Great 1st night at anchor - woke up to light rain  - slept like a rock. Brother and Sister-In-Law, Dave and Ann Galick, joined us for the Peoria to Alton run. Ran in rain on and off all day entering the Mississippi River at Grafton, IL . Mile Marker (MM) "0" on the Illinois River - MM #217.9 on the Mississippi.

Light rain turned to torrential rain and NO visibility for 20 minutes. Radar and AIS ( Automatic Identification System ) came in very handy. Arrived safe and sound at 3:30 PM in Alton Marina, having traveled 183 miles in 2 days.

We are staying here approximately 2 1/2 months

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
  WEEK TURNED INTO A MONTH ON LAKE BARKLEY / KENTUCKY LAKE We had planned on spending a week in Green Turtle Bay Marina but staying in the Kentucky Lake area for a month exploring coves etc. We ultimately decided it was cost effective to just stay in this marina and go out and anchor out when we wanted to. Staying in a marina for a month is ultimately the same price as staying in a marina for 10-ish days. Yes - Green Turtle Bay has turtles! Lot's of turtles that like when you feed them. We loved the quarry at Pisgah Bay ( grafitti bay) - notice the BIG I ( Illini)!  Our favorite is Duncan Bay - beautiful days and spectacular sunsets here on Kentucky Lake Grand Turtle Bay is 1 mile from Grand Rivers, KY - famous for Pattie's settlement which is a village of stores, restaurants known for the 2 LB Porkchop - which Doug indulged in.  We took the courtesy van from the marina and went back to Paducah one day and visited the National Quilt Museum - fantastic! Look at these pictu...
Read more

HISTORY OF THE TENN-TOM WATERWAY

 It is amazing how relatively unknown the Tenn-Tom Waterway is to the U.S. public - including the crew of Talisman. The Tenn-Tom Waterway is the 253 mile stretch of river from Tennessee mile 450.7 to Demopolis, AL at mile 217. Note - at Demopolis, the river turns into the Black Warrior-Tombigbee all the way to Mobile. The Tenn-Tom connects the Tennessee River to the Tombigbee. Prior to this the waterways were not connected. The Tenn-Tom shortened the trips for vessels by as much as 720 miles. Vessels going from Pensacola, FL to Chattanooga, TN only have to travel 771 miles via the Tenn-Tom instead of 1541 miles via the Mississippi River. In addition, vessels could avoid the swift currents of the Mississippi when north bound. The first engineering investigation proposed for this waterway was in 1874-1875. After various proposals were rejected, finally in 1946 Congress approved the waterway. There was strong opposition causing delays, delays, and delays. Construction finally began in...
Read more

Mobile Bay - Intracoastal Waterway to Orange Beach, AL

Image
 We left our anchorage at Big Bayou Canot at 6:20 AM, Big Bayou is at MM16. Heading South the Tombigbee River ends at MM 0. It turns into Mobile Bay which is MM 127. The topography instantly changed. We started to see Palm Trees on shore, a few dolphins and the water turned from dirty brown to clear. Mobile Bay was very busy. Shipyards, Container ships etc. We had to stay alert. We were suddenly in civilization after the desolate Tombigbee. These warships are huge! We worked our way through Mobile Bay and instead of taking the channel down the west side to the mouth of Mobile Bay we took a bit of a shortcut across ending up at the east side of the mouth to  enter into the Intracoastal. We watched our charts closely as Mobile Bay has some very shallow sections. Halfway through this "shortcut" we could see on our AIS system we would be joined by some looper friends. "Lady C" who we met in Alton this summer...and "Gemini Gypsy" who we met when we were held up...
Read more