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Books by Eric Douglas

Thriller fiction and Non-fiction

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Scuba Diving for a good cause

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Yesterday, I had the pleasure of making a couple dives at Bluestone Dive Resort in Thomasville, North Carolina. It was a pleasure because I got to dive with my dad again, and I got to see a couple old friends and it was a perfect day to be outside enjoying the world. But most importantly, we were diving for a good cause.

The quarry is owned by Robert Outlaw, who also owns the Blue Dolphin Dive Center in Winston-Salem. Bob and his family have been part of the diving community for more than 40 years. He has taught thousands of people to dive and moved them on to become dive instructors. His wife Janet runs the dive shop with a passion.
About six months ago, their son Ronnie, a paramedic and a dive instructor himself, became aware that his health wasn’t where it should be. It just so happened, though, that he was headed for Afghanistan to do some training for Homeland Security. I didn’t ask exactly what type of training he was doing over there, but it required him to grow his hair out and wear a beard. He put off seeing a doctor for a few weeks until he returned.
When Ronnie got back he discovered he had colon cancer. Not one of the happiest days, as you can imagine, for the 40-year-old. When I saw him yesterday, he said he had lost 85 pounds since the beginning of this ordeal. He was wearing a wrist band that said “F**K Cancer”. He said that was his edited version…

Divers in the water prepare for a shotgun start to hunt golfballs.
Ronnie is fighting hard, and still has the same grit and determination, but he needs some help with medical bills and such.  That was why approximately 150 divers came together to show their support. The quarry waived their entrance and air fill fees, in lieu of donations. I don’t know how much money they raised, but the water barrels seemed to be filling up.
Part of the event included a hunt for golf balls in the water that would determine what prizes each diver won. Several balls never made it back to the surface so that meant several prizes— including a set of signed copies of all four of my dive adventure novels—ended up going unclaimed.

It’s not live yet, but Janet plans to place the prizes that are still left as a silent auction on the Blue Dolphin Dive Center website. I encourage anyone reading to participate in the auction and help out a fellow diver and friend as he fights he way past cancer and the problems that come with it.

 

Godspeed, Neil Armstrong

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I’ve always been a space-junkie. I love the very thought of traveling through space and exploring other worlds. I grew up reading science fiction and loved to stare at the stars at night. If I had to think about it, a love of space is probably what led me to scuba diving. It was the closest I could get. 

Growing up, a childhood friend of my dad’s sold us a used telescope. He had a much larger one mounted on a base in his backyard so he didn’t need that one anymore. I remember setting it up on our driveway at night to stare at the moon and the stars in the sky. We even had a special filter that would let us look at the sun, although I don’t remember seeing much of anything there. The moon seemed so close, I could almost touch it through that tiny lens. I grew up dreaming of space and space flight and the exploits of atronauts like Neil Armstrong. 

Over the years I’ve had the good fortune to visit the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the Mission Control Center in Korolev, Russia. I actually watched a launch once in Russia at the Mission Control Center. I expected to see the long camera shot of the launch. Instead, I was treated to a view inside the capsule as the three cosmonauts left Baikonur in Kazakhstan and headed to the Mir Space Station. I remember thinking of the sheer exhilaration that must be going through their minds. 

I wasn’t quite two years old when Neil Armstrong hopped off the lunar module ladder and into history, becoming the first man to step foot on the moon. I wish I could say I met him, or shook his hand, or was even in the same room with him, but I can’t. I don’t have any personal connection with him at all, aside from being a member of an entire generation he, and a select few others, inspired with their courage and bravery. 

A few minutes ago, I learned that Armstrong has died from complications from heart surgery. He was 82. HIs family described him as a loving husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend, and also as “a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job.” 

 

That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.

 

In an interview, he said he hadn’t settled on what to say until just a minute before he spoke those immortal words.
When President John Kennedy challenged the country to go to the moon, he said

 

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

In an age when all the wrong people are made out to be heroes: athletes, musicians, movie actors, I hope the news coverage about Neil Armstrong’s passing will help us to remember, at least for a little while, what true courage, true humility and true honor mean.
I am hopeful, whoever the next president of the United States is, he will have the same courage as Kennedy and Armstrong to challenge us as Americans to exceed our grasp and push ourselves to reach for the stars, bother literally and metaphorically. Not because it is easy, but because it is hard.
Godspeed, Neil Armstrong. Rest in Peace.

