We awoke to a gray and cloudy morning with 56 degrees and it was very easy to snuggle in until 7:30. We were practically the only boat in the transient area and I thought that it would be a perfect place for me to practice the dreaded docking. We have a single screw boat with no bow or stern thruster and I have to get over my fear of crashing. Bob is a very good teacher and he took me through the steps of docking and undocking. When I am docking our small 32 foot boat, she seems like an ocean liner. I did better than last time, nobody got hurt and no boats were injured.
I undocked for the last time at 9:45 and we eased back out through the narrow harbor channel to KY Lake with a slight wind behind us as we proceeded downbound. We crossed the state line into TN at milepost 49.
We could see a huge spray of water behind us as a 70 foot powerboat, “Water Gremlin”, hailed us on Channel 16 courteously alerting us that would slow down and pass us. At the same time, the barge and pusher, “Edwin Kennedy”, upbound was also going to pass. This area has so many recreational boats that we almost forgot about the barge traffic.
We arrived at Paris Landing Marina at 1:45 and once again had to be mindful of the harbor channel buoys. We thought that the harbormaster directed us to the southern pier in the marina, but after docking there, we had to move to the southern side of the transient pier by the marina office. Bob got a lot of extra docking practice!
We joined up with “Rita’s Pick” and “Cynthia Faye” who came in a little later.
The sun came out and it was time for hiking around the park. A perfect day for me is boating and hiking. We were able to find one tree with some Fall color down in a cove.
