Are the Locks Getting Bigger, or Are We Just Going Upstream? (Inland Transit Day 5)
Tennessee River Mile 41
Kentucky Lake
Aurora, KY
Log Entry by Program Manager Tatiana Dalton
Saturday, October 29, 2022
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The days have begun to run together a bit, especially since they always seem to begin and end with a lock, which are becoming harder to tell apart. I’m not standing a watch during this transit, unlike most of my shipmates, who are on duty four out of every twelve hours, day and night. I have the luxury of sleeping through the night, which means distinct days with beginning, middle, and end, but even though I’ve been sleeping soundly I am continuously aware that we are moving. Every hour of travel brings us to a totally new place which disappears quicker than I can get used to it, which is both thrilling and exhausting.
After a brief stint on the Ohio River, we moved on to the Tennessee. While we will travel 218 miles each on the Mississippi and Tennessee, we spent just 46 miles on the Ohio. Since we started on the Ohio River, we’ve been moving upstream for a change. The locks we passed through today seemed huge, but as Capt. Hill pointed out, “All locks look big when you’re moving upstream.” Motoring into a lock chamber when the water is at its lowest level feels like entering a concrete fortress with towering walls—and when the gates swing shut behind you, it can feel even more foreboding.
In maintenance news, the crew continued to work on the two spars laid out on deck. Johnny taught Adam and Andrew and Aurora to varnish, and the team also primed most of the white parts of the spars as well. Brianna worked on filling in cracks and holes in the backstay spreaders with epoxy to strengthen them and prevent rot. The syringe she was using looked just like what you might use to fill jelly donuts—if she ever decides to leave tall ships behind, perhaps she has a career as a pastry chef. Rob also fixed the sink in the port head so that we no longer have to keep a bucket underneath it.
Now, at 2015, it’s starting to rain, so it’s time to scurry around on deck and cover our maintenance projects with tarps. That’s the challenge of painting and varnishing in an outdoor space—not that this dance is unfamiliar to anyone who works on boats.
