Day 376: Sunday, September 15, 2013

Port to Port: Henry Harbor Marina to Duck Island

Underway: 6:28 am      Motor Off: 4:15 pm      Miles Traveled: 61      Stayed At: Marina

First Things First: First time seeing guys in a small boat using crossbows to shoot asian carp.

Mile 196 to Mile 135: After a quiet night tied up to an ancient, crumbling lock, we got up early to overcast sky’s and no fog. We have over 30 miles to our first lock so we should be able to make some serious mileage.

The river was very quiet for a weekend morning. We pretty much had the river to ourselves. Our friends on Tour De Loop caught up to us after a few hours and were soon out of sight. We did have a new adventure on an otherwise uneventful day. Have you heard of asian carp? Did you know they can fly? Well, they can. Cindy was driving and carp were occasionally jumping around us. Well two of them decided to try sailing and ended up in the cockpit flopping around sliming up everything. Cindy does not like uninvited critters. I had luckily warned her earlier that it could happen and to be mentally prepared for the possibility. She did not steer us into the shoreline or jump overboard. After I flipped them back into the water, I took the tiller and Cindy went below to recompose herself. We all survived and definitely have a story to tell (we are not hoping to catch up to Spiritus’ record of 11 carp so far).

Except for some intermittent mist and a little wind on the nose, today was a great travel day. It was overcast and cool. The river was quiet. We found our chosen anchorage and, except for the fact that the island we were going to anchor behind didn’t have any water behind it anymore (the river is low), we were still able to anchor in a quiet, safe spot out of the channel. The forecast rain didn’t really start until we were done with dinner and relaxing down in the cabin. Only 135 miles left till we cross our wake. Amazing.