Day 13 - Cape Girardeau to Grand Rivers, KY redux

Now that I have access to the Internet let me back fill with the info I missed for yesterday.

We left Cape Girardeau around 8:30 AM and were literally dumped into the river from the trailer of a young man named Dustin from King Marine.  He had pulled us from the river the evening before without a hitch and today he picked us up at the motel around 8:00 AM, drove us to the river, backed us and the boat into the water and away we went.

Our departure from Cape Girardeau, MO. We got in the boat while it was still on the trailer and motored it off once it was in the water. The current immediately caused us to drift away too quickly to give a proper goodbye to our helper Dustin from King Marine.

Saying goodbye to Cape Girardeau

I looked as if things were going to start out with nice smooth waters but about a mile below Cape G we ran into a series of barges that churned the waters to a great degree and made for a bumpy 15 mph ride for the next 20 miles.  Mary counted 8 barge tows and without fail as soon as one disappeared another would appear.  They were all going upstream and this causes them to make the most turbulence because they are pushing hard against the current.

Nasty turbulence behind the barge tow lingers for miles and makes Mary nervous. That's why this picture is blurry, she took it and was shaking. I've seen this turbulence many times and it looks a lot worse when your level with it and only a few hundred feet away.

The water eventually smoothed out and we cruised along at our usual leisurely pace of 23 MPH. The miles went by and before we knew it Cairo, IL wasn't too far ahead.  Once at Cairo we meet the Ohio River where we turned and headed upstream toward Paducah, KY. which is about 50 miles. It was fun to be on a different river and we could immediately tell the change because the water color now had a green hue but more noticeably the smell had changed. It had't occurred to us that we had grown accustomed to the Mississippi until we experienced the Ohio. The same effect, I suppose, as when you're in a smelly place and you become used to it until you leave it and come back. If you ask which river we liked better I'd say it's a toss up. The only real thing we sensed, as I said, was the Ohio being a bit more fishy smelling.

Here's a piece of serious driftwood. Notice Mary to the left of the root ball returning from a necessary break. On this part of the Mississippi everything is amp'd up compared to further north. The water is big, the beaches are big, the waves are big and as seen here, the floating debris can be big too.  

 

This old buoy is taking a rest from duty.
The remnants of earlier flooding.

Take a look at the chart.  The loop-d-loop is about 30 miles through.
The Blue Fin is in the upper left of the screen represented by the little red boat figure and the arrow points in the direction of our travel. The white path is the river and you can see it's not being very cooperative in getting us from point A to point B in this area.  If we humans are doing so much these days to help mother nature then why doesn't she straighten this out so we use less energy and do less harm to her? 

The Blue Fin pointed upstream looking at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
The Miss on the left and the Ohio on the right.

These two pics show a back hoe with a long arm reaching down to the river bottom, pulling up earth and dumping it into the adjoining barge. This is the site of the Olmsted Dam on the Ohio River that has been under construction forever.

Approaching Metropolis, IL in the far distance on the Ohio River. (home of superman)
The water is as smooth as glass and the Blue Fin is running smoothly along.

As we reached Metropolis, IL the boat's main tank ran out of gas so I routinely switched to the reserve tank but was soon to discover we had a problem. In a few minutes the Motor started to sputter as did out hearts wondering what was going wrong and worrying about the swift 4 MPH current and where we'd land if we completely lost power. The water was high from flooding and with the shoreline being mostly up into the trees it makes for a hazardous landing approach.  I spotted a concrete boat ramp that still had about 10 feet of open surface above water so I sent the Blue Fin up and onto it with a harsh scraping sound. For the moment things were secure and now I had to think about the problem and what was its cause.  It seemed somewhat obvious that the problem was related to the gas in the tank I had just switched to but I wasn't fully convinced.  I still had along with us another portable gas can containing 5 gallons so I used it to partially refill the main tank and return it to use. It took about 15 minutes of circling the Blue Fin around the boat ramp to purge the bad gas out of the system and get the motor running good again.  I was reluctant to move too far away from the ramp in case I needed to make a return, which in actuality I did a few times as I wasn't convinced the problem was completely solved.  

Eventually as the motor began to perform normally the new problem I was left with, as a result of the gas-water condition, was that I now didn't have enough fuel to make it the rest of the way to Kentucky Lake. With Paducah only a few miles upstream we headed there to find more gas to top off the main tank allowing us to complete our day's travels. We parked along the concrete waterfront in the downtown area and from here I bicycled to find gas while Mary waited in the boat. 

Bicycling to get gas in Paducah, KY.
It looks easy enough but it was hot, and humid, and there were no gas stations in downtown Paducah.

  

This is where I found gas in Paducah. It's a commercial terminal not meant for retail sales. I opened an account with them, Tax I.D. and everything, in order to buy 5 gallons of gas.

After topping off the main tank with gas we continued up the Ohio for another 15 miles until we met with the confluence of the Cumberland River. ( I like that name) From here it was another 35 miles to reach the Barkley Dam that, once passed, puts us into the Kentucky/Barkley Lake reservoir where we would find the Green Turtle Bay Marina for overnight accommodations.

The Cumberland River is superbly serene.  The water clarity and odor are much better than anything we had experienced thus far and it felt nice to be tucked into the narrow banks and slow current.

At the end of our idyllic trip up the Cumberland River we ran smack dab into this wall of steel. This wasn't unexpected on our part but the lack of response from the lock master was. I called continuously on three different marine radio channels and received no answer. Mary was getting nervous so she decided to try the cell phone. The service was poor so she called a few times until the lock-master got the idea that we were out the and needed to get through. In a few moments we could hear the big sounds of the gates and valves moving so we knew we'd soon be moving on through.  

The ice cream shop was closed but that didn't stop her. Seeing a worker inside cleaning up she banged on the window and said, "I'm not leaving until you give me some ice cream".  It worked!

At about 7:00 PM when we arrived at Green Turtle Bay Marina, and with their facilities closed for the day, we just helped ourselves to their courtesy dock and tied off the Blue Fin for the night. We unloaded our bicycles and rode into Grand Rivers to our motel at about the same time dark was descending. We cleaned up and had a nice late dinner at Patti's 1880's restaurant  http://www.pattis-settlement.com/   This place soothed Mary and corrected all the problems of the day except for her want of an ice cream treat.

This was our longest day in terms of time, miles, and difficulty that we have so far experienced. Tomorrow were going to move at a more leisurely pace and enjoy Kentucky Lake.