 

High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there

I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,

I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew –

And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod

The high untresspassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee
No 412 squadron, RCAF
Killed 11 December 1941

 

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First day at Marshall

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The 2016 Class of Marshall University

Earlier this week my wife and I took her daughter (my bonus daughter) to Marshall University. It’s been an emotional week.

The “first day of college” has changed significantly since I went away to school 27 years ago. I recall my parents helping me load my stuff into my dorm room and then me “suggesting” it was time for them to head back to Charleston. I recall feeling very alone that first night, until I ran into a couple people I knew and going out for pizza. I still remember Todd Rodeheaver, my RA. The first thing he said to me when he walked into my dorm room was “Nice stereo,” as I was putting components together. “Just keep it down.” I have no idea what happened to “Rodie” after he graduated. He was in the ROTC. I believe he went into the regular Army as an officer.

At Marshall University (Beverly and I are both alumni) and where we were dropping off our daughter, the freshmen report a few days before the rest of the campus. The only upper classmen around were the RAs, the athletes and the band. The freshmen had two full days of programming scheduled to get them acclimated to the campus and ready for school. I like the process because I remember feeling a little lost as I walked around campus that first week. Do freshmen make better grades? Do they stay in school longer? Are they happier? I’m sure someone is measuring this stuff.

I wanted to stay out of the way as much as I could this trip, giving Bev and her daughter time to spend with each other. So, after we delivered her stuff to her dorm room, I made myself scarce. That meant I spent a lot of time hanging around the Memorial Student Center. I found myself looking for faces I knew. I had a brief fantasy that I was going to wake up from a dream, that it was 1985, and I was back in school. Obviously, that didn’t happen. It just so happens, my bonus daughter is now living in the same dorm as my first girlfriend in college. It struck me that I don’t recall much of that time.

Ironically, the one person I saw on campus that I recognized that day was Rick Haye, the Marshall University photographer. I worked for him for a couple semesters as a work study intern. Mostly, I processed black and white film and made some prints in the darkroom, but it was a tremendous learning experience. There’s no doubt in my mind that my time at Marshall studying Journalism and then working for Rick set me on the career path that has led to some pretty amazing adventures.

Someone once told me the friendships you make in college are the most intense, and the most short-lived, of your life. I’m still close to a few friends from college and I am thankful for that continued friendship. It’s odd to me that I don’t remember the names of many of the people I was inseparable with during those days. We laughed together, studied together, had way too much to drink together, ate together and “grew up” together. Some left after that first semester. Others made it a year or two. And some of us went that “whole nine yards” to graduation.

I hope and pray that my bonus daughter has the same positive experiences that Bev and I had at Marshall. The first day or two has been a little rocky, but I know it will get better soon. Just stick with it and be the strong, independent and creative young woman we all know you are.

Go Herd!.

Look! Show and Tell!

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In the rough equivalent of a double-dog-dare among writers, I’ve been challenged to “Look, show and tell!”

“From one of your writing works in progress, search for the word LOOK. Paste surrounding paragraphs and share, then tag others to do the same.”

KatharineHerndon started this game with Elizabeth Damewood Gaucher and now it is off to me. Elizabeth posted her excerpt from a project she is working on with me anyway. I wonder what Katharine used, since she is in on the River Town project as well…

Anyway, here is my first “Look” from the story Racing Miss Jayne Marie, part of the upcoming River Town Anthology.


“There is none faster or stronger on this river in her size. Some of the great boats on the Mississippi could push her around, but other than that, there’s no equal to her. She can carry more cargo, push more barges and still get there faster than any other ‘wheeler,” Dawson said, a touch of father’s pride entering his voice. He was a father, but his own children were away, living with his sister in Pittsburgh and the Miss Jayne Marie was all he had left.

