A Long Day of Boating to Paducah, Kentucky

Loopers all know that once you leave Hoppie’s Marina on the barge in the Mississippi River, you have a total of 200 miles to go before you see another marina with fuel and water.  Taurus can cruise faster than a lot of Looper boats. Our cruising speed is about 13 knots at 2300 rpm. A lot of Looper boats cruise at 6-8 knots. 

But when you have locks to go through, it works better to stay in a flotilla and go through the locks together. So the past couple of days, we have slowed down to 10 knots at 1600 rpm. But today, we knew we had 90 miles to go in order to get to our marina. And apparently there is a 4 kn current on the Mississippi River; we were at our 13 kn speed, and the river pushed us to 17.2 kn!  We left the Mississippi River and turned to go upstream on the Ohio River, where our speed dropped to 12.4 kn. By the way, we were in three different states today. We woke up in Missouri, traveled in Illinois, and we’re spending the night in Kentucky.

One of the interesting things we saw today: a flotilla of tugs.




We got to the Olmstead Lock after 60 miles. Fred called the Lock Master to ask about locking through. The Lock Master said the river was closed past the lock and we could wait tied up to a bollard in the lock. Better than anchoring!  We went into the lock, tied to the bollard and waited. It was lunch time, so we ate our lunch while we waited. In a half hour, the Lock Master came over the marine radio and said the river was now open and he would lock us through. Great!


Entrance to the Ohio River from the Mississippi River

Our First Mate as Captain-in-training


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