Anyways, we left GTB in the rain. It was certainly the tail end of the storm, so we had clear skies to look forward to. Nevertheless, we had the wipers going. When you leave GTB, you are on Barkley Lake on the Cumberland River. You turn right, go down (up) for about a mile, and then turn right into the Barkley Canal. This is a canal that takes you onto the Tennessee River where you then turn south and head up river. Some of this up down, north south stuff might seem a little disjointed. So, for the uninitiated river travelers, allow me to explain.
When you are on the US Western River System, there are a few things to keep in mind, each of which is an essential part of safe navigation. The terminology is important because, when communicating with other vessels, we all need to be speaking the same language. It's all a part of the Rules of the Road that all captains must master.
Rule Number 1 - when you are traveling up stream, the reds are on the right. Even if traveling up stream on a river taking you to the open ocean, when you are traveling up the river, or against the river current, the reds are on the right. If you screw this up, there is a good chance you will end up aground. This would not be good in the river because once you hit, you could find yourself pinned by the river current and getting off the grounding by yourself will become impossible. Tipping over, rolling over, all sorts of ugliness become a distinct possibility. So, keep the reds to the right when going up stream and you should be ok.
This is particularly important when you come to a place where two rivers merge and there is one of those aids to navigation which has a red or green on top of a red or green; the kind of mark that tells you where the main channel or preferred channel is.
This is a preferred channel or junction marker and indicates a bi-furcation in the channel. To navigate the preferred or primary channel, you should treat the marker as if it had all the characteristics of the color of the top band. If you are headed up river, and if the top band is red, such as the one shown above, you would treat it as a red, starboard side marker (leave it on your right) to access the primary channel. If the top band is green, you would treat it as a port side marker to access the primary channel. If lighted, the marker would have a light the same color as the top band.
Rule Number 2 - when you are traveling up stream, you are "northbound" or "upbound" EVEN IF YOU ARE HEADING IN A SOUTHERLY DIRECTION. This is a very strange thing to get used to. For example, for over 100 miles on the Tennessee River, we have been travelling essentially south; our headings have generally been between 120 and 220 depending on where we are. Yet, we are a northbound boat. We have to remember this when talking to commercial traffic. You don't want to identify yourself as a southbound pleasure craft at a particular location when you are really northbound. It would create confusion. Recall I said it is important that we all speak the same language out there. It is an essential part of the rules of navigation.
Another thing that takes some real getting used to is understanding the water depth as it relates to the rivers. You see, it is simply not enough to stay on the line where the barges go, if you have any hope of stopping for the night in an anchorage, or if you want to determine whether or not you can even get in. Fortunately, there is a solution. The river folks and the US Army Corps of Engineers refer to water depth on the rivers as the "Pool levels".
Under normal conditions, the locks on the rivers create lakes or pools. For example, there are numerous locks on the Tennessee River between its origin quite a few miles past Knoxville and where it pours into the Ohio River. For several days, after leaving GTB, we were on what is called Kentucky Lake. It's the Tennessee River, but we were on the lake created by the Kentucky Lock and Dam. The next lock we encounter will be the Pickwick Lock and Dam and then we will be on Pickwick Lake (still the Tennessee River).
Anyways, the pool level is the height above sea level of the surface of the water in the pool. You heard me correctly. The pool level, the thingy we consider to determine whether or not there should be enough water under the boat to go in there, is a measure of the height of the surface of the water above sea level.
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This diagram from the TVA demonstrates the various pools created by the various dams. Nine main-river dams form a “staircase” of quiet, pooled water and controlled current — a continuous series of reservoirs that stretches along the entire length of the Tennessee River. From its beginning just above Knoxville, the Tennessee drops a total of 513 feet in elevation before it joins the Ohio River. |
Now, it could be said that the primary purpose of the locks and dams is to maintain the navigability of the Western River System. Afterall, probably more than a billion dollars of commerce takes place on these rivers each year. So, entities such as the Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) use the system of dams to control the water depth to ensure there is at least 9 feet of water in the main channels to guaranty barge traffic can move. This all happened between 1930 and 1958 when the federal government exercised its jurisdiction over the Western River System and established certain depth authorizations. So, it's really all about what to do with the river to make sure you can move a barge on it.