“How can that be, Captain Dawson?” Winthrop asked, turning away from the boat to look Dawson in the eye for the first time. “The keel for the Miss Jayne Marie was laid just up the river, right alongside other sternwheelers that work this river. What makes this one special?”



“Well sir, boats aren’t as simple as all that. It was me and Mr. Hamrick bein’ up there every day while they laid the boilers and setting the wheel into place. We picked the gears and showed them boilermakers what we wanted,” Dawson said. “She isn’t flashy I’ll grant ya, but that’s not what you pay us for. You pay us to run up and down this river and make you money. That we do.”
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The people you meet ARE the adventure

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Lately, I’ve been feeling a little frustrated with the attitudes of people in the news, on the internet and on the street. While I wasn’t in a bad mood, I probably wasn’t in the best frame of mind when I left the house yesterday. My plan was to interview two World War II veterans for my Voices of War documentary project as I drove away from Charleston.

My first interview was with Eugene Lusk of Herndon in Wyoming County. Mr. Lusk gave me directions to his house, but I was also following the map function on my phone. And that’s where I got in trouble. Rather than taking me to Herndon Road, the phone app took me to Herndon “Heights” Road. As you can probably guess, that means I ended up following a small winding road to the top of a mountain.

If you’re not familiar with southern West Virginia, I was on a road (barely) one car wide, hemmed in by tall trees. I couldn’t see anything around me and was getting pretty frustrated. Cell signal was pretty much nonexistent as well. I realized I was going to have to attempt retrace my footsteps and find my way back down the mountain. I wasn’t sure I was going to make it to my first interview at all. This was not doing anything for my outlook.

While I was pulled off to the side trying to figure out where I’d gone wrong, a car pulled up beside me. The driver had the passenger window rolled down. I told him who I was looking for. He said “Give me a minute. I’ll show you where you need to go. You can follow me.” Just a few minutes later, I was racing back down the hill following a man who had obviously driven this road hundreds of times. While I was late for my first interview, I still made it.

Sitting on the back porch of Mr. Lusk’s home, we had a good talk about his service in the Army during World War II. He was in a Port Battalion where he loaded ships headed to the D Day invasion; then he moved across the channel right just a few hours behind the first wave of men who hit the beach to unload the equipment and food that would help Patton push across Europe. Because I was late, we finished up our talk a few minutes after noon and he invited me to eat lunch. I declined at first, but finally relented. It was good, home-cooked food, beans, cornbread, greens, sauerkraut and wieners.

Mr. Lusk’s wife is suffering from dementia, but after 65 years of marriage Mr. Lusk said they still made a good pair. He was gentle when he spoke to his wife, helping her with her food when the nurse stepped away. He talked about the family they raised together. It made me smile to watch them, and I wanted to get out my camera, but I thought, “No, this is a private moment.”

As I left, I called my second appointment to make sure it was all right for me to stop by. He told me he had plumbers in cleaning up a problem in his home, but then said to come on by because they had gone out for lunch. I thought to myself, “When I’ve had plumbing issues, the last thing I wanted to do is speak with a stranger,” but he was kind enough to let me in. And I got to speak to Ira Richmond, a veteran who served his country, in the south Pacific this time, as a signalman in the Navy. His fellow sailors, including the Captain of the ship, called him “Pluto” for the name of the town he was born in Raleigh County.

All of the anger and hate in the news bothers me. It seems like no one knows how to be civil any more. Sometimes it feels like there’s no respect for people of different faiths, cultures or beliefs. We feel like it is our sworn duty to mock others who think something even marginally different than we do. No one wants to be nice to anyone for fear of…well I’m really not sure what they’re afraid of. But these three men, and their families, helped me realize it is still possible to be nice to each other. These men were just neighborly.

As I drove home, I realized my own mood had lightened significantly. I was honored to be in the presence of these two men, and graced by a favor done by a stranger. Every adventure doesn’t start with a passport. Sometimes they happen in your backyard. I’m sure I learned as much from this adventure as I have any other I’ve been on..

Exercising my inner-Huck Finn

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There’s no cooler way to get around on the river than on a sternwheeler.

