5 Oct 17

Another long day; who is planning this trip out anyway?!? We woke up, without the alarm, about 06:30 and were moving about. Since we were up, we decided to get moving about 07:30. As we pulled back out into the stream, we were off like a shot with 3 kn of current behind us all 45 miles to the junction with the Ohio River. Of course, that all changed as we turned up the Ohio; our SOG went from 10.6 kn to 5.5 kn just like that. The trip up the Ohio past Cairo and Mound City, IL, was notable only for the number of tows parked along the river in the last few miles leading up to the Olmsted Lock and Lock 53. Olmsted is still under construction (completion is estimated as some time in 2020) and Lock 53 is one of the oldest locks on the river and is really showing its age. It was shut down for several days a few weeks ago and still has only one of the two chambers working; it is still working through the back log of tows that were delayed when it was completely shut down. Fortunately, they let us right through the Olmsted (we just drove through the open lock chamber. We then had to wait for 1.5 hours at Lock 53, while they lowered one tow five feet to the lower pool level. The lock gates literally took 10 minutes to close or open. We finally made it through at 17:00 and put the hammer down to make the last 9 miles to the closest anchorage we could find: Bean Branch Creek anchorage - it is actually on the Ohio River on the LDB at Mile 953.5, but is well out of the path of big tows. There is not much moving on the river anyway, as there are about 20 tows within sight, waiting for their turn at Lock 53. Good luck to them all; some of them are going to be waiting for days. Harvest Moon tonight, although we could not see much of it because of the cloud cover. We settled in early to a quiet night, except for the gently hum of the power and cement plants across the river. And, the Astros hammered the Boston Red Sox 8-2 in the first game of the ALDS championship. 

37-12.306’N, 088-52.977’W; Log 62.3, Sum (2017) = 2606.0 N-m