Spillway Locks...

Here's what the morning looked like...

After cleaning up, I checked out the engine again, paying close attention to the fuel lines and filters. I started it up and ran up the throttle again in neutral... more surging, then it smoothed out. I ran it at different throttle settings for severl minutes, and it ran smooth. It may wind up being that notorious “bad gas.”
I checked the thrust in forward and reverse before untying our lines... this is NOT the place to lose power - the lock is right beside a spillway and the current takes the water over that spillway! We pulled away from the wall and ran to the west, checking out the various throttle settings... everything seems fine. We turned around, called the lock, and headed east.



Remember the spillway I told you about next to the lock? The next five locks were just the same. And as the day wore on, the wind came up... it became a LOT of work to hold the boat steady in those locks. The locks next to the spillways leave you exposed to the wind. Another disadvantage of this situation: even more debris that gets carried down river. We heard that this area got between 5 and 6 inches of rain last night, a fact we don’t doubt. All that rain has raised the water levels to where the logs on the shoreline are floating off... right into our path!

We were chugging along, making pretty good time when we came to Lock 9. The wind had come up, and it took all the strength I had to hold the boat to the wall; the gusty wind kept blowing the back end of the boat away, I pulled like crazy to get it back in place. As we dropped the 15 feet, it became more like a wind tunnel... UGLY! But, we pulled out of there unscathed, except for my aching muscles.

The plan changed, and we stopped at the first marina we came to after Lock 9. We are down for the day at the Arrowhead Marina and Campground, a privately owned place. Quaint, but dated. The docks could use a bit more flotation under them (rock and roll!) but, we have power and TV reception.