If you’re looking for power or speed, diesel-powered tug boats and gasoline-powered speed boats make up most of the water traffic around the country; their propellers churning up the water and pushing boats quickly up and down the waterways.
Sternwheelers are different. There’s something reassuring about the wheel rolling along behind you; each paddle (known as buckets on sternwheelers) digging into the water and pushing the boat forward, setting up a calming vibration. It is slow and majestic. When you’re riding on a sternwheeler, you can’t get in a hurry. The pace of life is slow and once onboard you quickly conclude that’s just fine.
It just so happens that the pool between the river locks at Marmet and Winfield, WV on the Kanawha River holds one of the largest (if not THE largest) concentrations of privately-owned sternwheelers in the country. Most of these sternwheelers were built as pleasure craft and have never served as work boats. But what they do, and do very well, is help onlookers recall history and enjoy a sight long-gone from rivers around the country.
One of my earliest memories of the Kanawha River is going downtown to watch the sternwheeler races at the Charleston Sternwheel Regatta held over Labor Day weekend in the late 1970s. We took blankets and sat on the river bank while the boats cruised past; the ones who were trying hard to win were throwing water straight into the air from their quickly-spinning wheels. The rest took a more leisurely pace.
That festival is long gone and most people around town don’t have a clue that sternwheelers once routinely worked this river, pushing coal and timber to grow a burgeoning country while bringing back supplies for West Virginia.
One of my best friends happens to be one of the owners of Hobby III, a sternwheeler that makes its home in Nitro, WV (although they claim their home port is the Port of Indecision, giving a nod to Jimmy Buffett). Whenever JD Pauley says he is taking the boat out for a day, I do my best to clear my schedule and go along.
Most of the sternwheelers on the Kanawha, like Hobby III, are personal missions for their owners. Boats are notorious for being holes in the water to throw money into and sternwheelers are probably even more so. Most of them are fabricated from whatever the builders have lying around. There aren’t standardized parts available for them and you can’t go down to the sternwheeler dealership and buy one.
The next time you see a sternwheeler rolling down the river, slowly making its way, give it a wave or a honk to say thank you. The people on board aren’t re-enactors dressed in period costumes pretending to be someone from the early 1900s. They’re just people who enjoy the river and want to take life a bit slower. At the same time, they’re keeping history alive to remind the rest of us what built this country and state. I think they know that, too.
Below is an essay I wrote fifteen years ago about a trip I took on the Hobby III from Charleston to Marietta, OH. It took us three days. With a couple minor tweaks, the following is exactly how it was printed that year.
Three Days to Marietta

