St Charles Missouri to Iuka Mississippi

It is 0630 and sunrise is still about a half hour away. We are finally leaving St Charles, MO this morning. We need to make it through 2 locks today and then get to an anchorage. There are no marinas on the Mississippi between Alton, IL and Paducah, KY.. There used to be one in that 200 mile stretch, but, they had some damage in the last year and only have room for one or two boats and they have no room for tomorrow night.

The bottom paint job is completed and we put Journey back in the water last night. We let the marina put a new product called prop speed on the propeller. It is supposed to keep the barnacles from adhering to the propeller. Anytime we run the boat they will fall off any area coated with the prop speed. Between the bottom strip and paint job, keel repairs and prop speed the end result was good. We are ready to leave and start the next 450 mile challenge.

Well, we left a little late to let the fog clear on the river and made it to the first lock. There was not much of a wait and we got right through. Once through the Mel Price lock in Alton, IL we called the lock master of the chain of rocks lock 27 to find out how long the wait was. We still had 25 miles to go to our anchorage for the night and wanted to make sure we made it. She indicated that it would be 2 plus hours of waiting and that we could tie off to the wall of their auxiliary lock which was not operating currently. The issue with this lock is that the Army Corp of Engineers is dredging the canal the lock is located on. They close the river every evening at 5:00 pm. Anyone not through the lock by 5 is stuck. We arrived around noon. They were still clearing out the commercial traffic left over from the evening before. Commercial traffic has priority over recreational vessels for locking through. We did not get locked through until 4:30 pm (4 hour wait) and still had those precious 25 miles to go. We went by the famous St Louis arch, but were in a hurry, so no stopping for pictures.

There are not many places to anchor on the Mississippi river. We advanced the throttles so that we would go 12 mph and made it to our planned anchorage on the Merremac River right at sundown. (Yes, we were cut off by another looper who has issues with waiting for other people. We would run into him again and again

Kevin was ready with all our anchoring gear and we were able to get situated on the anchor as the last bit of daylight winked out of the sky. It is a very safe anchorage off the Mississippi and away from the barge wakes. Now the plan is to wake up before sunlight (ugh that is getting old), dress, cook some breakfast and go after watching the fog partial burn off. We would like to do 80 miles tomorrow. The good news is there are no more locks on the Mississippi!

It was a long day on the Mississippi where were dodging barges. When it is not obvious as to which side it would be good to pass them on you call them on the vhf radio and ask which side they would prefer. They will tell you on the 1 or on the 2. Ok, all you mariners – what does that mean? It goes back many years to when sound signals (honking the horn) were how you communicated between vessels. When they prefer the 1, you pass them on your left side, so you point your boat to the right. If they prefer the 2, you pass them on your right side, so you point your boat left. We stopped for the night at little diversion which was a canal where about 8 boats could anchor. It had a small current to keep the boats from moving too much on their anchor.

Sunday, September 28 was another early rising to leave at first light. We had 112 miles to go with no good anchorages to pull into. We had tried to get reservations for the dock at Paducah, but other loopers had beat us to the space. There was to be one lock today after we transitioned from the Mississippi to the Ohio river. Oh my, was the confluence of the two rivers infested with barge traffic. They were going every which way. One was even backing up the Ohio. He wanted us to go between shore and his stern. We did, but it felt a little tight with the large tug backing up with a tow of 5 barges in length. We got around him and started heading for the main channel on the Ohio and sure enough there was a tow with barges crossing the channel heading straight for us.

We also had to speed up the boat where it ate more fuel while on the Ohio as we had a 3 to 4 knot head current while traveling up river. We were traveling with other boats towards the Olmstead lock 10 miles north on the confluence. There were 4 slower boats behind us. This lock had both main and auxiliary chambers. The lock master let us in the a secondary chamber and we proceeded to wait for any and all pleasure craft behind us. Between the wait and how gentle the lockmaster was being with letting in the water, it took over an hour to get through the lock. It was touch and go as to whether we would be anchoring in the dark. We upped the throttle and received a modest return on speed for the amount of fuel we were expending. Remember, the current was going against us. We arrived in Paducah abut a half hour before sunset and made it to the anchorage behind an island just beyond the town docks with 10 minutes to spare.

