Markland

It started raining last night about midnight.  Still raining when we left Madison about 9 am.  Still raining now at 5 pm.  Beautiful day.

We discovered where the Corps of Engineers was headed with those new lock gates on a barge.  Markland--our first lock on this trip.

As we got close to Markland, we passed 6 or 8 tow boats with about 15 barges each along the river bank.  They had pushed the lead barge aground so they could wait there to pass through the lock.  The gates had fallen off the main lock, so they all had to pass through the auxiliary lock which is half the size of the main lock.  That means they push in the barges, break them apart, back out.  The lockmaster runs them up or down, and then pulls out the barges with a "mule".  Then the tow boat goes in, and goes up or down, and moves out to connect to his first barges.  It takes more than twice as long to get through.  Some of the barges had been waiting a couple of days.

So I called the lockmaster on the VHF channel 13.  No reply.  I called him on the phone, and was told they'd let us go through in about 4 hours.  Stay close and he would contact us on the VHF and tell us when to go.  So I stayed close, he called and I hustled in.  We were passing through ahead of at least 10 tow boats that were costing over $500 per hour to sit there and wait.  So I hustled in the lock.  And was promptly admonished for going too fast (7mph) in a no wake zone.

We're anchored in Big Bone Creek tonight. N 38 degrees 51.313 seconds   W 084 degrees 47.041 seconds

 

Look like these folks gave up on the sailboat business.