Captain's Choice blog: The great and powerful Oz

Thursday the 6 looper boats left Bean Branch and headed for lock 52. Now we had heard that sometimes you have to wait...we called ahead and were told they would lock all of us through together. What they didn't tell us was we would have to wait nearly 5 hours. Now, if your a fan of the Wizard of Oz you know that when the great and powerful Oz has spoken that you listen. Well, a few of us nicknamed our lockmaster the great and powerful Oz...if you called he would say, "I told the first two boats" or "I called you"...so we patiently waited the 5 hours to rise 5 feet (locking took 20 minutes) before we could head on our way. We put the wait time to good use as Mark got some of the boat waxed and I worked on a sketch.
From 10 boats to 6 boats to 3 boats..that's how many we had in our anchorage Thursday night. Irish Lady Too, 4th quarter and us anchored at Cumberland Towhead Island just north of Paducah, Ky in the Ohio River (this is where the Ohio and the Cumberland River meet). As soon as we dropped anchor Mark and I were in the water. It's been high 80's, low 90's for the last several days and the 84 degree water felt terrific! It was a great anchorage with a nice sunset, herons flying around and quiet.

Friday morning we headed up the Cumberland River, which was very pretty. We saw several pleasure boats and fishing boats along the way to the Barkley lock. We called the lock about 4 miles out, told them we had 3 pleasure boats coming and to see how busy they were. "Come right up and we will get you locked through no problem"..I think we waited 5 minutes before we could go through and the 57 foot rise took about 20 minutes. Mark commented several times that they must have been filling the other locks with garden hoses. Once through the lock we were at our destination, Green Turtle Bay Marina in Grand Rivers, KY. Our understanding is there are about 25 looper boats here, all staying for different amounts of time. As we spoke to different people Friday night we heard some people had to wait overnight to get through Lock 52, others went the Tennessee River and had to wait hours and hours to get through the Kentucky Lock...so all in all I guess we did well. Our boat will be here for 2 weeks, we will be going back to Buffalo for a short trip and then Nashville before heading back out on the water.

Saturday & Sunday were hot ones with temps in the 90's. The weather is suppose to break on Monday with a few days in the 70's before climbing back up to 80's.