Ohio river locks

By: dreinken on August 17th, 2015, 8:48 pm

We are currently at Green Turtle and have completed the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. The Mississippi current was about 5 mph when we went down this past week. We did stay at Hoppies, but didn’t get there in time to go to the Blue Owl for lunch. The Mel Price and Chain of Rocks took us 6 hours to complete. There is a lot of barge traffic still backed up on the rivers. And we were stuck in the Chain of Rocks lock as they couldn’t get the down bound door to open.

We choose to go to Little Diversion from Hoppies as we wanted to get up the Ohio before the small chamber lock at 52 was closing for repairs starting Aug 17. There is a four week period in which both locks at 52 will be down. Information we received at Little Diversion about the two locks on the Ohio, led us to change plans. We went to Angelo Towhead instead of heading up the Ohio. This was an excellent strategy and we suggest that all loopers think about anchoring at Angelo Towhead. Rationale: the new Omsted Lock is almost completed, and they are putting in the wicket dam now. You can’t go through this area without a lead tow. When you arrive at Omstead Lock, you need to contact the lock master on Channel 13 or call 618-738-6403. They will ask for information about your boat and number of passengers. We arrived early in the morning and were lucky to only have to wait 30 minutes for the shadow tow to arrive to take barge traffic up bound through the 2 mile area. If we had been later, we would have to wait about 3 hours as the shadow tow takes tows up and then waits and brings tows down. There was no problem with pleasure craft following barge traffic. You will travel at a slow rate of speed and must stay in position behind tows (they have priority). Unfortunately, anchorages that Skipper Bob suggests are currently unavailable as tows are using them as waiting areas. 966.0, 949.0 and 944.5 where filled with barge traffic. Thus, there is nowhere for pleasure craft to wait or anchor overnight. Lock 53 is being removed – demolition barges were there. The locks are gone, but the wicket dam is still in place. We heard a sad story from the Omsted lockmaster, that a pleasure craft tried to pass a barge at lock 53 and crashed into the wicket dam which is currently only 2 feet under water. Lock 52 is scheduled for closure during the next four week (two weeks for smaller lock and two weeks for larger lock). We didn’t have to wait long, but again tows have first priority. We then moved to the Cumberland Towhead for the night. Loopers in front of us, tried to go from Little Diversion to Cumberland Towhead in one day, but they ended up going through lock 52 at 9:00 p.m. and had to travel in the dark up to the anchorage. We were glad that we stopped at Angelo Towhead.