Wednesday August 9, 2017
And away we go
That is until as soon as we backed away from the slip at Green
Turtle Bay a tow sipped by the entrance of the marina headed for Barkley Dam a
mile or so away. So much for a quick
getaway – an hour delay while we waited our turn. Then it was thirty two miles of boring narrow
Cumberland River until we entered the broad Ohio. We enjoyed 1.5-20 MPH favorable current all
day on both rivers.
We were bowling along in fine style as we approached Dam 52 where
thanks to our new AIS transponder, the lock operator called to inform us that
the dam wickets were up and that we’d be required to lock through. It was two hours of doing donuts until we
were called to enter the lock for the 10-foot drop.
The lock tender told us to come in and moor port side to which
meant we had to rearrange all our lines and fenders on the run. We got in and were just finishing tying up to
the single bollard we could find near us (and it was not the floating type we
have been used to for some fifteen locks), when Mary told me the lock attendant
on the opposite lock wall was yelling something. It turned out he wanted s to moor on the
STARBOARD side on that wall. I told him
we had moored in accordance with the radioed instructions, but he said they had
not consulted him and that we were in a dangerous spot. So we backed up and again changed sides of
our lines and fenders. There was a
worker repainting the yellow border along the curved edge of the lock wall well
down the way from us, but the new paint where our mooring lies went across the
wall was NOT yet dry, and it is now on our lines and hands. Worst locking we have ever had.
Finally, we arrived at the Olmstead Lock and Dam currently under
construction. The lock is not yet in use
which means that vessels sail through the lock.
Tows had to have an assist tug to escort them, and we were initially
asked to follow astern of a tow which was being escorted. As we were in the process of positioning the
boat to do that, new instructions arrived to just go ahead and sail through
alone.
After passage of the Olmstead Dam, we ran down the river about one
mile to anchor in the last known decent anchorage before the junction with the
Mississippi River now a mere 13 miles away.
We are between a pair of giant barge mooring cylinders and the nearby
shoreline in about 9 feet of water. Our
first attempt at setting the Supermax resulted in failure as I could hear it
dragging across the gravel and mud bottom.
After retrieving it and resetting the shank from the loose mud position
to the mid-position, we had success.
The AIS transponder has been an asset and fun to play with today. There were so many tows about today all with
collision potential sounding the AIS alarm on the plotter due to the closeness
of our passages in the narrow channel that I had to turn the alarm off.
The generator started up without fuss and is now cooling us off
after a warm muggy day with following winds -
our norm it seems.