By Eric Douglas

The smoke from the fireworks had barely blown away when we left Charleston. The Regatta was over. If it weren’t for the good times that follow the sternwheelers and their owners, there would be very little to tell about that event. Once proud, politics have reduced the Charleston Sternwheel Regatta to a shell of its former self.
The fireworks were good at least, the boaters all said. The only other positive comments to be heard all began with “This USED to be the best festival…..”
Once we got outside of Charleston headed down the Kanawha, the river was like obsidian. Dark and shiny, it rippled and waved but never broke until we passed. The wind had died down to almost nothing. Leaving the larger cities along the Kanawha, the lights on the banks diminished quickly. To put a little more river behind us and get a jump start on the morning, we were making a midnight run but about 3 a.m. the long nights and the sunny days were catching up to everyone on board so we tied up and slept.
We were an interesting group on this trip. First off, there were two sternwheelers: Lakie Marie and Hobby III. We were rafted together in Charleston after the races on Sunday and didn’t untie for the next three days. On board Lakie Marie were Bill, one of that boat’s owners, and his sister Betty known on the river as Mom and a first-class cook. On Hobby III were long-time pilot and new owner J.D., new owner Denny, Denny’s mother Phyllis and sister Melanie and I.
We were well on our way to Marietta if only about 15 miles down the river. We were well on our way because everyone was in the river trip mind set. Almost no one thought about getting off for anything. J.D. had to leave us even though I think it nearly killed him. We were still within a 30 minute drive from our homes and could have very easily made a phone call and had someone come and get us if need be, but I don’t think that idea ever crossed anyone else’s mind. We were on our way to Marietta for a festival known among Sternwheelers as a place where they take care of boaters.
You have to understand that this trip was special. J.D. and Denny just bought Hobby III a month and a half before. While they have spent all of their time on the boat, this would be the first long trip they would make on it.
Hobby III has an interesting history. The late Captain Harry Wilson began building the boat in 1977 and finally put it into service in 1985. He named it Hobby III. Old timers on the Ohio River have numerous stories about Harry and his adventures or misadventures on the river. Harry died at the wheel on a trip in 1992. Considering some of the new adventures, or misadventures, Hobby III and her crew get into it is often said that Harry is still on the boat. But no one gets hurt and everyone has a lot of fun so it is also believed that Harry watches out for Hobby III.
After his death, Harry’s wife Louise sold the boat to Brian Honaker and Brian moved the boat to the Kanawha River. J.D. had served as the pilot on Hobby III almost from the time Brian bought the boat. And he fell in love with it. When the opportunity arose, he and Denny bought the boat and immediately began to make it their own. The river and especially sternwheelers have a pull that is hard to explain.
Sternwheeler owners don’t spend all of their time and money on their boats for festivals and races in once-proud river towns. Sternwheelers and their captains love the river and the majestic boats that travel it. There is a mystique, a mystery and an aura of intrigue that surrounds Sternwheelers. It has to do with the assumed nobility of an earlier age no doubt. Sternwheelers represent gentility, nobility and respect.
Don’t get me wrong, sternwheeler owners like to party. At the various festivals, most owners have a wild time till it is way past the bedtime of any but the latest night owls but if it were just about having a place to party with friends, a newer house boat would surely be more convenient and practical. Not to mention, faster.
We began the trip again early in the morning. Bill was up and moving at no more than a few minutes after six after having gone to bed at 3 a.m. With the help of Denny and Bill’s son Mark who joined us for the day, we were soon untied and chugging down the river.
While the river may be beautiful and refreshing and convenient and exciting, it can also be cranky. Not the violent of floods but the cranky of fog. We had fog. It wasn’t bad enough to stop moving entirely but it would have stopped less determined souls. At about half speed, which for the sternwheelers meant about 2.5 to 3 miles an hour, were rolled down the river watching for debris and keeping the boats off of the bank.
Owing much to what I imagine was a devious streak more so than safety, Denny would occasionally blow Hobby III’s air horns. A few times people were outside and waved to us. Many more times, I am certain, people cursed from inside their homes.
After a few hours of traveling, we reached the Winfield Locks and Dam. With very little delay, we were able to lock through and join the river on the next lower pool. Winfield was the first of three locks we would pass through. It is also the smallest although not for long. Very soon, the construction of two new lock chambers will be completed and even the largest of the Tows on the river will be able to pass through.
After the Winfield Locks, there isn’t much to see along the Kanawha River until Pt. Pleasant. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing. We still had several hours on the Kanawha until we reached the mouth. There is something to be said for traveling along portions of the river that must closely resemble the river first seen by explorers when they crossed the Appalachian Mountains or by the flat bottom river boats that first plied their trade on the Kanawha or even by the working Sternwheelers of the 1920s and 1930s that brought the coal and first salt and then chemicals out of West Virginia and delivered it to points throughout the United States.
