We limped into Green Turtle Bay Marina on Saturday April 13th. What a wonderful day it was too. Once we got off the Ohio River and onto the Cumberland the sun came out, the wind died down, the crap in the river magically disappeared and the entire aura and feeling changed.

The Cumberland River is a beautiful clear blue waterway. This day was reminiscent of previous years on the ICW and through the Erie Canal.

We only had one barge pack in front of us on the journey. I called him asking him if he was planning on going through the Barkley Lock as that would have made a difference in our timing…slow down to let him get through, which could have taken a couple of hours for a pack his size and raising the 53 feet necessary to get into Barkley Lake, or hopefully be able to just continue on. Finally, some good luck! as he was stopping at a shipping dock just a few more miles further up river. Michael looked at the lock traffic and did not see anyone coming our way and he called the lock to verify it was traffic free and to see if they were expecting any barges soon. The lock master told him it was clear and that he sees us on AIS and was getting the lock ready for our passage. Nice! We got to the lock and went right in and were lifted and through within 15 minutes. This lock, or really any lock on the rivers, can sometimes take hours depending on commercial barge traffic, which has priority. our destination, Green Turtle Bay Marina was less than a mile from the lock.

Green Turtle Bay Resort and Marina is on Barkley Lake, a long narrow lake within the Cumberland River, located in Grand Rivers, KY. GTB is a very popular year round vacation destination. It is very pretty, and this time of the season, very quiet. We are the only boat here at the transient dock, which is really nice.

Why it’s called Green Turtle Bay. They are everywhere from bitty babies to dinner size

Grand Rivers Kentucky is surrounded by outdoor beauty, the village offers access to two major lakes, Kentucky Lake and Barkley Lake, as well as the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area. The little town has a great array of restaurants, shops, and a little market. The claim to fame is Patti’s 1880’s Settlement, which is reminiscent of old school Knott’s Berry Farm when it was free to get in and before they had all the rides. Everyone raves about the restaurant…meh, it was okay. Not the best, but also, not the worst we have run into.

Yesterday we even took a marina loaned golf cart into the village. Everyone here has golf carts here.

‘THIS is what’ is in the background

The boat was pulled out of the water on Monday and the props were pulled off…again. One of the fins on the starboard side had a definite curve to it. The port side also had a piece of line wrapped around it.

Up she goes again

Since we were staying on the boat and it needs to be plugged into power, the push boat took her back to the slip.

Michael diligently spent a few days trying to find a repair place for our old props, which are now spares, and a set of available new props. During that journey he confirmed that the last place that worked on the props, in St. Charles, MO, had cut them down an inch from 24″ to 23″ due to the damage. That discovery cleared up a lot of confusion and questions for Michael. Finally he found a guy who found a place, in Florida, that had the original 24 inch props for our boat in stock and would ship them to us, for a much more reasonable price than he had been getting from places in Ohio and Michigan, $2300.00 each, plus shipping of course. They are supposed to get here on Monday or Tuesday.

In the meantime, we drove the old props 364 miles round trip to Iuka Mississippi to a repair place. Originally the estimate was a week, then after discussion it became tomorrow, then after more discussion it became “hang on a sec”. The machinist took a look at them and determined the port side was perfect and the starboard side only had a curl on one fin. In truing it there was another fin that was a titch out of whack as well. But, all in all, he did it right there while we watched and it only took about a half an hour. Nice! Especially since we won’t have to rent another car for a day and make that drive across 2 other states again to get them back. And the bonus, it only cost us $200.00, oh, and plus $20.00 beer money.

In the meantime, we are here for another week, scheduled to leave on Saturday April 27th. But there is an in the water boat show here in the marina that Michael may want to stay an extra day for. We’ll see what happens, makes no difference to me.

Due to the condition of the Ohio River we have scrapped our plans to go to Louisville. There is just too much crap in the water so we have decided to spend time in these two lakes. There are a lot of anchoring locations all around here that people say are very pleasant and enjoyable. So we will take advantage of some of those as we make our way on the Cumberland River up into Nashville where Bruce and Diane will again be joining us for some of the river adventures. That’s going to be fun.

That is all for now. Check back in a little while to see where we are. Love to all, Gina and Mike