Green Turtle Bay Marina

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 171 - September 18, 2017

I got up early and took Baxter up to the park above the Paducah Marina for his morning constitutional. It was 6:30 a.m. but there were already quite a few walkers and joggers out. Mainly I wanted to go up to the top and out through the yellow tape, past the barricade, and get back in before any of the contractor's people arrived! I know Loopers have reported the contractor is OK with Loopers tying up, but my City background tells me that I really should not be here with the yellow tape and barricades! But we had our coffee and toast and were off before anybody else came down to the dock.

We had not made reservations at Green Turtle Bay Marina, since we did not know when we would arrive with the uncertain status of the Ohio River locks. I fired up the computer on the way and used dockwa.com to request reservations for three nights, and we had a very quick response confirming our reservations! This is a WAY better system than having to phone every marina! 

Lucy graced us with her presence in the cabin this morning while we were cruising! She has just been getting more and more willing to spend time out in the cabin, and we are really enjoying it!

One relaxed kitty cat! NOT the same cat that used to live under our bed!

We had about 12 miles to go up the Ohio before we turned up the Cumberland River for the 31 mile run to Lake Barkley. The cruise on the Cumberland was supposed to be "scenic" but it pretty much was the same as all the other rivers, with a couple of industrial sites and not much else. We did have one interesting encounter with a tow at a bend - the first time this has happened since leaving Chicago - but AIS told us the name of the towboat, we called on the VHF, and the captain told us what he wanted us to do, which was what we could see we needed to do anyway, and it all went smoothly!

Scenic Cumberland"

We made the Barkely Lake Lock just a little bit after the other boats we had been with in Paducah locked through. We could see them in the lock on the AIS! This is a fairly new modern lock. The lock master told us it would be about 15 minutes after the other boats left the lock before we could enter the chamber. He was pretty much dead on! We cruised into the lock, I caught a floating bollard with our lock line, and we advised the lock master we were secure. This was a 57 foot rise, and it went really quickly!

The Green Turtle Bay Marina on Lake Barkley is less than a mile past the lock, and I called on the VHF just as soon as we entered the marina breakwater. We were directed to go straight ahead, and our slip was literally a straight shot in. We have a bit of a "to do" list for tomorrow, but tonight we relaxed with sundowners and another great rib eye and baked potato dinner!

This photo really belongs to tomorrow's blog post, but if you were wondering why this is called Green Turtle Bay Marina, here is the reason!

This guy was swimming right beside Daydream in our slip, attracted by just a little cat food in the water!