After two days of Blue Skys and Calm weather the trip to Comox was a bit more challenging. Gray skys, intermittent rain, wind and 4 foot waves. At least the waves came from the stern, Paradigm Lost handles well in those type of seas.
We loved all the flowers in the marina and having our boat right in front of the float plane dock. A walk around the area showed us just how nautical the town is. In the pictures, Bella Jade and Makyla are real boat serving as balconies for their host. Tug Boat is a decorative sculptor for the town, I hope they give her a name.
We were excited when we learned that the Comox Glacier was only 19 miles from our marina and that we could see it from our flybridge. We are saddened to learn that scientists predict that the Comox Glacier along with the other sixty-five magnificent glaciers on the island, will be gone by 2050. In the 1970’s Vancouver Island had 170 Glaciers. In the glacier images below the first one is from the Internet so that you can compare it to the pictures we took.
Beautiful day on the water. After docking at the Saysutshun State Park Marina (formally Newcastle Marine) we took a short walk on the Island. On Thursday we took a bus to Woodgrove Centre to do provisioning. On our way home the bus became a little crowded. At one stop we picked up high schoolers, a few stops later middle/elementary school, and then younger elementary students and preschoolers with guardians . We were highly impressed by how well behaved and capable all of the students were.
LighthouseDodd NarrowsTruck TrafficBridgemans FLOATELSaysutshunSummer FunView from SaysutshunTotem
Leaving Annette Inlet we traveled 23 miles on calm water under blue skies to Ladysmith B.C. Since our last visit the Ladysmith Marina has changed hands. It is now operated by the Stz’uminus First Nation, the new name is Oyster Bay Marina. For now, they are off to a slow start, the restaurant is closed and the 900-foot transit pier had no more than four vessels visiting during our stay.
Although the Marina seems to be struggling we really enjoyed our stay. The Cowichan Valley Trail provided a great getaway for some quiet contemplation. The focus of the town seemed to be the Old Town Bakery which opened in 1932 and are widely known for their cinnamon buns. They offer nine flavors daily, with a monthly special. When I was there the flavor of the day was Peanut Butter-Cream Cheesecake. The fun part is that it is more than a walk-in walk-out bakery, it is a place where the locals gather to chat as they consume irresistible pastry or a savory lunch. The lady decorating cakes told me that on Saturdays they often churn out over 1,000 cinnamon buns.
One of our favorite memories of being at marina will be of the Purple Martin’s serenading us each morning and evening.
Oyster Bay MarinaOur Morning HeronSteam DonkeyCowichan Valley TrailJuniperDame Rocket.DogwoodOld Town BakeryMorning LightMale Purple MartinPurple Martn Couple
Our new adventure is to sail the Inside Passage from our homeport in Port Townsend to SE Alaska. The passage is a approximate 1000-mile-long waterway in that runs from Puget Sound, Washington to Skagway. We departed Point Hudson one week ago today, Wednesday-May 15,2024. We had planned on crossing the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the San Juan Islands but 3–4-foot waves with wind gusting up to 30 mph in the strait was bit challenging and we decided to take the longer, calmer route behind Whidbey Island to Deception Pass State Park where we spent several days.
Leaving Port TownsendLeaving Port TownsendMount Baker
Rick at Deception PassPark MarinaMarina Ramp
On Friday we made our crossing to the San Juan Islands via Rosario Strait stopping at Roche Harbor to top of the fuel tanks and anchoring in Reid Harbor at Stuart Island. After a pleasant night at anchor, we crossed Boundary Pass and headed for Bedwell Harbor’s Canadian Customs Office. Proceeding to Prevost Island we anchored in the lovely Annette Inlet. The evening entertainment was seal watching, listening to the birds and enjoying the sunset. After years of dreaming, we are finally on our way.
Deception PassSunset Reid Harbor Bedwell Harbor Canadian CustomsAnnette Inlet
On October 11, 2016, we left our home in Port Townsend, WA, trailered Andiamo over 2500 miles to Grand Rivers, KY and launched her at Green Turtle Bay on Lake Barkley, October 25, 2016. Today, October 25, 2017, we crossed our wake, meaning that we are back to the body of water that we started from.
Since leaving home, we have been in two countries, the US and Canada. We have traveled in twenty-six states, nineteen by boat. We cruised rivers, lakes, the Intracostal Waterway, the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean, and man-made channels/canals. We also locked through at least eighty locks from river levels to lake levels down to sea level and back up to rivers and the Great Lakes. Along the way, we visited family and friends and forged new friendships. The amount of history we learned was worthy of a degree. What an adventure!
