Today was a long day. 60 miles, two locks, and skunked at both. For those of you who are not river boaters, we will explain the locks. As the river runs down to the Gulf, it’s going downhill. Many areas of a river have water falls. Well - those water falls don’t bode well for boats, so a series of locks and dams was installed.
The dams hold back the water and can
release water at a controlled rate downstream. The locks are chambers
which boats can enter and be lowered or raised, depending if they are
traveling up or down. The locks are really pretty simple.
They are a “chamber” with doors on both ends which hold back the river.
For us, we are going down stream. When
we get near a lock, we call them on the marine radio to announce our
arrival. The lock will respond with an approximate wait time depending
on the traffic they have.
When they are ready for us, they open
the upstream door, and show us a green light, which is exactly the same
as a common street light. We enter the chamber, pull up to the wall as
directed by the lock attendant, and grab a pair of ropes they send down
to us. We use the ropes to hold our boat against the concrete lock wall.
They then close the upstream door, and
open some VERY LARGE underwater valves to a piping system, which lets
the water from the chamber dump to the lower water level of the river
below. Our boat slowly lowers with the water until we are at the level
of the river below the lock. Then they open the lower door, and we drive
out. For an upwards lockage, the procedure is the same. They let the
boats in, close the doors, and open a valve to the upstream side, which
fills the lock until it is at the height of the river above. Pretty
simple system. No pumps - just gravity doing the work.
The locks we have traversed the past few
days have had only 6’ to 8’ drops. Some locks we encounter will have
over an 80’ rise / drop. The upper St. Anthony lock in Minneapolis has
about a 60’ lift / drop.
OK - so I said we were “skunked” at both. Boaters know what that means - don’t you!
For you non boaters, that means we ran
into commercial traffic. The tows and barges that navigate the river
system are HUGE. A typical “train” is a very powerful tug boat
pushing a train of barges which are 3 barges wide by 5 barges long - 15
total. These trains are so big, they can not get through the locks in
one lockage. The procedure is the tug pushes the first 3 X 3 set of
barges into the chamber. They then uncouple the large cables that tie
them together, and the tug backs out with the remaining 2X3 barges.
The lock attendants then close the
doors, lower the water, then open the exit doors, and winch out the
barges with a cable / winch system. Those barges are secured to a
concrete wall outside the chamber. They then run the water in the lock
back up to get the tug and remaining barges, take them down, open the
lower doors, the tug pushes up the the waiting barges, ties them back
together, and off they go.
The entire process can take up to 2&1/2 hours.
We waited at both locks today.
BUT - we made new friends!!! And we hope tomorrow is better at the locks!
Captn Ken
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