Day Four - Tuesday, October 30th, 2007

Barnacle II Cruise Day 4 – Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
Leaving Little Rock Yacht Club

I awoke at 6:15 to dark and fog. Kenn was already up and making the first pot of coffee. The captain and Ms. Captain were still snoozing. As daylight broke, the fog got heavier. Kenn took his time checking out the engine room, the fluid levels in both engines, the generator, etc. We had a leisurely coffee and breakfast, and I’m still trying to find an efficient way to upload and share photos on the blog spot on the web. Still fresh out of luck.

We pulled away from the marina in a deep fog at 8:30, although we could see a hundred yards or so in front of us. Vickie was a nervous Nellie while we were all trying to find the channel markers by site and on radar. We made it slowly to the Little Rock Murray Lock (#7) and came out of there at 10:00. We came through downtown Little Rock and waved at the poor workers in the office buildings.

At 11:00 AM at river mile 114, Kenn spotted another young eagle flying over us. I couldn’t grab my camera until he had landed in a tree top on the right bank. A super long lens on a moving boat doesn’t always make for a clear shot, but I could definitely see his white head and yellow beak. We were being buzzed by C5-As doing touch-n-goes at the time. There were at least 3 planes in the air, and they probably did at least five or six each while we were in the area.

We approached Lock & Dam 6 at river mile 108 at just before noon. It must have been a slow lock because when we got there, the gates were still closed on the rising water to meet us. We had called the lockmaster at least 20 minutes earlier, and there was no upriver traffic to wait on. So I’m not sure what was the issue, but we were out of the lock by 12:30 and had sandwiches made for lunch.

We made it to Lock & Dam 5 (no name, and Vic and I want to lobby the local congressman to have it named the ‘Marvick’ in honor of us two boat queens) just above Pine Bluff (river mile 86) at 2:30. Again, we had to wait on the lockmaster to bring the level up and open the gates. Barney wanted to lower the RPMs on the engines today to try to stretch our fuel to 1 mile to the gallon, and we’re not going to be able to make it to river mile 20 today like he had originally wanted. It looks like we may make it to mile 40 before dark if the locks cooperate with us.

How quickly things change. When we got to mile 71, we signaled ahead to the Rob Roy railroad bridge to raise it. There is only a 17’ clearance in the closed position, and it’s too low for us to go under. As we were approaching the bridge, we called ahead to the lock just a mile beyond it to see if we could lock through. The lockmaster told us that we had at least a 2 hour wait since a big tow was locking to the upstream side and he had to break the barges apart and lock through a few at a time. We discussed the situation and decided to turn around and go back upstream 3 miles to the marina at Pine Bluff. Vickie wanted to do some laundry, and we decided it wouldn’t hurt to spend another night tied up to a dock.

We tied up to the fuel dock at the marina about 4:00 PM, making an early day of it. We only made 60 miles today, but it really puts us in better shape to hit the Mississippi River. We should be able to get to the end of the Arkansas/White River tomorrow afternoon, or within 15 to 20 miles of it and find a good anchorage before dark. Then on Thursday, we should have an easy day of getting into the Mississippi, then on to Greenville that night. We can refuel there and should have enough to get us to Baton Rouge. It’s too far to New Orleans from Greenville to make it on the fuel we carry, and our only other shot at refueling is in Baton Rouge.

So tonight, I sat Kenn up on the dock and gave him a much-needed haircut. That really fascinated Barney…I know, he thinks there’s no end to my talents. Yeah, right! We were also able to get our laundry done. We weren’t really hurting for clothes, but we have more room to stow clean clothes than dirty. I noticed that it feels like we’ve gone into another season. It is much warmer here than at home, or even at Little Rock. To me, it felt 20 degrees warmer tonight than last night, and I was burning up for once. Probably hot-flashing, but it felt good to sweat a little.

We had snacks and cocktail hour on the back deck, then had pot roast, mashed potatoes, deviled eggs, carrots and cucumber salad for dinner. We were tied up to shorepower and in the middle of cooking, the dock and the boat went dark. The boat queens for the day (only because we found some parts that Kenn was missing for a project) thought at first that we overloaded the shorepower connection with the cooktop, microwave and other kitchen appliances, but the breaker wasn’t tripped. So the generator was cranked and we switched back over to house power to finish cooking. We found out later that most of this end of Pine Bluff was without power, so we didn’t burn up a power line upstream somewhere. Whew! Whatever caused the problem was resolved in 45 minutes or so, and we switched back to shorepower for the night.

The weather is really pleasant tonight, back to short sleeves. There is a slight wind blowing, so maybe no fog in the morning. The boat is running well, comfortable to operate and live on. But the galley is only big enough for one person to work in. If someone walks by to grab something out of the fridge, the door hits the cook in the butt. Heaven forbid if she’s washing dishes in the sink…she can end up trapped by the door while someone is deciding what they want to snack on.

Barnacle II is performing better than anticipated on this trip, and we’re all thankful for that. There has been a minor issue or two, but nothing that couldn’t be resolved in a few minutes. This is the longest trip she’s ever been on, so her legs are getting stretched for once.