Sunday September 12, 2021.
Temp: 84/66, Humidity: 54/90%, Top Wind: SW7 mph, Precip: None- hazy & sunny, Miles Traveled: 45, Number of locks: 1 with about a 50’ lift (Goin UP now)
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I’ve never lived someplace where the bugs pop out of the water over night and take over the world. But it happens! Would you look at this?! Mayflies! Bug-pocolypse. The Entomological Society says mayflies live most of their lives on the water bottom living on algae and decomposing matter. They finally get wings, fly out of the water, molt one last time, mate, lay eggs, and die in a matter of days. It’s called a Mayfly bloom. Not pretty.
UGH! I put on a jacket with a hood, and went out to try to shoo them out of the fly bridge. THANKFULLY, even though all the windows were open, there really wasn’t a whole pile of them IN the bridge. Eeeww – gives a whole new meaning to the term “FLYBRIDGE”! Most of them were still alive, so I tried to disturb them to get them to fly away. Yea – that didn’t work. They flew and then landed again. I closed all the windows except for the drivers one, and then I got out the battery powered leaf blower, which we purchased and brought along for such a time as this. I tried to at least get them off the bridge and then closed the canvas door at the ladder to try to keep them out. Kenny got out the water hose and tried spraying down the boat to get rid of them. The thing was, most of the cooties were on the water side of the boat, not the dock side. But he did get the back sprayed down and reduced the mob some. There was a little fishing boat with a couple of guys tootling around the marina casting for fish. We talked to them a bit as we were fighting our battle. They said that the mayfly bloom is good for them, because it brings the fish up to feed. They were trying to catch skipjack, which then they use as bait to catch big catfish. 🤷♀️. This is what the mayflies look like …. a picture from the interweb. We had thousands of them. Literally.
I suggested that we just get out of here, and then Kenny said we could hook up the weiner dog hose and spray down more as we went along. Deal! So we unplugged, untied, and moved out. We were hoping there would be fewer bugs away from the dock. That’s not necessarily how these bugs work, but it was a hope!
I sprayed and sprayed bugs everywhere I could reach from the security of the flybridge or cockpit. The problem is, they are water bugs, so unless you really blast them, they don’t care about the water. And it seems that they can hold on in a hurricane, so wind doesn’t blow them off either. Grrrr! I got what I could then I drove for awhile, and Kenny took the hose up the sides and onto the bow to spray more off. We had a huge pile of dead bugs at the strainers in the cockpit. They didn’t seem to be increasing too much as we motored along, so I think we got away from most of the bloom. 🪰. What a morning how-do-you-do!
This was interestsing…. a little boat came zooming up and pulled over to this tow. Then he peeled out and went to another one up ahead on the river. I don’t know what that was all about. 🤷♀️. Pony Express?
We didn’t go far before we turned off of the Ohio River and onto the Cumberland River. Surprisingly, the current against us was stronger here and we were only going about 7mph today. It’s a pretty river to travel. And the water is much cleaner than the big rivers. If we stay on this river long enough, we’ll get to Nashville Tennessee.
We saw these markers on a bridge…. showing that the water level is really low!
We finally arrived at the Barkley Lock at 1:30. Unfortunately, there was a tow that had half of his barges already in the lock when we arrived. We had to wait for that load to go up and somehow get pulled out at the top, then wait for them to drain the lock, the tow and more barges went in, got locked up, got re-hooked up to the entire load, and then moved the whole load out of the way. The split loads take a long time, and this lock is about a 50’ lift, so it’s a lot of water that needs to be moved! There was no place for us to tie up and wait, so we just floated around.
Fortunately there was no water coming over the spillway of the dam (like this screen shot from google shows), so we were able to find a bit of an eddy in a spot around the lock wall and sit still for awhile. There was current on the edges, but not much in the middle. We had to wait so long that our buddies from Paducah that were more than an hour behind us caught up and even had to wait.
But it wasn’t terrible. The Seahawks were playing the Indianapolis Colts, which is kind of the local team here in Kentucky, so the game was televised on the Yahoo Sports App. We pulled that up on Kenny’s phone and watched the second half of the game while we floated around. (Hawks won!) It was pretty warm but there was enough touch of a breeze that we weren’t frying.
When the water was drained out of the lock, it flowed out into this corner. (You can see the top of the lock gates on the other side of the wall). As the turbulence flowed, the crazy asian carp went bonkers! I videoed them a bit, and the fish were jumping like crazy! We didn’t want to get too close, or they’d be jumping into our boat! Those big fish can catch some air!! We had one jump into our boat in 2018, so they can really fly! They don’t look big in this picture, but they are about 20” long. They’ve been swimming and flopping all around us.
Finally at 3:15, it was our turn. YAY!!! We followed a go-fast boat that had passed us on the river about a half hour before we even got here, so he’s been waiting a long time.
Here’s Dream Weaver. It gives you an idea of how high the lock walls are, how high we’ll be lifted, and then actually, how low the water level is because of how much of the lock wall is NOT wet. The water marks on the wall are lower than normal.
This is little Legacy as the giant doors close behind them.
Our lift went up pretty fast. In other locks, the floating bollard goes up, stops, then goes up again, and stops. In this one it was a constant slow smooth slide up. When the go-fast boat saw that we had reached the top of the waterline, he dropped his lines and started his go-fast loud engine. But maybe he didn’t listen to the lockmaster on the radio. The lock master had been talking with a tow at the top of the lock that was waiting to go down. That tow needed to wait for the upbound tow to get out of the way, then he needed to move into position and get secured, and then wait because there were four PC’s (us) coming up that needed to get around him. So we sat at the top of the lock with the doors closed for quite awhile waiting. The go-fast boat finally realized the gates weren’t opening, so he had to get a line back on and turn off his growling engine. Finally, we were set free.
And just about a mile above the lock, we arrived at Green Turtle Bay Resort & Marina. This is a great place to hang out for awhile. There is a yard where you can get all kinds of work done. A really good marina store with all kinds of parts. Two outdoor and one indoor pool. A loaner car to borrow for two hours at a time to go shopping. A spa where you can get a massage (YES!). Three restaurants, and more in the small nearby town of Grand Rivers. And they are an AGLCA sponsor, so they love loopers. It’s a great stop to rest and relax after running the big rivers. It is set on the Kentucky Lakes which is a great cruising ground with state parks, anchorages, and so on. We’re planning to go to Nashville from here in a few days. Here’s our Girl parked on Looper Lane.
Oh this was neat. Karrie on Wayward Travelers had posted pictures of boats passing them on the Ohio. We originally met them in the Dismal Swamp back in April, then ran across them again in Paducah. They left a day before us and anchored on the Ohio. This is us passing their anchor spot. Isn’t she a pretty Girl?
We are currently planning to be here at Green Turtle for four nights. It’ll be nice to sit for a bit where we have some great amenities. ☺️. Boat work, massages, shopping, pool, other loopers, …. all good stuff.