WAY TO GO OHIO!

TUESDAY, SEPT. 30 & WEDNESDAY, OCT 1 –

Sorry we have been delinquent in our posts.  I have been slacking!   We finally got off the Mississippi.  Wow, what a relief!  Upon entering the Ohio river, the color of the water totally changed.  Wish I had a picture from the confluence where one side is blue and one side is brown. I know some others were able to get that shot, will post later.  When we got to the Ohio it was a lot of chaos!  There was a wall of barges!  I could not even discern where the channel was.  There was a towboat  fleeting in the middle and he had both up and down towboats stopped.  We just skirted right around them and it felt good at that moment to be a little boat. 

Although we were going UP the Ohio, we really only had about 1-1/2 knots of current.  We were thankful and made good headway.  Lock & Dam 52 is a wicket dam and the wickets were down so we glided right by.  Nice to have one less lock to worry about.  Ended up anchoring just south of the new Olmstead L&D.  It is so new in fact, it is still under construction.  Was kind of interesting to see.    

During this leg of the trip, Miss Molly found a new lounging spot.  

The crew of Perfect Balance who had us over for decktails last night, had us all again for dinner.  What great hosts Jim and Mimi are!   The weather was still in the middle to high 80’s.  Can’t believe this stretch of weather.  We had not had rain one day since leaving Hammond.  We are however ready for the heat to go.  I know, be careful what you wish for!

Wednesday brings us to Lock & Dam 53.  Hurried up to get to the lock and had to drop the anchor and wait. It was kind of neat to sit in front of the dam if you had to sit anywhere.

That’s the story of life with these locks.  Sometimes you just don’t know how long you will have to sit.  Think it was about 1-1/2 hours this time.  We had a little episode while waiting there.  We have life vests that auto inflate and I had them sitting up underneath the dodger so we could put them on before we went into the lock.  I was down below in the galley and all of a sudden I heard what sounded like a small explosion!  Turns out it was one of our life vests that overheated and inflated.  

Wow, scared the stuff out of us!!!  We didn’t even know that was possible.  Went down to get another jacket before we got the call to enter the lock.  My heart was still beating really fast when we got the call to go.  There were 7 boats and they lined us up bow to stern all on the port side.  We knew it was kind of tight and should have complained.  We had a boat right in front of us and right behind us.  I was on the bow and literally had to sit on the anchor and keep my feet on the dinghy of the boat in front of us to keep our anchor from hitting it. Then, just as we start going up, their stern line gives loose.  The captain ran to the helm and started the engine.  I yelled to the lock attendant that we had a problem  and then on top of that I noticed the stern line was in the water. Told the captain and he came back down and grabbed it.  Meanwhile the stern is going farther and farther away from the lock wall.  They worked the boat back up against the wall and retied.  A little more excitement than any of us had in mind.  We sure were glad to get out of that lock!  Here is some of the floatilla behind us. 

We went on to a nice anchorage at Cumberland Towhead.  It was really HOT when we got there so we took an old flannel sheet and pinned it up with clothespins as a sun shade, whatever works!  PIC 9191  We had our full group from the night before and there were 3 other boats there when we arrived.  

Turned out that both the KY Dam lock and the Cumberland lock were closed to all recreational boats that day so these folks had to just stay put all day.  Then about 6:30 2 more trawlers showed up so this was the largest number of us anchored out together yet.  We enjoyed a beautiful sunset and went out on a cookie run. 

I had baked chocolate chip cookies that morning so we got in Marley and went from boat to boat handing out 2 cookies for dessert and to say goodbye.  We planned to go to a different marina than most of the others at that point and we know once we get to Kentucky Lake that boats may start to scatter.  Learned from the last boat we visited that there is a Looper “Q” at Green Turtle Marina and that’s why they are all going there.  We had planned to go to Kentucky Dam Marina where our refrigerator part was shipped to.  May need to delay a day, hate to miss a party and free food!