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According to the TVA, over 50 million tons of goods move up and down the Tennessee River every year. Anything that’s transported in bulk quantities makes a good candidate for shipping by barge. |
The average person may think of a dam as a huge solid structure used to block the flow in a river and form a lake. This is not true of navigation dams, like those on the upper Mississippi or on the Tennessee. These dams are not solid but are a series of concrete piers across the river with movable gates between the piers. A dam is formed when the gates are lowered, causing the water level upstream of the dam to rise and form a slack-water pool deep enough for navigation. Each dam is operated to accommodate river flow conditions. In normal operation, all gates are partially open, to allow water to flow through. As the river flow increases or decreases, the gate openings are increased or decreased accordingly. These increases or decreases affect the depth of the pool as well as changes in water flow caused by precipitation or draught.
In each pool, field surveys have established the ordinary high water profile, and the location of the primary control point. Project pool elevation is maintained at the primary control point. So, the depth of a pool is related to this. Again, the pool level is a factor of height of the surface of the water above sea level. The bottom of the river is also measured in terms of height above sea level.
Here is an example to make this perhaps a little less confusing:
Suppose you are cruising upstream on Wheeler Lake and are nearing Decatur, Alabama (which we will be soon enough). You decide to leave the main channel to enter an anchorage near Mile Marker 301 on the LDB. The official Tennessee River Chart shows the river bottom where you wish to leave the channel has an elevation of 538 feet above sea level. It also shows a contour. This contour represents a change in the river bottom. In this example, the contour shows an increase in elevation to 550 feet. As you have probably guessed, if the bottom of the river comes up, it is getting shallower.
Now, assume that the charts show that the elevation of Wheeler Lake at normal pool is 556 feet. This means that as you leave the navigation channel, you can espect the water to be 556 minus 538 or 18 feet deep. It also means you will encounter water only six feet deep or 556 minus 550.
But, as you can certainly imagine, the pool levels change depending on the season. So, you will have winter pool, summer pool, fall pool, etc. These seasonal levels may be different from "normal" pool.
Using the same circumstance above, imagine if there is a draught and the elevation of Wheeler Lake is only 551 instead of the normal pool height of 556. This means you have five feet less water under the boat at all times in Wheeler Lake. Thus, using the same example above, you would have a water depth of 13 feet as you leave the navigation channel that would quickly decrease to one foot (551 minus 538 equals 13 and then 556 minus 551 equals 1).
So, now you are wondering how you determine the pool level. First, normal pool is printed on the navigational charts published by the ACOE. Next, you go to the TVA website and get the latest guage information for the lake you are navigating in. Here is a link to the TVA for information on Kentucky Lake. http://www.tva.gov/lakes/kyh_r.htm Also, at a number of points along the river in each pool, there are guages you can read off to get this information. These guage locations are published and often correspond with fixed mile markers. It really takes some getting used to. All of a sudden, your depth guage just became secondary. What you really need is an altimeter.
What's more? When the government authorized the construction of the dams to make the rivers navigable, you can imagine what happened to the areas surrounding the river. Yes, they were flooded and the government had to acquire all those lands. Yes, in order to operate the slack-water pool system, it was necessary for the federal government to acquire interest in all real estate that would be subject to flooding caused by the use of the dams. Much of this land is now serving the public for recreational purposes and as wildlife refuges. Some land is owned outright and some is covered by "flowage easements" allowing artificial flooding of privately-owned land, if necessary.
What does this mean to us? Well, it could mean a lot of things, but of primary concern is dropping an anchor. Can you imagine dropping your hook and having it get tangled in what was once a barbed wire fence enclosure? There are also what are called stump fields out there looming just under the surface, not to mention old roads and even, in some cases, structures. So, we use a trip line at all times when anchoring on the rivers. Thus far, we have managed to avoid hooking an old chimney.
So, in review, up might be down, right may be left, southbound might really be northbound, red could be green, and water depth in Tennessee is measured against its relation to the level of a distant ocean. Got that?
