Friday September 24, 2021.
Temp: 75/46, Humidity: 39/100%, Top Wind: SW6 mph, Precip: Fog 🌫, but no rain, Miles Traveled: 64 in under six hours, number of locks: 1, about 23’ drop
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Indeed, the river is runing faster, which is great for our fuel economy!!
We were rudely awakened at 6:30 by my obnoxious alarm that said it was time to go. Booo. So up and atum, make some coffee, then head upstairs to prepare for departure. I swabbed down all the windows, and opened the drivers side. I went back down to get some things for the travel day – like Gladys and my blankie! I came back up, and my window was flogged up again! I guess we were at dew point, plus I was seeing a little bit of fog steaming from the river.
The outside temperature was only 50*. HA! I just noticed the “Forecast” side of the display…. rain, snow, and lightning? I don’t think so!! At least I hope not!! 😲. I figure the air was colder than the river, in addition to 95% humidity, which combined together made some steam/fog.
The golden morning light on the city was just beautiful, with the nearly full moon watching over.
We pulled our lines and carefully nudged the bow out first. The current caught it (as planned) and we were headed down river in no time. Thanks for a fun time, Nashville! I bet the nice quiet dock will have a completely different story to tell by Sunday after the Titans game.
I remembered this bridge from when we came into Nashville on Tuesday. I snapped a picture of the same water level marker to compare to the one I took on Tuesday. We were very surprised to see that it is really not much different! So the water level is not much higher, but the current is a lot faster as more water is pushing and trying to get down stream. Today it shows the water in the middle of the “65”….
This was on Tuesday, and it’s barely lower. Weird! 🤷♀️
The scenery was so much more enjoyable and beautiful today, compared to our rainy trip upstream on Tuesday. It was chilly this morning, but we kind of enjoyed the refreshing atmosphere. We had our jackets on and I had a blankie, but it wasn’t COLD 🥶 COLD, just chilly.
UH OH! The river around Nashville is very bendy and curvy. As we came around one of several bends, there was a big fog bank down on the water. Isn’t that kind of strange how it’s just a big blob right there and clear where we are? Captain checked the AIS and didn’t see anybody moving ahead, so that was good. I guess we keep on going!
So into the fog we went. There was a manufacturing facility on the left bank of the river that was spewing out steam, so we’re pretty sure that was the culprit for all of this that settled on the water. We slowed down and coasted through at idle speed…. which was nearly 9mph!! A few times the fog got so thick that we could barely see the trees on the banks. At least it wasn’t as bad as when we were on the Ohio River!! At one point I heard a rumble, and didn’t know if it was a tow, a train, a plane, or what. 😳We kept our eyes peeled, and finally saw some lights then a facility on the left that was loading something into a barge. Whew! It wasn’t moving!
We had a few more places where the fog got really thick, so we just went slow, watched the water and the instruments closely. We were pleasantly surprised that there was hardly any debris on the river. Thank goodness we didn’t have to dodge a bunch of logs along with navigating through the fog.
And then….. check this out! Ta-Da! CLEAR BLUE SKY, and a full moon. YAY! Once we got out of the industrial curves of Nashville, everything cleared up and we had a gorgeous day!
The river looked so calm most of the time and sometimes it looked like a lake. But we had at least a 3mph current in our favor all day. We were cruising along at just over 1200 rpm and going nearly 12mph. Without current, it would be 9mph at 1300 rpm.
It was 42 miles and less than four hours, and we arrived at the Cheatham Lock. We called the lock and had to float a bit while the lock was filled and prepared for us to go down. I’m glad we didn’t have to do that for very long because the current was really strong. The lock is on the right, and the bridge looking structure is actually the spillway for the dam.
As we went into the lock, the spillway sounded like the Niagara Falls! Look at all of this water!!! When we came up on Tuesday, there was no water going over the spillway! It’s amazing how things can change in such a short time. I’m also amazed at how intricate the management of all these dams and rivers are, all the way from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico. The water levels are managed all along the way to try to prevent catastrophic flooding. Nature doesn’t always do what man predicts, so sometimes flooding happens anyway. But we try.
The trip down 23’ or so was calm and uneventful. When the lock gates opened, we made our way out into the churning turbulent waters. This is Captain talking to the lock master and thanking him for the ride down. Check out the water around us! It was really moving, and we were catching nearly 5mph for a bit!! The lockmaster told us there was a tow upbound not too far away. Sure enough, the tow called us by name (we LOVE having AIS so they can see us and call us!) to let us know that he was coming around a bend and for us to stay on the two whistle so that he could take the inside corner. He was very nice and wished us safe travels.
Ahhh – farther down the river, things calmed down. It was about 22 miles from the lock to Clarksville, and the scenery was so nice.
We arrived in Clarksville just after 1:00. As we were approaching, another tow called us to let us know he was coming around a bend. Kenny let him know where we were headed and that we’d be out of his way. Another point in favor of the AIS!
On this map, see all those squiggles at the bottom? That’s Nashville. The green line is where we “idled” through the fog. And yes, we are now moving northwest and will continue in this direction for a couple of days before we can turn and go south.
When we arrived at the marina, we couldn’t get anybody on the radio. Finally, we were floating around right in front of the fuel dock and I called on the phone. HA! That surprised the guy to hear that we were looking in his window at him! Anyway, he had us go in into the same slip that we were in a few days ago. When we went in to register, he thought we only wanted one day, and I told him that I reserved two nights when I called yesterday. They didn’t write it down, and didn’t have space for us to stay two. Really?! Oh well. I guess I could have thrown a fit about it, but it’s really not a huge deal, so we’ll move along tomorrow. We were going to stay two days just because we haven’t explored Clarksville. However, upon investigation, it looks like kind of a hard place to get to town on the bikes from here anyway. So we’ll head out to Lake Barkley tomorrow for a long 72-ish mile day. At least it’ll be another beautiful day!!
While we were sitting around this afternoon, I was looking at our next week or so of stops. I realized that there will be no grocery stores ANYWHERE for awhile, and maybe not even eating establishments. Uh Oh! I took inventory and realized we’re really low on bread, milk, and protein, as well as fresh produce. Well – can’t do much about the produce, and there is no grocery store anywhere close to here, but I strapped on my backpack and walked over to the Dollar Tree and Big Lots to see what they had. I was surprised to find bread, english muffins, a gallon of milk, some frozen cod steaks, as well as a few other things to go with stuff I already have on board. We’re still low on fresh produce, so our fruits & veggies section of our plates will be suffering a bit, but we won’t go hungry. 😏 We’ve both gained so much weight since March, that a diet of snack food is the last thing we need!! Oh well.