We have traveled over 10,000 miles and still have over 3,000 to go as we travel to visit family and friends in Missouri and Arizona before returning to our home. To all that have made our journey an extraordinary adventure, we thank you and look forward to seeing you again. Special thanks to our lifetime friends, Karen and Henry Heflin, for joining us at Green Turtle Bay to celebrate “Crossing our Wake!”
Join us as we lock through our last lock and cruise into Green Turtle Bay Marina. The three attached videos, from the last mile of our loop, are 6x the actual rate, except where the lock is filling with water, which is 32x the actual rate. If you watch the left side of the lock you can see the increase of the water level.
Preparing to Leave Paducah Dock
Paducah Sunrise
Paducah Riverfront
Paducah Riverfront
Paducah Riverfront
Brookport Bridge
Tow Anchorage Area
Dredging the River
Dredged River Dirt
Entering the Cumberland River: Last River of the Trip
Paducah is a fascinating town that was originally claimed by the famous American Revolutionary War hero, George Rogers Clark. When he died his claim went to his younger brother William, of Lewis and Clark fame. William, in 1827, platted a town at this northernmost point of what is now the Tennessee Tombigbee Waterway, an important part of the American Great Loop.
After being on the boat for three days it was a real treat to just walk around the town and experience the riverfront. Paducah is home to the National Quilt Museum, The Lloyd Tilghman House & Civil War Museum, Paducah Railroad Museum, an Art District, “Wall to Wall” Murals, and so much more. The weather was a bit cool and windy so we opted to wait for the warm weather next week to thoroughly explore the town. We can do that because, if all goes well we will “Cross our Wake” at Green Turtle Bay tomorrow and will remain in the area until we have the truck and boat ready to go west.
At 7:00 am we weighed anchor and continued up the Ohio River to make our way through the notorious, outdated, and often closed Ohio River Lock 52. A relic of the 1920s river control system, Lock and Dam 52 is the last of the old wicket dams. When completed, the Olmsted Project will replace Lock and Dam 52 as well as the now-defunct Lock and Dam 53. Scheduled to go online in 2018, the Olmsted Project is both the largest and the most expensive inland waterway project undertaken in the United States.
Although not yet operational, the Olmsted Lock is in place and we were required to request permission to cruise through. Lockmasters are the gods of the rivers, you don’t want to get them angry with you, they are the ones that can make or break your day. When I called to request permission to transit the area the lockmaster, in a very stern voice, informed me that he had 15 tows & barges in front of me and that it would take a while. When I meekly, with all the cheer in my voice that I could muster, asked what time he thought we could go through, he gave a great big belly laugh and said, “Awe, I’m just joking you, come on down and I’ll talk you and your buddy right on through.”
He talked us through the Olmsted Project and the remains of Lock and Dam 53 without incident and we were on our way to Lock 52 just 24 miles away. We had been in contact with a couple of our friends that transited the lock last week; one vessel had to wait four hours before being locked through and the other had to wait three hours, we were not looking forward to the wait. We were lucky, we only waited about forty-five minutes. However, as you will be able to tell from the video of Courageous, it was a bouncy 45 minute as we waited for the Captain Anthony to complete his lock through. In the pictures, you will also be able to tell why the lock needs to be replaced.
By 12:30 pm we were safely tied to the newly opened Paducah Transient Dock, where we reconnected with several of the loopers that we had met at the marina in Alton, IL. This dock has no bathroom or shower facilities but has electricity, water, pump-out, and fuel. We need a pump-out, water, and electricity to charge all of our devices after being without for three days.
Our time on the America Great Loop is coming to an end, the plan is to spend tomorrow in Paducah and on Wednesday cruise to Green Turtle Bay Marina where we put the boat in the water on October 25, 2016. We expect to be greeted by friends Karen and Henry who are driving from the Kansas City area to help us celebrate us ‘crossing our wake’.
As we were leaving our snug, calm anchorage in the Castor River Diversion Channel a northbound tow with 35 (5 by 7) barges passed the mouth of the channel leaving a 3 to 4 foot 2-mile long wake that made us want to turn around and stay in the protected waters of the channel. As we pulled into the Mississippi River another northbound tow with 30 (5 by 6) barges passed us, between the two we felt like we were riding the old mechanical bull at Billy Bob’s.
