Green Turtle Bay Marina

 What a long day! We left Paducah at 7 am and 8 hours later, we are tied up to the dock in Green Turtle Bay Marina. We had a decision to make leaving Paducah - take the Kentucky River and go through the Kentucky Lock, or take the Cumberland River and go through the Barkley Lock. The Kentucky route has less current, but more barge traffic and you can wait 2-5 hours to get to lock through, whereas the Cumberland River had 4 knots of current going against us, but it is less traveled and the one lock is pretty laid back and easy to get through right away. After calling the Kentucky Lock early this morning, we decided on the Cumberland route. I will say the current was fierce and slowed our speed down to just around 4 knots per hour - half the speed we normally travel.  Besides that, the water was full of debris to dodge - floating logs, trees, branches and a huge rope that had come loose from a barge tie-up somewhere. We managed to avoid it all, although one of the 8 boats traveling in our floating hit something and he will have to be hauled out of the water here and probably have to replace at least a prop if not a drive shaft.  Ouch!!

The Barkley lock was a pleasant ride up almost 57 feet to the Barkley Lake level and our marina was right outside of it. All 8 looper boats pulled in here today, so it was sort of a cluster getting everyone docked, but we have a great convenient spot and the services here are great.

We are mentally exhausted from being on high alert all day for debris and current, so we opted out of docktails and will have an early to bed night.