Sunday, September 27, 2009

We slept very well last night. The temperature was on the cool side, there was a bit of a breeze, and the waves were gentle. It was now time to decide which way we were going to take to the Kentucky Lake area. Because the current on the Ohio was so strong and we didn’t want to push our fuel to the very end, we decided to take the shorter route on the Tennessee River. It was a lovely morning – clear and sunny – so we pulled anchor at 7:10 am and set out for Kentucky Lake. We thought we could make the Kentucky Lock by noon, but we had no idea how long we would have to wait for lockage. Stories we’d heard rumored of waits from 2 to 6 hours.

On our journey up the Tennessee River, we did not encounter any commercial traffic in either direction; in fact, the only recreational traffic we saw were local fishermen speeding by on their flat bottom boats. When we were about 2 miles from the lock, we gave them a call to let them know we were approaching and requested a lock-through when possible. The lockmaster said he would have the lock ready for us! We drove right into the chamber and were out of there by 12:15 pm! Gale says that’s from “Clean livin’, Baby!” It may have had something to do with it being Sunday morning, too!

As we entered Kentucky Lake, the scene was spectacular. We saw dozens of sailboats out enjoying the day, the Lake itself was huge, but still reminded us a lot of Clear Lake. We didn’t go too far before killing the engine and drifting while we had our lunch. As we were coming to a stop, we heard a greeting on the radio, “Blue Heron, Welcome to Kentucky!” A passing sailboat must have watched us come through the lock, noted that our mast was down, and knew that we were just arriving in the area.

We called our friends, Don and Ally, from Ally’s Cat, to see if they were at the Green Turtle Bay Marina yet. They had just arrived at the marina this morning even though they left Alton two days before we did. Don told us that we definitely made the right choice taking the Tennessee River route. They had chosen the Cumberland River and said they fought the current all the way.

The Green Turtle Bay Marina (GTB) was on Lake Barkley so we decided to take the canal between the two lakes and check it out. We stopped at the fuel dock, looked over the facilities, and decided to stay. We filled our fuel tanks and made the fuel economy calculations: 291 miles, 25.1 gallons or 11.6 miles per gallon. That averaged out to 1.8 hours per gallon. Not bad! We settled into our slip, turned on the computer, and the “Skype” phone rang almost immediately. Our friends Bob and Susie had seen that we were online and made contact! We talked to them for a few minutes and then headed up to the showers. Gale was done before Maureen, but she was back on the boat at 5:20. The impromptu “Looper” cocktail party had started in the gazebo a few yards from where we were docked so we walked up the steps to join everyone. We met a few new friends, and caught up with a few “old” ones.

After leaving the cocktail party, we headed up to the Yacht Club for dinner. This is a dry county, so we had to bring our own bottle and have it served to us. Our meal was fantastic and began with a wedge salad – a wedge of a head of lettuce smothered with blue cheese, feta cheese and garnished with a few tomato slices. The main course was stuffed orange roughy – the stuffing was a mixture of shrimp, crab and cream cheese covered with another cream sauce! We’re pretty sure we each had about 1,000 calories on our plates! We ate it all and it was heavenly!