First, I’ll start out with the stats, because it was a record day for us on a couple of fronts. 166.7 miles. 13 hours and 11 minutes. Three rivers. It was a long, terrific day.

We knew we had a long way to go, so we got up early. Sunrise was at 6:27. Our plan was to be ready to push off at 5:45 and go as soon as we thought there was enough light to safely go. The plotter is good enough to keep us from running aground in the dark, but it can’t see floating debris.

We were ready to go at 5:45 and pushed off the wall at 5:56 and turned toward the mouth of the Kaskaskia river. Our AIS told us that there was a tow coming down the Mississippi from our right, so we gunned it a bit to squirt out in front of it.

Today was about balancing three things: time, speed, and fuel. We had about 13 hours of daylight to work with. While our fuel consumption had been much better than we thought, we needed to go a little faster in order to make it before dark. 166 miles… 13 hours… we needed to average about 13 mph. That’s faster than we had been going. For most of the way, we’d be on the Mighty Mississippi with the current in our favor, but the last 45 miles or so were upstream on the Ohio River. So… we settled in at about 1600 rpm on the Mississippi which had us going between 13 mph and 15 mph with the current. When we turned up the Ohio, the same rpm had us going about 9 mph. We decided to push it up to 2400 rpm to plane at 16 mph for 12 miles to the Olmstead Lock (more and that later). It was the only lock of the day, so we could time it better after that. We finished the day running at about 1800 rpm and 10 mph.

Enough with the tech talk, eh? Anyway, we pointed our bow down river and watched another beautiful sunrise come up on the trip of a lifetime. The day was hour after hour of dodging the occasional tow and a few floating logs. The Mississippi winds and bends its way south separating Missouri from Illinois. There are only a few cute towns like Chester and Cape Girardeau. Other than that, there’s just the odd fisherman or group hanging out on a beach on a hot day.

The confluence of the Mississippi and the Ohio was a cool moment. There’s something very exciting about changing waterways and the junction of these two rivers has been a nexus of intracontinental trade for centuries.

When we reached the Olmstead Lock, I radioed from about 2.5 miles away. The Lock Master asked how far away we were. When I told him, he said that he already had a northbound survey boat in the lock. He would hold it for us, but, “get here as fast as you can.” I pushed Our Dash up to about 15 mph as Wendy hurriedly put out the fenders and lines. They closed the door right after we entered the lock and got through in no time at all. The Olmstead team was friendly and fantastic. We’ve had some great luck with locks so far. I doubt that luck will hold.

About an hour out of Paducah, I phoned the main number as the guy from the day before had instructed me to do (I had called the day before to let them know that we’d be late getting in). No answer and the voicemail had not been set up. Grrr… after 3 or 4 more tries over the next hour, we gave up and decided we would have to go it alone. Fortunately, our confidence has grown with practice and we felt up to the task.

The Paducah dock is on the Kentucky side of the river. There is a bit of shoaling on the downstream side, so you have to approach perpendicularly from the river. There was only one other boat on the dock on the inside. The dock manager the previous day advised that we dock on the river side of the dock to avoid a shallow area you have to cross to get to the other side.

As we pulled up the dock, it took me a few minutes to get close enough to the dock. The current kept pushing us away. We finally got close enough to the dock for Wendy to lasso the cleat with a line (a first!) and pull us in. I jumped to the dock to pull in an aft line and we were set! We tied up, hooked up power and water, and started cleaning up.

The owner of the other boat on the dock came back and stopped to chat. He advised that we move to the inside of the dock because the passing town in the night can make the river side pretty bumpy. We asked about the shallow area and he assured us that it would be fine. He’s been there two weeks waiting on a generator part and seemed to know what he was talking about.

We untied and scooted around to the backside of the dock. It got a little shallow for my taste, but we never had less than 2 feet under us. We tied up again, chatted for a bit with the neighbor, and packed it in for the night. A couple of showers later and we finished up the day. It’s been a long one, but a great one.

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