Thursday October 22, 2015
The Little Diversion Channel is 49 statute miles north of the mouth of the Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois. We were up early, and pulling up the anchor by 7am. The narrow channel is perpendicular to the Mississippi, with heavy tree growth and a high bank. You have to be really careful to check that no tow-boat and barges are coming along by checking AIS on the chartplotter as well as calling a “securite” on the VHF radio. Once you commit to leaving the channel, there is no stopping. The Mississippi just picks you up and hurls you along. We ran our 51hp Yanmar engine at 2000rpm (as opposed to our normal 2,500 to 2,700rpm range.) Despite the slower engine speed, we were flying along at over 8 knots! The Mississippi in this area was quite narrow, narrower than the Ohio at its mouth. The River is also incredibly twisty. One S turn was laced with whirlpools and eddies. Pretty wild ride.
At 12:15pm we went under the Cairo bridge, turned to port (left) toward the Ohio River, and immediately were slowed to under 5 knots by the current. It is a lot faster going downstream than upstream! As Mark Twain said, “we were racing with islands”, or so it seemed.
As per our instructions, at mile 975 we called the Olmstead lock and dam construction project, 10 miles away. All marine traffic must be escorted thru the construction site and on to the old lock 53. I had been dreading this part of our trip. We had been travelling with Matt, and we arrived at the lock to find our travel companions of the previous day already waiting. After hovering for an hour, we were finally given the go ahead. They would escort our group of four pleasure craft thru, after their shift change…. So we waited some more. FinLly we followed a tow boat thru the massive construction site and on for another 3 miles to the old lock 53. We were herded into a small enclosure and told to wait there until a tow and barges exited the lock. It was a beautiful day, and by this time we were starting to notice that it was getting late. By the time we exited from lock 53 it was 5:30. The sun would set in 45 minutes. We asked the guys at the lock if there was anyplace nearby where we could anchor. The best they could come up with was a spot 20 miles away. Mmm! That would take us at least 4 hours. No way!
We conferred with the three other boats. Our only viable option was to anchor in the Ohio River off Bean Branch Creek. Travelling at night on the Western rivers in not a good idea. There are lots of tow boats pushing barges. We were lucky. It was a perfectly calm and clear night with a 3/4 full moon high in the sky. One of our group was faster, so they had gone ahead of us. We could see their lights in the distance as we carefully navigated along the channel and then off to the anchorage across from a massive (and lit up) chemical plant. We arrived at Bean Branch Creek at 7:45pm. Peaceful night at anchorage.