Day 7 on the river

Cold, wet, sucky sums up the morning. It rained most of the night with the winds about 20 miles an hour. Just after we pulled anchor we followed a barge through Fort Madison RR swing bridge. It started to close as we got to it. It had not seen us coming, and we may have gotten under, but would have been close at 13'.  We radioed them and asked to hold, and they did mid-swing. Then on our way into the lock 19, we were pretty sure that we saw the big cruiser docked at the yacht club at Keoukuk.

Coming in the lock was rough. The waves picked up just as we got into the lock, and the wind came behind us blowing hard. About the time we tried to hook to the floating bollards in, the waves inside the lock slammed the boat into the side of the lock.  One of the next waves ran the flood lights on the wall and knocked them loose. I don't think we had any damage, but could see how one could. We rocked around for awhile even after the lock doors closed.  As we dropped down it got a lot better. It end up being a wild ride. We both would be ok if we didn't have to do that again.

I cooked up some lunch as we headed to lock 20. Rain has let up but the wind was still blowing as we waited a couple of hours for a north bound barge at lock 20. We got to lock 21 just as the sun was setting.  The wind was blowing petty good as we grabbed the lines. The wind got the back of the boat and spun us completely around in the lock. After the other boat in the lock got out we spun back around and headed out in the dark to find a spot to drop anchor. 

We have gotten though over half of the locks but only a little over 1/4 of the way to Mobile. We are looking forward to less locks and warmer weather the rest of the time, we hope.

Tomorrow night I should have better internet and will try see if I can fix the errors on the blog. I will repost some of the photos of day 6 and 7 also.