In spite of all the aforementioned nonsense, we did manage to stop for a night after leaving GTB in a lovely spot called Cypress Creek. It was beautiful. We slid into this little round area almost completely surrounded by trees except for the south entrance which gave us a wonderful view down Kentucky Lake towards a bridge. It was so quiet, you could hear those falling leaves echoing as they touched down on the surface of the water. It was a very pleasant night.
In the morning, however, we upped anchor and headed on up the river to a place called New Johnsonville, Tennessee where we got a slip at the Pebble Isle Marina. We selected this place because it has a courtesy car and was only a short distance from the town of Waverly where there was a movie theatre.
Brenda really wanted to go to the first showing of the film, "Breaking Dawn", the fourth film in the seemingly endless Twilight saga. So, we made the run and the effort. Unfortunately, the film was sold out for opening night. We were not to be discouraged, however, and stayed another night. This was really no problem since the marina was very cool, the people were ridiculously friendly, and we had a chance to cruise around in the courtesy van and see some sights. Really there is not a lot to see other than some very beautiful countryside. The town itself was small but spread out. Cool stores, and a genuine small town feel. The local highschool cheerleaders were all dressed and taking photographs in front of the county courthouse and the statute of some local civil war hero. Ultimately, we did go to see the movie. We had a nice time. We had dinner at the Waverly Cafe and then got in line. I guess I thought that, since it was sold out the night before, there would probably not be much of a line for night number 2. I'm thinking to myself, this is a small town. You would think that everyone who wanted to see it would have already seen it. Well, I was wrong. Brenda ended up leaving me at the table and ran across the street to get in the steadily growing line. By the time the ticket booth opened, the line was up the street and around the corner. The crowd was great; everything from grandma and grandpa, to outback hillbillies, homegirls to highschoolers in big trucks. It was great. Dinner was good. The movie was more like "Breaking Wind", but we laughed a lot nevertheless.
After a stupendous breakfast called a "Shipwreck", we left this beautiful marina and continued heading south. We ran all day and finally settled for the night in an anchorage called Double Island. Now, there is no rule which says you must travel X number of miles per day. However, sometimes there are logical breaks. For instance, sometimes it makes sense if you have a considered destination 110 miles away, to travel that distance in 3 days, 33 miles per day (if possible depending on where the anchorages are). You could do it in 2 days, but that's 55 miles per day and at 6.5 knots, that takes a long time and makes for a long day behind the wheel. So, we like to break it up a little more. However, sometimes, the distance between anchorages or marinas makes this kind of planning difficult. So, from Double Island, we had basically a couple choices. Note, however, these choices also consider the pending storm (the one which is right now as I am writing this dribble, pelting us with rain, thunder and lightning).
We could have chose to run 48 miles to an anchorage about 7 miles short of the Pickwick Lock and Dam and then go the couple miles through. We could have chose a short 10 mile run to Clifton, Tennessee where there is a little city marina with a courtesy car and a nearby supermarket. Well, we chose Clifton. Not only does it have all that I just mentioned, it is a perfect day away from the other side of the Pickwick Dam. As we are getting closer to Thanksgiving, we wanted to make sure we could have the things we need to make a perfect dinner......again. We did the TG dinner in Nashville for my mother who is not hosting her own this year. We thought it would be a nice thing to do. Nevertheless, we will do it again for the two of us and we needed green beans and sweet potatoes. I know this seems like a rather mundane reason to stop, but it is what it is.
Clifton is a very cool little town. The marina is small, but it works and is very nice and new. The folks here are really nice. After we completed our shopping, we spent the rest of the day on Sunday just hanging around in the cafe watching football. I cannot remember the last time I did that. It sure felt good to spend a day doing just about nothing.
Given the intensity of this rain storm, I sure am glad we're tied up snug as a bug in a rug here in Clifton. Between the wind and the rain, and the lightning and the thunder, we might be just fine out on a hook somewhere, but it's better to be inside, so to speak. If this lets up soon, we may head out. If not, we will stay in one more day and see what happens. Like I said above, three days of crap and three days of nice, three of crap, three of nice. It's just the cycle mother nature is in right now and we have learned to cope. So, I'm making chili in the little crock pot Barry and Jodie gratiously bestowed upon us. Never done that before. We'll see how it comes out.
That's all for now.
Bye y'all
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