Winter is Here: The Ohio River

The next leg of our Loop trip felt like we were in Game of Thrones, north of the wall, except instead of fighting White Walkers we were fighting a two and a half knot current, barge traffic, and a leaky packing gland. Winter was no longer coming, it was here, and I can honestly say I’ve never been so cold in my life. We left Bar Island on the Mississippi early enough to catch the sunrise, the last pleasant part of the day. Turning onto the Ohio River an hour later was like getting slammed into a brick wall. Our SOG went from ten miles per hour to three, and in case the forty-degree temperatures weren’t enough, it began to rain. It is also worth mentioning that our packing gland had loosened in the cold temperatures and was releasing a steady stream of water into our bilge. As we don’t have an automatic bilge pump, we had to take turns emptying the bilge by filling up a bucket, hoisting it out of the cabin, and dumping it over the rail on repeat. It was not super fun, so Grace capitalized on a bout of insomnia to devise a plan to fix the electric bilge pump. This meant that we no longer had to use a bucket to bail the bilge! Go Grace! Unfortunately, our packing gland did not like the cold temperatures any more than we did, so it started releasing water into the bilge in a waterfall-like manner, and the bilge began to fill up every few hours. I think the lowpoint of our trip so far was setting alarms for 2 am to bail the bilge. Bilge problems aside, we also had locks to worry about. At Hoppies, we had been warned there were three locks we’d have to get through: the Olmstead Lock, Lock 53, and Lock 52. We were also told it was unlikely we’d get through Lock 52 without a major delay. We approached the Olmstead Lock as fast as we could, which meant agonizingly slow. The Olmstead Lock is currently being built, and although the lockmaster wanted to get us through as quickly as possible, priority was given to barges. The lockmaster said in his southern drawl, “Sailboat, come on through. Actually, hold for another 25 minutes” at least twice. Lock 53 was next. “Sailboat from Detroit,” we heard on radio channel 13. “Can you go any faster?” It was the lockmaster from Olmstead. “Um, not really” was our honest answer. “Be careful, the current gets pretty strong when you get to the wall by 53.” We looked around us, seeing nothing nearby that even remotely resembled a lock. To our left, there was a wall barely poking out above the river. We remembered a fellow Looper remarking that Lock 53 was gone, but we had thought there would still be some type of structure to motor through. Turns out, it was as gone as the Sept of Baelor after Cersei blew it up. That night, damp and chilled to the bone, we made it to the Bean Branch Creek anchorage, which really meant we parked our tiny sailboat on the river bank in between huge barges. We were so frozen at that point that we kept all of our sailing gear on, started the alcohol stove for heat, and had a Hello Dance Party in the cabin. A Hello Dance Party is when you play the Martin Solveig version of the song Hello and dance as silly as possible. It both puts you in a good mood and warms you up. The barge next to us probably wondered what could possibly be happening inside our boat. In fact, when we got up the next morning, we saw that the barge had quietly left in the middle of the night to anchor a few miles up the river. It felt oddly like we had been snubbed by a cool kid at school. We bailed the bilge at 2 am, got up at 7 am, dressed in three layers of clothes, bailed the bilge again, and mentally prepared for Lock 52. We had heard horror stories of the lock only letting pleasure craft through late at night or early in the morning, with some sailboats having to wait upwards of 24 hours to be locked through. Luckily, a few sailboats had reached the lock ahead of us and let the lockmaster know that we were arriving soon, so we were able to drive right in! No wait! We were ecstatic but we were also confused; the lockmaster had an odd request. Instead of all four boats tying up to a wall like normal, he asked that we spin in circles in the center of the lock. Grace and I exchanged looks, wondering if he was going to record us spinning and put us on youtube in a viral video named “Lock 52 LOLs.” We decided to call it quits early and stop at the recently built Paducah dock. We were greeted at the dock by the first cute boy under 30 we’d seen in a month, which a little bit made us wish we had showered within the past week. It was Halloween weekend, so we figured out how to wash our hair using boiled water and the bathroom sink and headed into town. We stumbled into a 90s-themed party, per advice from a waiter at the restaurant where we ate dinner. The bar had CD’s dangling on strings from the ceiling and everyone (except us) was in costume. We just pretended we were Lewis and Clark on a river expedition. Ironically, we had left our boat with the intention of talking to other people, but we definitely only talked to each other. Oops. Seeing everyone hanging out in large groups of people made us miss our friends at home. We left Paducah the next morning, bellies full from brunch at Gold Rush, bilge freshly bailed, cheered by the thought that we only had one more night before Green Turtle Bay in Grand Rivers, KY. Everyone ahead of us had hyped up Green Turtle Bay. “The sunny south awaits,” our friends said. “It’s all downhill after Green Turtle Bay!” Obviously, things up to that point would not go smoothly. We had a short, sunny trip to the Cumberland Towhead, where the Ohio River meets the Cumberland River. We tucked up behind the island, sassed a fishing boat that was lingering nearby, and tossed out the anchor. Within a minute, the boat started to rotate around the anchor rhode, only to snap back in the other direction before it could make a complete turn. It continued to do this very quickly and in an alarming motion unlike any a normal boat at anchor should ever make. We tried to pull the anchor up and it wouldn’t budge. After attempting to reverse and / or go forward in nearly every possible direction, we got the anchor out from under the keel. I asked Grace how she would explain what had happened at the Towhead in a blog post, and she said, “mysterious forces were at work.” Rattled but slightly less cold (thanks, adrenaline), we reset the anchor and dreamed of Green Turtle Bay.

P.S. Thank you to Sarah and Alison for helping me with accurate Game of Thrones references. Y'all are the Arya to my Sansa (?)