We got up and wanted to get an early start. We were going about 60 miles today, but we are still being pushed by a strong current. We are planning on doing about 10 knots, so this will only be a 5.5 hour day. After this anchorage, there is not another stop for another 30 miles. Then we will be taking a turn up the Ohio River, and fighting a current once again. The anchorages after Little Diversion we are hearing are not so good; especially after rain. The forecast today is rain later in the day, so we do not want to travel too far and push our luck. It was raining when we woke up, so we waited a little while for it to stop before we started our departure. In the mean time, I had walked down and spoken to the others and told them our intention. A few wanted to go further, and they could with the speed they travel, but ultimately decided to stop at Little Diversion as well. One went on to a further anchorage.
We tossed our lines and pulled out. Everyone else was fairly close behind, and it didn’t take long for them all to pass us. We all were monitoring two radios, one we had on channel 72 for our communication between boats, and one was scanning the other channels for emergency and work boat/barge radio chatter. We recently discovered we have an AIS system, which is a receiver that shows other boats transponding their boat information, including boat name, speed, direction, etc… Our radio does not transpond, only receives, but we had to get an MMSI number from the government. We were able to do this through BoatUS, which sells these systems. Ours is built into a radio we have on the flybridge and coupled to our GPS chart plotter. This new information now allows us to see around the corner (and miles out) and identify any ships coming our way, and with their name, we can call them directly on the VHF and communicate with them. All commercial vessels are required by law to have these (on) and operating while underway. This gives us a big advantage navigating the rivers.
As we were about an hour and half away from our destination, we could see it was raining ahead of us. We closed up the flybridge and moved downstairs to steer from the lower helm. This is nice- being dry and warm, and still making way. The rain was heavy at times, and we had the windshield wipers on. We couldn’t actually sit and steer as the wipers don’t reach that low- who designed that! We stood at the helm keeping a sharp eye on the channel markers, with Lauren next to me keeping an eye out for debris and disappearing channel markers too! This was definitely a team effort!
About thirty minutes before arrival, the rain stopped. We knew we were getting close, so we resumed driving from the flybridge. We rounded a corner and saw one of the other boats we left with (Fratt House) turning into the channel. We had been told to be careful with the current- it will push you toward the bank quickly and strong. We were also surprised we had caught up! We turned up stream into the current and I had to give it a lot of throttle to make it out of the river. Once we cleared the downstream current, there was none. We moved forward toward the other boats anchoring, which was in front of a low train bridge. The channel is about two hundred yards deep and about 20 yards across. Since they had gone all of the way back, we went back about half way and dropped our anchor. The winds were picking up, and a storm was a brewin’. I decided to try a stern anchor, as we had let out a lot of rode since we were in thirty feet of water. I didn’t want to swing and end up on land. We were now anchored and spent our time inside the boat while the weather started to get nasty outside.
Dinner time came around and the winds had picked up to about 15 mph. our stern was facing the wind because the stern anchor was keeping us this way. I wasn’t happy with this, as we usually want our bow into the wind. I was messing with the stern anchor, when I felt us moving. Oh shit. The wind had grabbed the bow and was spinning us around. Lauren poked her head out and exclaimed “We’re moving!? We’re dragging!” I tried to explain I had done this, but it was scary to be moving. We were now facing the wind, but kind of dragging toward the other boats anchored by the bridge. I let out a little more rode, and we seemed to have stopped moving backwards. I quickly dropped the stern anchor again, and tried to make sure it was holding. We seemed to be stationary again, so we ate dinner, watching intently out the window to see if we were moving again. The winds started to die down, but the rain continued. I decided I would sleep on the couch in the salon so I could keep an eye on our location throughout the night. The rest of the night was uneventful, we didn’t move and the winds had died down.
Tomorrow is up in the air- It is almost 85 miles to get to Paducah, Kentucky. Typically people anchor somewhere in between, as this is a long trip going against the current. Today we were making almost 11 knots, tomorrow we will be making 5 knots. We are leaning toward the long jump after tonight’s anchor scare…