The table below is a list of phone numbers for each lock and dam we'll encounter on our trip. It covers the entire route traversed from Minneapolis to Mobile, AL. The marine radio channel number for most of the dams is listed too.
I'll be taking advantage of both the phone and the radio as they each offer their unique advantage. The radio is convenient as it is the long established way to contact a dam but the use of a cell phone is becoming more popular. The radio provides instant no fuss communication and is oftentimes answered by the actual lockmaster out on the wall tending to the locks. Your voice will also be immediately heard by other nearby boats allowing them to know your intentions as well. This compares to the cell phone which is private and has the advantage of allowing you to check dam traffic from places far away versus the radio which is good for only a few miles distance from the dam.
To explain the process, right now you could use your phone to call one of those numbers listed and ask how long the wait would be for an upstream or downstream lock through. (Notice that the heading in the list says,"24 hour phone numbers" and as I'm writing this it's February so don't be surprised if in calling the St Anthony Locks, with foot thick ice, the lockmaster in Minneapolis calls you a nut-case.) But if you venture to call they'll want to know the size and type of your vessel and, since you're not within their view, how long your estimated arrival time is.
An example of me making good use of the phone will be to check traffic at a dam while I'm sipping my beverage at a shop in a town that is say, 20 miles away. I might want to know if there's a barge tow locking through or if one is soon expected to arrive The lockmaster will always know what barge traffic is in the pools up and downstream from their dams. With the knowledge I gain in making the call I can then decide to make a run for the dam to get ahead of a tow or just hang out knowing there's time for another sip of my drink. No need to hurry off in ignorance only to arrive at a dam and wait.
The Ohio River dams at the bottom of the list are the two trouble makers that I mentioned (Segment #2) in my earlier post, and as I said above about using the phone to contact a dam, I'll probably be calling these two numbers the day before we actually arrive. I'll need to learn about the state of the dams, whether the wickets are up or down, and if in the up state, then how long the lock-through delays are running. You'll soon see below too that there's a new way to find out what's going on at any dam if I am able to have Internet access. But regardless of how I get the info, I'll need to know what's happening at these old wickets and I'd like to keep track of them after we depart from St Louis.
Once past the wicket dams we continue traveling upstream on the Ohio River and in a short distance begin our approach into Kentucky Lake. Here I can choose to run the Blue Fin up the Tennessee River or continue about 15 more miles on the Ohio to the mouth of the Cumberland River. To take the Cumberland river causes us to increase the overall distance to reach Kentucky Lake by about 35 miles and it could be the better choice to once again, avoid heavy tow traffic at a dam. The Kentucky Lake dam on the Tennessee river happens to be another one of those potential bottlenecks where really long wait times for a lock-through is possible. But now, unlike with the old wicket dams behind us, I have a choice of another dam. By my choosing the alternate Cumberland river route we'll be heading to Barkley Lake Dam which is much less busy and could potentially save us some time. This is definitely one place where I'll use the phone to get information on barge tow traffic and then make the time versus distance trade off to pick the best route.
View Larger Map
You can trace our two possible routes on the map above. We'll be traveling on the Ohio River entering the map on the left and heading toward Kentucky Lake on the lower right. The shortest route is through the Tennessee River seen near the center of the map. You'll also notice another less direct and winding route via the Cumberland River closer to the top and right of the map. This takes us to Lake Barkley and that's OK because, as you can see, regardless of which dam we pass through we end up in almost the same place. While Kentucky Dam is on the Tennessee River and Barkley Dam is on the Cumberland River, once on the upstream side of either dam, I only need to pilot through a short canal to get from one lake to the other. The lakes run almost parallel to each other for some distance and create the Land Between the Lakes national recreation area. Mary an I have visited this area before with my sister and her husband in our MoHo's and it's very nice for both water and land lovers. I've always thought it was unfair to waste two such beautiful lakes by them being placed so close together. Couldn't one of them have been shared with some other state badly in need of a nice lake?
For those of you who are curious, the Cumberland River allows you to eventually get past Nashville, TN while the Tennessee River can get you beyond Chattanooga, and on to Knoxville, TN. A fact I'd bet few of my mid-western friends realize; that one is able to travel by boat from Minnesota to these seemingly far away places. And while tempting to me, those destinations are not in the plans for this trip.
As we proceed beyond Kentucky Lake and up the Tennessee River we're given a break from dams for a nice 250 mile stretch until we reach the lock and dam at Pickwick Lake. From this point we're back into the repetitive sequence of dams located at irregular intervals as we now begin our course on the Tenn-Tom Waterway.
The dams on the Tenn-Tom are, in general, very close together and some are as near as 5 miles to each other. Neighboring lockmasters will often times synchronize your lock-through because the travel time between them is so short. Let's see, 5 miles distance at 30MPH on the smooth water puts us at about 10 minutes transit time between dams. That's less time than it takes to fill or empty the lock chamber and open the gate in preparation for our arrival. Matt said he and his friends would often times go 50MPH on the jet skis so they were only 6 minutes between the closest spaced dams. Hardly enough time to operate the gates even if the chamber water level was correct ahead of time.
I don't expect too much trouble in terms of delays at this group of dams except that this synchronizing business can sometimes become your enemy. If a big cruiser is traveling between the dams at say 5MPH, the lockmaster will sometimes wait for them too. In this case it does no good for a guy in a speedy boat to race ahead hoping to lock-through.
And a final problem with the locks is that there is always the chance of a maintenance closure. In fact, I haven't mentioned it but that is a possibility anywhere along our entire route. A day- long delay is a real possibility somewhere on our path and I'll have no control over it. That's the reason some slack time has been built into our schedule.
A last minute update.
Take a look at this nifty website I've discovered that gives real time information on the locks and dams.
Real Time Status of Lock and Dams
It shows the average wait time and how many other vessels are in queue for a lock-through. I don't know if I'll always be able to access this info while underway but I'm thinking I can when I'm resting in a town along the way. Tools like this didn't exist even a few years ago and it should help out quite a bit to prevent wasting time waiting when we could instead be touring around. It's still my thought though that talking to the lockmaster trumps this because he/she can not only tell me the expected wait time but they have the power of choice to fit me in between a tow. I have always found the process at the locks to be fair even when the wait times reach the annoyance threshold. Talking directly to the lockmaster reduces this annoyance if for no other reason than to simply keep one informed of the status of the locking activity.
Now an even bigger challenge would be to teach Mary to be a good copilot and gather up this info while I pilot the Blue Fin. If she could check the Internet, make the phone or radio calls, and keep us abreast of these dam goings-on it would be a great help and I'd be much impressed. I even promised her a promotion to the title of chief information officer but it got me nowhere. I think the better bet is to teach her how to drive the Das Blue Fin Boot and I'll do the info gathering. I'll discuss the possibility of her becoming the chief pilot after some additional consideration and passage of some more time.
If you see something I have wrong or have any help to offer please comment.