The Turn...

Today we made the big turn and started up the Ohio River, more on that later. We were underway before 0700 in anticipation of a long delay at Barkley Lock. We approached the lock and called the lockmaster to get in the que and were told there was a double locking up and we would get in in about 2 hours, not too bad. A double ts a tow that is too big to come through the small chamber at one time. They push half in another tug pulls them out at the top, repeat the process for the other half. Luckily there was a nice cove just off the lock so we got to try out our anchor for the first time...it works!!

   There was a lot of traffic at the lock including one "priority" load going down which we were lucky to get in in front of, turns out it was the rocket hauler from Decatur which had caught up to us. Once we were down there was a tow waiting to get in, thankfully he gave us plenty of room (look left)

 That was a BIG pucker!!
30 miles down the Cumberland River we met the Ohio and made the big right turn....and watched our speed drop to 6.5 mph. Thank goodness that was only due to being just below the Smithland Dam, we improved on the upstream side to about 8 mph. The replacement crew is getting the hang of running the boat pretty quickly.

 Tonight we are in the little town of Golconda, Il. This is the kind of place we are looking forward to exploring in our boating future.

Could be a long day tomorrow so it's an early night tonight.