We left Alton Marina early - saying goodbye to a fun summer. We made our way thru two sets of locks - Mel Price and Chain of Rocks with no issues and headed to St. Louis. Interesting fact - St Louis has NO marinas or tie-ups for pleasure craft.  We passed thru the Arch area with no traffic. St. Louis has an Earth Cam that has a live feed.....we had it on our phone and when we floated into the feed, I did a screen shot - pretty cool....and puts the size of the arch into perspective.



THAT'S TALISMAN!....RIGHT UNDERNEATH THE BEAUTIFUL ARCH!

We are headed down the Mississippi to the Ohio - North on the Ohio - then the Cumberland River - past Paducah - to Lake Barkley - Kentucky Lake area.

The issue on this stretch of the Loop is getting fuel. After Alton, the place available for fuel flooded last year or the year before ...so still not available. We can get to Paducah, but because of COVID, they were not selling fuel - docks are owned and run by the City. We had to make arrangements with a portable fuel truck to service us  at Cape Girardeau, MO. We scheduled with the fuel man for first thing in the morning - there are no marinas so we anchored out the night before in Little Diversion Channel - a beautiful little cove we had all to ourselves. Photo courtesy of our drone. First night out I decided to go all out on dinner - Veal Picatta, Baked Potato, Salad - Doug better not get used to this!






Next morning met the fuel guy at an old rusty barge at Cape Girardeau. Man pulls a tanker off the road, climbs down a steep stairway, has hoses on the barge, we have to nose in - Pat's job is to keep pretty new boat's bow off rusty old barge - while Doug tries to stretch fuel hose a few more inches - all the while bouncing as another barge goes down this narrow stretch of river....INTERESTING is being politically correct.

Fueled up and continuing on to Paducah to tie up at new city docks for the night.  We were the only ones there. We cooked dinner on the boat and then took a late night walk up the hill. AND discovered an adorable little downtown area that has apparently over the years has had most of their old downtown buildings renovated and repurposed into cute restaurants and shops. We blew it! Should have had dinner downtown.



Next morning, left early for the short trip thru the Lake Barkley Lock to Green Turtle Bay Marina. Pulled up to lock and saw divers on a barge in the lock! Call to Lockmaster confirmed they were doing a maintenance and we could now sit for 6.5 hours waiting. Strong current, windy and rocky bottom so we could not anchor or use DPS to hold so we "circled" the whole time - UGH!

Came thru the lock finally and Green Turtle Bay immediately on our right. Our home for awhile.

Miles from Alton to Green Turtle Bay, Grand Rivers, KY - 292 miles

8 Locks Now Completed

 





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 pictures of
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

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 197
Read more