Starting the long trip North

Tuesday, October 14

We took today off. We took a relaxing day at GTB to mental prepare for the long trip up the Mississippi. When we leave here it will take us between six and nine days to get to St Charles. We will be at anchor each night accept for one night at Hoppies (see the May entry for description of Hoppies). The trip is; thru the Barkley lock and 32 miles down the Cumberland, 69 miles down the Ohio with two locks, then 185 miles up the Mississippi against strong current to the first lock on the Mississippi and finally two locks and 37 miles to St Charles.

The tough points are the two locks on the Ohio, they are the busiest locks on all of the rivers and the wait can be lengthy and then the 185 miles of the Mississippi from Cairo, IL to St Louis. The estimate I am getting from boats that came the other direction in the last week is the current is between 3.5 and 5+ mph. Since we like to cruise at 8 and our top speed is less than 12 it is going to be a long 185 miles.

The last couple of days coming in here the Coast Guard morning broadcast have been advising of a grounded 61 foot Hatteras just ten miles up the Cumberland from GTB. Yesterday I was standing on the dock talking to a couple of the marina people plus the Captain of the Local TowBoat US operation. When the employees left, Capt Gordon said he thought he would take a run out to look at the Hatteras.

I ask if I could go along and he said sure. It was a beautiful afternoon for a boat ride and an interesting hour of conversation with a very interesting guy. He grew up in Hawaii, has lived across the country and has thousands of hours in boats of all type (sailed Hawaii to Tahiti race 17 times). He has also worked at and owned TowBoat US operation around the country. The Hatteras was not a pretty site. It is lying on its side, listing about 30 degrees and the port shaft, half the prop and the stabilizer are out of the water. Capt Gordon says in Florida he could use prop wash from a tow boat to wash sand out from under and in a couple days refloat it. Here because the bottom is clay and rock it will take a barge with a crane to move it off.

This will be the last entry in the blog for a while. There will be no internet access until we get to St. Charles, then we will be busy preparing the boat for the winter and packing to go home. I will do a long summary of the summer when we get back to White Bear Lake.