We cut a day off our travel time so we went all the way to Clarksville the first night and then we tried a Kentucky State Marina the second. That has been our biggest disappointment thus far on the trip. It was over 2 miles off the main river, which I knew, but it was not as well marked as it should have been. We treaded very slowly to the harbor and were told we had to dock at the fuel dock. The dock hands were friendly but not boat savvy. The wind was off the dock and they were reluctant to loop the lines around the cleats but then found out that they could not hold the boat; oh well after some direction we got things tied down. I would have much preferred to go directly to our covered slip. Linda went in to pay but they would not accept us until we showed them our insurance??? No explanation. After much probing and being told repeatedly that the info is on the website?? (which did me no good at the desk or the previous 5 days on the boat) we found out that it is state policy that each boat must show that they have at least $300,000 in liability insurance. Luckily, I did bring the policy and I did find it so we were allowed to stay. Then we asked about washrooms and laundry only to be told that it is not there responsibility it is the parks group that handles that. They did tell us where the building was but would not give us any indication what they were like. Well after lugging all of our laundry to the building up the hill we discovered that it was very rustic; a fish cleaning table, washrooms that you might find in a wilderness park, that is no doors, concrete floors and spiders everywhere, and an old rusty, filthy washer....Yyyyuck. To top it off, the wifi did not reach our boat. On the bright side, we only paid $24.60 for the privilege of going through this h.....
Our next day was worse. We were so glad to leave and got out of the bay without a problem. Things were looking up, we only had 30 miles to GTB, our friends had a courtesy van reserved for 2 PM and the canvas guy was set to stop by in the afternoon, then......were is the next buoy??? Neither of us could find it so we were going dead slow on the proper side of a buoy just off our port in 65 feet of water. It still did not feel right. There was a fishing boat ahead of us and a tug to our right. Just as I started to turn right, still no buoys ahead, we ran aground. We were stuck. It didn't sound nasty, there was no bump, we just stopped moving. I decided that I would first lighten the load on the boat before trying to move myself off of whatever I was on. I had almost 200 gals. of water on board which we started to empty. I was also thinking of taking the dinghy off as that would be a few hundred pounds. Before we really got started in earnest, the fisherman in the bass boat came over and said it gets shallow pretty quick there. In fact, they were on our right side in 52 feet of water and we were in 4 feet and stuck. They offered to help so I tossed them a line and they gently pulled us off the sand bar. So far so good. I started the engines and put each one in gear and could not detect anything untoward. We continued on our journey, after getting directions to the channel (it was not clear at all) and when the opportunity presented itself, I took the boat up on plane. No apparent vibrations; this is good. Well back at the dock I went into the water and checked the props. I could not see well but I was able to feel the edges of all four blades on each propeller and did not find any nicks or feel any bends. I think that we got away with one.
The rest of the day went as planned and the next day was good as well. We re-provisioned the boat, completed the laundry, had the dinghy cover completed and installed and went out to supper with friends both nights. We are ready to go again.
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