We had read that going down the Cumberland River to Kentucky lake was less crowded with commercial traffic even though it was the longer route. It was only going to be about a 45 mile run so we had a nice relaxing early morning enjoying our coffee and up anchored around 10:30 am. We had a 12 mile run (against the current) to get to the Cumberland River. Surely, since the Cumberland was the smaller river we wouldn’t have to fight it so much. Commercial traffic (barges) were everywhen and the current was 4 knots against us slowing us down). Barkley lock, part of the Tennessee Valley Authority was inundated with tows and barges. We called them when we were about an hour out. The lockmaster said he had a group of pleasure craft waiting 3 or 4 hours and that he would probably lock thru in about a half hour. We put the boat up to full speed (normally 15 to 16 knots). The most speed we could get was 12.3 knots.. Meanwhile the engine was enjoying a lot of fuel. We saw on one of our electronic devices that the waiting pleasure craft were moving into the lock about 15 minutes before we could arrive at the lock. We came around a bend and right smack dab in the middle was a barge and tow getting ready to go under a bridge. We called the lock master and explained that we were less than 15 minutes out but couldn’t get around the barge to make tracks. We called the barge captain on the VHF and explained that the lockmaster was holding the lock for us and asked if he had any preferred side. He chose the 2 as he was lining up towards the right for easier entry into the lock. Argh, Bev was trying to set fenders while we were at speed and Kevin was fighting the prop wash from the barge tow boat and not be pushed into the bridge. Both of our adrenaline was spiking from the excitement.

The lockmaster found a boat willing to let us raft off of them rather than us taking the time to catch a floating bollard to tie off of. Once out of the Barkley Lock we entered Barkley Lake which is parallel to Kentucky Lake. They are connected by a canal. However, we were to stop for the night at Green Turtle Bay resort. Then resort has nice docks, good power, an indoor pool, pickleball courts and a spa. There are two restaurants on site, one for nice dining that is only open on weekends and the other was a tiki bar all week. It was about a half of mile from our assigned slip. We were tired from our long adrenaline filled day so we settled into the boat and watched Monday Night Football by streaming NFL plus using the Starlink. It was fun seeing the Broncos play well in all three aspects of the game. We had a day of rest on Tuesday which enabled us to plan and purchase our plane tickets back to Seattle. It took a while to find acceptable flights as the seating charts showed mostly middle seats being available. It took Bev 5 hours to find an acceptably priced flight with our desired seating configuration. Yes, we did pay for an upgrade to premium economy.

Hey, this doesn’t look like a river . . . wow, we made it to Kentucky lake. It is a very peaceful, calm day for a cruise. We are still fighting a current, but not as bad as the Ohio and Cumberland rivers. Kentucky lake was made in 1944 when the government dammed up the Tennessee River. The lake is mostly made up of shallow water. However, there is a nice deep channel where the river used to be. We cruised by a rather large building left over from before the river was dammed just off the channel.

Tonight, we stay at Pebble Isle Marina. We have two more days of cruising before we get to Iuka, Mississippi where we.plan to leave the boat for 5 weeks. Pebble Isle was a nice peaceful marina. There was only one other looper boat there. The marina gives all transient boaters stopping for the night, homemade cinnamon rolls. They asked what time we were leaving and we said early. Ugh. They came down to the boat with some frozen pre made cinnamon rolls that we would need to bake. This morning, Oct 2, we baked the pastries and had them with our egg breakfast. They were yummy. We got under way at 7:30 am and are at the Clifton marina this evening.

Tomorrow, we go through the Pickwick lock. The Harbor master at our marina in Iuka, MS called us with some excellent news. The lock has finally finished their construction project and they just opened a second lock chamber this morning. That should cut down the wait time tomorrow to get through and into the Aqua Harbor Marina where we have a slip and our van waiting for us. We cannot go too much further south until Hurricane season ends, so we plan on flying home for 5 weeks to enjoy the Washington rain and reacquaint ourselves with our dirtside home.

We are at Iuka, Mississippi and have been reunited with our class B Winnebago RV van. We spent two days trying to clean Mississippi mud off the red hull of Journey. It is not going well. We also talked to the local Awlgrip repair person who was recommended by the national representatives. Awlgrip is a special paint for boats that look like gelcoat. It makes older boats look young again, It is very difficult to find a person that can touch up all the scrapes that come from concrete lock walls. We get the estimate of how much the work is going to cost tomorrow, we think. The hard part is the boat will have to be lifted again. Mind you, we just got her back in the water after the bottom strip job. Ouch, that is a lot of money. Since we have 10 more locks to go to get to Mobile, we decided to wait than possibly scratch a brand new paint job.

We have found a RV storage lot within 5 miles of Nashville airport. Tomorrow, we drive to Nashville, check into our hotel, empty out the van of luggage, take the van to the lot and uber back to the hotel. On Wednesday, we fly back to Seattle for a month stay. I wonder how much dust has accumulated in our house while we were gone.

The government has shut down and there are delays at airports. Nashville is one of the airports affected. Our flight left at 7 am and was only 24 minutes late leaving. I guess it pays to get up before sunrise to fly before too many flights vying for available air traffic controller time. It was a pleasant flight and little delays arriving at SeaTac airport. We are home and I am happy to report that we don't have a large accumulation of dust. Awesome! We do have an over grown weedy back yard that we started to work on.

The next update to this blog will be mid November as we head down the Tombigbee canal towards Mobile Alabama.