On the Move

When we arrived at Washington Marine for our splash, Refugio was already in the sling hanging over water. Honestly I didn’t mind not seeing her being moved over the roads just inches off the ground – boats just should not be that close to dirt (either wet or dry). One of my jobs as deck boss is to watch for water at the tail pipe when the engines fire up; there should be a big gush of water, then there after continual little spurts. This time however, giving a thumbs-up on the starboard and a ‘not-so-much’ thumb wiggle on the port engine. After an hour of investigation and a “dawn-liquid seal” test it turns out the sea strainer was not quite seated and was allowing more air to be sucked in rather than water. Easy fix! Tom cruised down the Ohio and I drove my car to the marina, 20 minutes later we met up at the marina. After a quick trip to the store for provisions and dinner (feeding a momma duck & babies too) we tucked in for the night. It was a relatively easy day and we logged 3 miles!

The next morning the first thing I noticed as we quietly slipped through downtown Cincinnati was how LOW the water levels are. In comparison to two years ago, there are no other boats on the water, it’s hot, the water is very still and the only breeze is the 7 knots we are making ourselves. The bridge that was purple two years ago is now yellow.

There are numerous abandoned barges being used as shore extensions, most of which were now totally exposed due to the water level. Also, more tree roots and shoreline rocks are more visible now too. I know there has been major flooding further down river, but it makes me wonder how things would have been if man did not try to control the rivers flow and just let Mother Nature take care of her own. I suppose if I understood the reasons for all the locks then maybe I’d understand that need for control; or the reasons for all the control then maybe I’d understand that need for the locks. We decided to drop anchor(s) behind the little island in Craig’s Creek, as we’d done on our trip north two years ago just north of Markland Lock. Not much has changed here, all the damaged pier and boat parts are still there rusting away. With the humid temps in the high 90’s we decided to run the generator all night in order to keep the air conditioners running. Noisy, but cool in the staterooms.

More times than not we’ve awoken to deteriorating weather & wind blowing us places we don’t want to be – namely into the rotting pier and boat parts along the island. Our anchors holding, but we’ve slid a wee bit closer to the junk pile than we liked, so as soon as it was light enough we weighed anchor(s) and calmly slipped away from Craig’s Creek. Back out under the 20’ bridge disturbing the thousands of mayflies who apparently want to come with us. Fortunately there is no activity at the lock this early (7:30am) and we’re able to lock though. So expertly we slid along the wall and I grabbed the bollard to hold us off as we lowered 35 feet. We were told come Monday the larger of the two locks will be down for a few months for repair, so we came through at a good time. (Thank the gods) Otherwise the wait could have been hours. Commercial vessels have priority, and being a smaller lock most will likely have to breakdown their tows to get them through. Believe it or not there appears to be much less water this side of the lock, they say pool is 14 feet. The remainder of our trip is pretty uneventful and we’ve noticed many familiar sights along the Ohio. Approaching the marina is always exciting; seeing it for the first time from this advantage rather than from shore. Just past the US 421 Harrison St. Bridge which connects Madison, Indiana & Milton, Kentucky tucked in behind a small land mass sits the Rivercrest Marina. Approach is good, a solid 7 feet under us – once in the marina we’re down to about 4 and when finally tucked into our slip we’ve got about 6” under our keel. Well we don’t have much water, but our slip is covered and it’s still only about 1.5 hours from home. The city of Madison is quite a lively little artsy town which seems to hop every weekend with one activity or another. This should be a good place for us to continue with our boat renovations and soul restorations.