October 9, 2013  Day 24   Wednesday

Anchorage at 1.5 mile marker in the river was a good one, beautiful night skies and amazing morning sun.  Slow current with no waves from the tow boats and barges..  Entered the dreaded Ohio, was very busy around Cairo, Ill. at one point wondered how to get around all the tow boats building huge groups of barges 21 sometimes, think may 28 we saw at one point.  Our speed has dropped to 3-3.5 knots as expected going against the Ohio River.  It's current speed is supposed to be around 3 knots against us.  After getting thru all the traffic we went to the Kentucky side out of the sailing channel, hoping to get better time and not to hit shallow water or logs in the water.  As we were told the Ohio is running fast to the south with lots of tree branches/logs and wide. Wind was out of the east, tried the Jib up which helped some with the speed.  Partly cloudy and temp about 50's.  Oh yes the electric start on the motor quit a couple of days ago, but will start if Curt pulls the cord.  Passed over Lock 53, Wickets were down, good current or rapids going over the wickets, our speed dropped to 1.4 knots for a little while till over the dam, wondering if we'll make it up over the wickets at Lock 52.  previous sailboat had to be towed over it because of the fast current.  Made it two Lock 52, wickets were down, lock master said just go over it following the tow boat who was a 1/2 mile ahead.  Went to the green buoys as suggested by other previous boaters, our speed dropped to .5 knots so I said forget this I turned toward the red buoys and in the processed must have made it over the wickets because our speed slowly increased and we were passing thru the eddies/whirlpools being tossed around a little.  Curt finally took a deep breath, we're home free now, well almost.  Anchored on the Kentucky side of the Ohio, what we thought to be far away from the sailing channel and waves of the tow boats/barges.  First tow boat waves rocked us for about 10 minutes, waves kept bouncing off shore and back to our boat.  Shore was approx. 50 ft and depth 12 ft.