9/25/18 Tuesday: Today would be either a 20 mile day if we take the Tennessee River (the red route), or a 45 mile day if we take the Cumberland River (the blue route). Why would we choose to go farther? Because generally, it takes less time. What?! Our destination is Green Turtle Bay Resort & Marina. To get there via the Tennessee River, we need to go through the Kentucky Lock & Dam, which is very commercial, and notorious for delays. To get there via the Cumberland River, we need to go through the Barkley Lock & Dam, which is more pleasure craft friendly and generally has few in the queue. However, Barkley has been ‘broken down’ a couple of times in the last week, where boaters had to tie up and eventually go through the lock in the dark. YIKES!
I looked at the lock queue for the Kentucky dam last night, and there were five big 15-barge tows queued up. They can take 3-4 hours each because they have to be broken apart and double lifted. The Barkley lock had nobody. I checked again this morning, and there are still 3 big doubles at the Kentucky lock. Alan called the Barkley lock, and it is operational with no wait time currently. Alrighty then! It’s still more than four hours away, but we will take the long mileage way, which will be shorter time wise. So away we go, along with SeaJamm, at about 9:00 am.
Good-bye to you, oh walled city of Paducah. Perhaps we’ll be back for some BBQ in a few days!
The Tennessee river cuts off right here at Paducah, so that is why we needed to have a plan before we left the dock.
This was a big dredger or something. We had about 12 miles of the Ohio to travel taking our chosen route, so we had several tows that we had to maneuver around.
If we kept going up the Ohio, we could end up in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania! Just beyond the place where we needed to turn off the Ohio to go to the Cumberland, there was another big dam and lock. We aren’t going that way.
We turned right here, to find our way to the Cumberland River. We thought we’d lose some of the head-on current, but it actually got about 1 mph worse as we were now fighting the confluence of both rivers. We slowed down to about 6.5 mph!
Once we got onto the Cumberland, it settled down to only about a 1.5 mph current to our bow. The scenery was nice, a narrower & slower river, with very little traffic, and we caught glimpses of a change in the seasons a’coming. Everything was still pretty green, with some yellow, but once in awhile we’d see some orange.
There is a benefit of traveling with other boats, because you get a little more attention at the locks, and you have other eyeballs on the river spotting logs and other concerns. The detriment is that you can only go as fast as the slowest boat if you want to stay together for any reason. Our caboose boat got stuck behind a tow for a little while, so we all had to slow down to about 6 mph for over an hour to give him a chance to catch up. The lock wanted us all together. It was a very sloowwww dawdle up the river! But he caught up, just about a half mile before the lock, so all was good.
As soon as we got through the lock, the entrance to the marina was within a half mile. We all piled into the marina and got into our slips. Imagine our surprise when we docked right next to our dear ole friends on Coconuts! We haven’t seen Bru and Sandy for months! We had other familiar faces welcome as too – Herb from Phanthom, and Rick & Lynda from Recess. It’s great to pull into a marina and see family!
SeaJamm was only staying two nights, and was assigned a slip over on pier 6, which is covered moorage primarily for long term locals. We wandered over to see them later in the evening. Their dock was very fun! The locals have lights, bbqs, picnic tables, space heaters, and all kinds of homey decorations for hanging out together on the docks. We chatted with a few, and they were all very nice.
On our walk back to our dock, we saw five does scampering along the shore. This is a big Resort & marina. I think it will be nice to chill out here for awhile!
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9/26 Wednesday: It was rainy all day, so there wasn’t much activity around these parts! I did a bunch of planning for our road trip to Nashville. We have a rental car reserved for Saturday 9/29 – Saturday 10/6. We plan to drive to Nashville for a few days, go do some touring around, and probably continue our voyage out of this marina on 10/6. So I had airbnb and hotel reservations to make, along with some kind of itinerary planning so that we’d have a clue of where we should go and what we should see while we’re on land.
Kenny worked on my wiener-dog hose. He pulled out the water pump motor, and it was froze up. Probably salt water intrusion was his guess. He got it to work again, so put it back in, and I cleaned off the mud pile on the anchor pulpit. Then he worked on the fuel lines for Laverne (the port engine). She still does NOT like to start when she’s cold, and seems to be getting more temperamental about it. So he pulled out the fuel pick-up and did all kinds of inspections. He noticed that a nipple connector thing had pink teflon tape on it, so it has been pulled before. Then he dropped it, and he couldn’t find it anywhere. After about an hour, he was getting ready to go up to the Ship Store to see if they had one. I didn’t want him to think that I thought he didn’t look hard enough, but sometimes 4 eyeballs are better than 2. So I grabbed the flashlight and started looking. As I looked, he described that he heard it hit the rubber exhaust hose before he heard it hit the hull bottom. So I expanded the search, and found something about four feet away from where he was looking. I asked him what it was. That was it! He was astounded that it had traveled that far when it bounced. I guess I retain my title of “finder of all lost things”. That was a relief, since Laverne was useless without it. Whew!
Finally, around cocktail time, we heard Bru from Coconuts call us over for a ‘Sidecar’. What in the world is a ‘sidecar’? Bru said – just come have one! He finally told me that it was cognac, grand marnier, simple syrup, and lemon juice, shaken. Ewww…. cognac? Really? OK – we’ll come over and try one. Eddy and Linda from Spiritus were there too. Sure enough, a sidecar was kinda tasty! I had two. Who knew you could dress up cognac to taste good?
Here is Bru the bartender. They are such fun people! They are leaving tomorrow, darn! We really enjoy them!
After cocktails, Kenny & I were headed to the Thirsty Turtle to find some dinner. And so were some friends, so we all joined together at a table had had a wonderful evening!
Here is Herb, Sherry & Alan, and then new acquaintances, Sonny and Phylis from Corkscrew. (A different Corkscrew than our other friends Bob & Linda.). Alan & Sherry met them two years ago when they first started their loop. We had a fun evening with some really good pizza. Sherry & Alan are taking SeaJamm down the river tomorrow, so we sadly had to say ‘adios’ to them as well.
We all caught a ride back to the boats on the stretch limo golf cart shuttle. This Green Turtle Bay Resort is pretty cool. There are condos, restaurants, a spa, a ship store, a pool, and lots of docks. We’re enjoying just relaxing here and visiting with lots of friends. It is a place that virtually every looper stops, because of its location. Each day we bid adieu to a few, and welcome some new.
