Trip Recap

We were underway about 0800 on Saturday for the last leg of the trip home. Right off the bat we found that the lockmaster had lied to us the day before, the river had come up a bit overnight. The 4” of clearance we had Friday was gone Saturday morning and the bridge made a slight adjustment to our anchor light on the way out. Once on the river we were treated to another glorious morning with flat calm water and a nice breeze.

We stopped at River Watch restaurant in Lawrenceburg to pick up my sister Kathy and Mike who wanted to join us for the trip through town. We were underway again about 1:30 and made our way through light traffic between there and Saylor Park when things began to pick up. Above Saylor Park we began to see more and more boat traffic, much more than anywhere else the past 2 weeks. Throw in a barge or 2  and things get really interesting. We were greeted just before Anderson Ferry by Dan & Chris on their boat “Never Say Never”. Other members of our marina welcoming committee began showing up as we got closer to town. We were beginning to overtake a tow just as we got to the Mill Creek and the run through the bridges, not good timing but I was anxious to get to the marina. I have a pretty good idea of what the tow is going to do as they head through town…not so much the pleasure craft. We cleared the barge about the time we got to the Brent Spence Bridge and were able to breathe a little easier. Still a lot of smaller boats but I live by the rule of tonnage…they will move. It was a nice sight to see my crew from work on the Serpentine Wall to greet us as we went by…too bad I was still pretty busy driving and didn't get a picture…thanks guys. 

We were in the marina and safely tied up by 5:30, another fine day on the river except for the last hour and a half…the worst of the whole trip. Now I know why tow boat operators call Cincinnati “The Gauntlet”…the big horseshoe turn through the bridges downtown along with all the pleasure craft must make things real exciting for them. As expected we were greeted by a steady stream of well wishers and people wanting to see the boat…the last ones were kicked out about 11:00 and we crashed hard.

Now for the recap:

We traveled 14 days straight without any issues. This is thanks to a good survey and prep work done by our mechanic down in Tennessee. 

The boat was in Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana & Ohio...not bad for a maiden voyage.

We covered 996 miles, stayed in 11 marinas, one free "dock" and anchored out one night. Total slip fees were $428 and 2 marinas didn't charge us since we bought fuel.

We took on 509 gallons of diesel and I estimate another 140 if we top off now for a total of 649 gallons.  

The rough math is that we got about 1.4 mpg which is not bad since we ran the boat pretty hard to keep on schedule. The really good news is that the mpg goes up to over 2 once I subtract the hours run on the generator at 1.5 gph!!! That makes me very happy!!

I would like to offer a BIG thanks to all who crewed with us as well as those of you that followed and offered good wishes for the journey...we couldn't have done it without you. Please keep following as I will be posting periodic updates as we begin prepping the boat for our big adventure. I will be posting some more pics in the next day or 2 that were taken by Dan while they were in board...I just need to shrink a few down to fit and there are so many great ones it will be hard to choose just a few.