and the preferred marina which was just a mile or less from the dam. We knew it would be a busy day as three locks were involved; two on the Ohio and the one at Barkley Dam. The first one on the Ohio that we came to was open as all the wickets which hold back the water were down. This happens when water levels are low and the difference between upper and lower sections of the river is practically nil. The second one on the Ohio was much different we had a two and a half hour wait to be locked up in the auxiliary chamber because of the number of tows which were waiting in line and commercial has priority over pleasure in the lock systems on the rivers. The weather was again fantastic and when the day ended at ten o’clock in the evening we were extremely tired and ready for the sack. The first part of the day was on the Mississippi with its magnificent bluffs and the way they show up when least expected. The river was very wide as we went further and further downstream from Hoppies Fuel dock where had stayed the night and filled our tanks with fuel for the long day ahead. There is only one place like Hoppies and it is a must stop on the trip. The advice received there only served to make the trip more enjoyable. We were going to be going through two sections of the river where the US Army Corps of Engineers had been doing some work to help control the river flow but it did not work and created to sections where there were now some pretty extreme whirlpools of water which if you do not have enough speed can suck you in and then spin you around and it does this with not only boats but also can break up tows and there barges. People have seen telephone poles spinning around as well as dead animals and such. Not a very pretty picture but with Shorty we had the power to go right through them with no consequences and I did even realize I was past until Bob said we had passed the first one. After finishing the Mississippi we approached the mouth of the Ohio River at Towhead Point where we made the turn to go upriver to the Cumberland Rivers mouth. The Ohio River was very broad and had some narrow channels due to shoaling with low water levels. The channel was not very clear and at one point I came close to putting Shorty on a sand shoal but Bob spotted it first and I had to slow up and feel my way out of it using the depth finder readings and looking at the different shades of water. That is why it is difficult for one person to do the trip. There are too many things to be on top of at one time including lots of debris in both the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. Up a short ways and we came to the mouth of the Cumberland River which was very different as it was much narrower and deeper than the other two and had hardly any debris floating in it. The Cumberland River is a very pretty river with wooded steep sides lots of trees and other foliage growing along the shore. The other rivers were full of buoys to guide you whereas the Cumberland is more of stick to the middle of the deep channel. We ran across what we believed to be a lead mining operation right at sunset on the river and we wondered how much of the lead was leaching into the river from that operation. We finally entered the lock at Barkley Dam at twilight and when we came out on the lake it was dark and using the chartplotter we felt our way for a mile to the entrance to Green Turtle Bay where we tied up late without registering until morning. We took some photos but I am afraid they won’t do justice to the beautiful bluffs along the Mississippi and the flat agricultural land along the Ohio and also the many beautiful wooded islands and the large sand beaches all along the way. One of the sand beaches looked to be better than a mile long and totally deserted and the countryside along the rivers was very scarcely populated all day with the exception of the little towns and all the houses were built on either high stilts or a good way up the hillside to defeat all of the flooding which occurs every year along those rivers.

The boat last night was a total mess as we had a bug attack after we left the lock at Barkley dam and got to the marina. The inside of the boat and outside was chock full of mayflies which had just hatched and I sprayed them with bug spray and now will have to mop the floor with a scrubber and wish I had a vacuum to get them out of everywhere else. The cockpit of the boat was full of them despite the screens because to dock we had to put up a section of the screen and in they came.