New Martinsville to Marietta

 Day 8:  Saturday, August 20, 2016

You can monitor our trip at the link: Second Winds Progress Live

We awoke to another pleasant foggy morning.  It was just the kind of morning that made sausage gravy a good fit.  So it was.

We were underway by about 9:00 and as we pulled away from the dock a barge

Traveling in the morning fog on calm waters

with a large tow was passing heading in our direction.  We have been traveling at about 4 knots and so was he.  I decided not to compete with him for the river and slowed down to let him get ahead.  The problem with following him was the confusion that he imparted into the water.  So I called him on the radio and told him I was going to pass on his “one whistle” side and would stay out of his way. 

The “one whistle” is a riverboat captain term that stems from the old steam boat days when the only way they could communicate was by whistle.  And, one whistle refers to the port side of the boat and two whistle means the starboard or right side of the boat.  On

Little harbor tow working a coal barge at a staging area.

our first trip down the river, we were doing quite a bit of actual sailing and tacking back and forth across the river.  When we would encounter a barge, they had no idea what we were going to do so I started calling and asking which side they wanted to pass.  To my surprise, the answer came back something like, “How about the one!”  That obviously meant nothing to us so I got out a book of nautical terms and it was defined.  We called often and the answer was always in the same format.

We sped up to 5 knots and slowly passed and pulled ahead of the barge.  We maintained that speed until we were about a mile ahead of him then throttled back to our quieter 4 knots. 

As I mentioned yesterday, this is a relatively isolated part of the river.  We did see a couple of industrial complexes on the West Virginia side of the river.  Janine commented that it is interesting that we saw very few plants of any type on the Ohio side and those that we did see were all small.  On the WV side, some of the complexes were huge.  I assume it had to do with taxes and incentives provided in the past by our friends from the southeast.

We passed the town of Sistersville WV, the name of which came about in an

The Sistersville Ferry

interesting way.  The man who settled this area was Charles Wells and he fathered 22 children with two wives.  Upon his death, his properties were divided up among his kids.  Two sisters had their tracts side by side so they merged them and started the settlement in their name. Sistersville also is somewhat famous in that it has the Sistersville Ferry that was established in 1817 and is the oldest operating ferry on the Ohio.  Walk-ons ride for $1.00 and cars/small trucks go for $4.00.

We didn’t stop at any small towns on the trip today.   

Our original plan was to travel about 25 miles and anchor somewhere along the way.  Since we were traveling somewhat faster than usual, we reached that 25 mile mark at a bit after 1:00.  Our plan for tomorrow was to travel on to Marietta where we would join some friends from the Mid-Ohio Valley Sail and Power Squadron for dinner Sunday evening.  We had stayed in Marietta on our previous trip and found it to be a great stop for a number of reasons. So we decided to step up the pace and motor on the 20 remaining miles to there.  I sped up to 6 knots, about top speed for the boat and we headed forth.

Coal fired powerplant at the Willow Island Dam

About 10 miles upstream from Marietta, we encountered the Willow Island Lock and Dam.  I was unable to raise the lockmaster on the radio so I finally got him on the cell phone.  He told us that he had another boat rising in the chamber and that we could enter as soon as the gates were open and the chamber was clear. We made a smooth entry and tie-up and descent through the lock.  We are getting the procedure down pretty well.

We had trouble contacting the Marietta Harbor so we called our friend Craig Keaton who lives near there and he volunteered to make arrangements for our stay.  He also got the phone number for the Harbor so we were able to call them and get the particulars of docking.

As we moved into the waters near Marietta, we began to encounter more pleasure

The historic Marietta water front

boats.  At one point I could see 18 boats hanging around in the river.  Most of them were anchored or drifting with folks swimming. It is a warm and sunny Saturday in late August.  The season will be over soon.

At the marina, we were directed up to the fuel dock. Once there, we took on some fuel and a helpful young man directed us to our assigned space in the really crowded dock.  Where he had us parked was

Marietta's andmark Lafayette Hotel

behind 2 other boats that and our position locked them in with no way to get out without our untying and moving away.

The folks here are most helpful and friendly.  We were both excited to find that they also had 10 flavors of ice cream for sale in the dock office.  So, after our dinner of Mountain Home Freeze Dried Sweet and Sour Pork we headed for the office for a bowl of peach ice cream.  The freeze dried meal was really good, however very expensive as a cruising food.

The wind was blowing fairly hard from behind the boat causing our little craft to

Paddle Wheel tour boat leaving the Muskingum River

dance freshly in her moorings.  We shall see how we do sleeping.  They are calling for more thunder storms.