With only 48.8 miles remaining of the Upper Mississippi River, we continued to stay vigilant as we watched for navigational markers, debris, and landmarks. Our first landmark was the Thebes Railroad Bridge which opened on May 25, 1905, and is still the only railroad bridge between St. Louis and Memphis. According to local folklore, the history of railroad bridge disasters in the 1800s caused people to be fearful of the new iron and steel bridges. In order to instill confidence in the strength of the bridge a long line of steam locomotives crossed the bridge at once. If the bridge could handle the weight of the massive locomotives, it could handle anything.
The river remained wild until we met calmer waters in the oxbows north of Cairo. At the end of the Upper Mississippi, we turned to our port and entered the mouth of the Ohio River. The Ohio River begins at the junction of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers at Pittsburgh, PA and continues for 981 miles, we will travel just eighty-nine miles of the Ohio River and then take the Cumberland River back to Lake Barkley.
We were running at about 10.5 knots at 1200 RPM (11 miles per gallon) on the Mississippi River when we turned into the Ohio River, we immediately fell to 5 knots. We increased RPM to 1600 and got another knot to 6 but fuel mileage fell to 2.7 MPG.
At one time Abe Lincoln also cruised the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, however, his trips were much different from ours. In 1828 and again in 1831 he was a bow-hand on Allen Gentry’s two-man flatboat that was loaded with furs for the New Orleans market. It was through his firsthand experiences with the slave-markets in New Orleans that he developed his lifelong hatred of slavery.
Tonight we are anchored on the Kentucky side of the Ohio near La Center, KY in 18 to 20 feet. The rain is pouring and we are kicking-back enjoying what might be our last anchorage of the trip.
Courageous at Anchor
Thebes Railroad Bridge
Thebes Railroad Bridge
Mississippi River
I-57 Mississippi River Crossing At Cairo
M/V Dan MacMillian
M/V Dan MacMillian’s Wake
Mississippi Wing Dams
Mississippi River: Cairo Highway Bridge
Mississippi River
Mississippi Meets the Ohio: Note the color difference of the two rivers.
The Mississippi River begins its winding journey to the Gulf of Mexico at Itasca State Park in Minnesota as a minor 18-foot wide knee-deep river with an average flow rate of 6 cubic feet per second. From Itasca, the Mississippi River flows north to Bemidji, Minnesota where it turns east, and then south near Grand Rapids. A hundred miles downstream from New Orleans it empties into the Gulf of Mexico with an average flow rate of over 600,000 cubic feet per second. According to the US Geological Survey, the length of the river is 2320 miles, we are traveling only 217.9 of those miles. We entered the river at the junction of the Illinois and Upper Mississippi Rivers, mile marker 217.9, and will end the Mississippi portion of our journey at mile marker 0.0 of the Lower Mississippi, at the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, a small portion of the river and our overall journey, but still challenging with its array of barges, fast current, and never-ending mass of debris.
We were up before sunrise and left the Kaskaskia Lock wall at first light. At Fern’s briefing one of her tips was; “Anchor in a protected area, away from runaway barges, we haven’t had any for several years but you can never be too careful.” As we turned to port leaving the Kaskaskia River to reenter the Mississippi we heard a U.S. Coast Guard announcement that there were several runaway barges reported at mile marker ninety-four. Fortunately, that was downstream of us and if we came across them they would either be floating ahead of us or stuck on the bank. By the end of the day, we saw two on the bank, one on a sand-bar, and three that had settled against another set of barges.
Our normal cursing speed is 6.5-7 knots.
But on the Mississippi, we are running 9.5-11 knots.
Today’s sun shimmered on the water and the sky was a dazzling blue, great for picture taking but very difficult for spotting the multitude of logs floating towards Andiamo.
Just south of Cape Girardeau, MO we crabbed our way into the Castor River Channel Division and anchorage in 20-feet of water. The reviews of this anchorage indicated mosquitoes would be quite abundant so we prepared the evening evasion. However, even with both the temperature and the humidity in the eighties they never arrived, which made us very happy.
We spent the evening decompressing, watching Arizona State devastate Utah 30 to 10, visiting with friends and family via text and phone, and preparing for tomorrow. Tonight we are at mile marker 48.8 on the Mississippi River and, if all goes well, we will leave the Mississippi River tomorrow and start up the Ohio River.
