Day 3: Friday September 7, 2012

Underway: 9:00 am        Motor Off: 7:10 pm        Miles Traveled: 37        Stayed At: Anchor

First Things First: First walk on a beach. First dinghy ride to shore. First 100 miles at mile 745 – we’re 1/60^th of the way there. First near disaster. First “wilderness” anchorage in Kiesel Horse Bay downriver from Lock 5 –very quiet and peaceful – best anchorage yet.

(This blog post is rated GA –Grandma Alert – don’t read if you are over 80 years old and worried about what your children are doing with their spare time). A very interesting day. Cloudy and a little rain before we left our anchorage. Sun gradually came out and we cruised downriver with a gentle tailwind. We stopped at Wabasha to get gas, walk and check out the Eagle Museum right next to the municipal dock.

Headed downriver, passed a daymark marking our first 100 miles and decided to take advantage of a perfect breeze to sail down wind (with a little assist from the motor). We were consistently hitting 6.9 mph which, for our little boat, is rare but a lot of fun. We soon saw Lock #5 in the distance at the end of a long open bay above the dam. For those of you who don’t sail, running downwind is usually much quieter and easier than beating upwind.  You don’t notice the wind building – usually because you are having too much fun.  Well, the wind was probably gusting to 20 mph+ by the time we had to take the sail down. A challenge but we managed and immediately noticed that there were 2-3 foot rollers running straight down the bay with whitecaps driving us toward the lock. Well, we were told to wait for about 45 minutes (pounding upwind and surfing downwind) for a tow to lock through. We decided to ask if we could wait at the lock wall which they ok’d. We aimed for a place to tie up (the wrong place actually) and probably 500 feet from the wall, the motor sputtered and died. We had run out of gas at the worst possible time. Keep in mind, we are towing a dinghy which is now bumping into the end of the boat, the wind is gusting to 20 mph, the waves are 2-3 feet high (or worse since they are bouncing off the concrete wall) and a solid black wall is approaching fast. With some luck, we were able to sort of surf/sail the boat against the wall but we were moving too fast. We grabbed a long steel rail at the top of the wall and were slowly able to stop the boat and tie off temporarily (as waves were nearly swamping the cockpit and washing over the top of the motor. I quickly refilled the gas tank and we successfully restarted the motor (first pull) and pulled away from the wall to try again after the tow was done. It ended up being about 2 hours for us to get through the lock process. Suffice it to say we learned a lot. We survived to cruise another day.

The challenges were not over for the day but finding a decent anchorage was a “breeze” compared to our lock experience.

Lessons Learned:  (1) Pay attention to the weather even when it is sunny and you are having a blast. (2) Check and fill the gas tank frequently and especially before critical maneuvers. (3) Don’t assume things – double check the instructions if in doubt.