That portion of the river is quiet and leads those who travel it to be reflective. You start to wonder about things like the boats and men that worked this river 100 years before. An then you get waked. Not awakened, although that is likely to happen too, but waked, as in what happens to you as a cabin cruiser rushes past and the wake off of his hull rolls across your bow.
It happened to us, not far from Pt. Pleasant. We saw him from a long way off. Thirty feet of plastic cabin cruiser, rolling up the river pushing water all around. He passed by no more than 30 feet distant and three waves crashed over our bow. Fortunately, not a lot of river water made it into the cabin.
There is a real feeling among Sternwheeler owners that people in plastic boats need to learn a few things about courtesy on the river. It is a somewhat unfortunate fact that you don’t have to know anything about the river to buy a boat. Just have the money. Maybe because they have nothing else to do, most of the plastic boats seem to continually fly. But do they ever stop and think about the river? I doubt it. If nothing else, riding on a Sternwheeler teaches you to slow down. No matter how anxious you are to get to where you are headed, there is no point in getting in a hurry. When you slow down, you have time to think and appreciate the river more.
Approaching the Ohio River at Pt. Pleasant, things begin to change. The final 30 miles of the Kanawha is less mountainous and surrounded by farming bottom land. It is a wonder that the land is still as productive as it once was. Most of that river bottom land was once subject to regular floods that brought with it fresh new silt that created rich growing conditions. The taming of the river, while still not complete thank God, has done a lot for improving boating but has stopped a natural process of renewal.
 Then we turned north. The Kanawha River took most of Monday, Day One but we continued to cruise up the Ohio. We finally came to a stop at the home port of the third boat that was to be our traveling companion for the trip up the Ohio, the Cheryl Lynn II owned by John Thomas.
Cheryl Lynn II spends most of her time within sight of Pomeroy, Ohio on the West Virginia side of the river. When we arrived at the river camp we off loaded two passengers and picked up two more along with a boat and her captain. When we docked to Cheryl Lynn II we tied off and once again didn’t untie again.
Bill and his son Mark had to take care of other business on shore but Gary, the other owner of Lakie Marie and Carol joined us for the remainder of the cruise.
At the close of that evening, we got to see a sight that put it all in perspective for us; the Delta Queen. The Delta Queen is one of the Three Queens, three sternwheelers that cruise the waters of the Mississippi harking back to the days of old. The Delta Queen is a steam-powered sternwheeler.
I was the only one on Hobby III at the time so as she steamed past, I pulled on the horns and whistles. The Captain of the Delta Queen returned the honor by sounding his steam whistles.
The next morning, we awoke to fog. The fog on the Kanawha had been bad but this was worse. It was too bad to even bother to untie. It was so thick you couldn’t see a boat dock 50 feet away. We didn’t leave the dock until 10 a.m. That put us behind schedule.
We were also a little concerned. We had never traveled with Cheryl Lynn II before. John had recently had to replace sections of his drive train and didn’t want to push his boat very hard. As it turned out, there was nothing to worry about. The three boats ran together well and we averaged better than 5 miles and hour up the river.
After a few hours on the river, we came to the Racine Locks and Dam. Our first locks on the Ohio. At least it was the first one for Denny and Myself. Both John and Gary had been through Racine several times. They both said many times that, because of the size of the lock chambers, you never have to wait on the Ohio. It took us better than 2 hours to get through Racine. The small lock chamber was down.
For the uninitiated, I think I need to explain locks and dams. In the mid-1800, prior to heavy river traffic, the rivers of this young nation were subject to tremendous fluctuations of water depth that would make them very difficult to travel. In the summer, you could walk across the Ohio and even in the deep places, downed trees caused snags that would catch the smaller packet boats.
To make the rivers navigable year round a system of locks and dams were built on major waterways throughout the United States at the turn of the last century. These locks and dams raise the pool of the river to a consistent level to allow heavy barge traffic to progress up and down the river. The locks are chambers that allow boats to float up or down to the next pool of water.
In the 1930’s the system of many small locks were replaced with a few much larger locks and the sizes of the boats and barges grew accordingly. It wasn’t too much longer that Sternwheelers grew into disuse. Larger diesel powered tow boats with propellers were stronger, faster and more maneuverable.
In the 1970s, the Corps of Engineers, the government organization that maintains the nation’s waterways, began upgrading the size of the lock chambers. Many of the locks and dams only had 600 foot long chambers. Packs of barges had to be broken down and sent through the chamber a few at a time. This took time. Now, all of the locks and dams in the immediate area have been, or soon will be, upgraded with newer lock chambers that are 1200 feet longer or more. The construction at the Winfield Locks and Dam is nearly finished and should be opened anytime in the next month.
Still, even with all of these improvements to transportation, one of the chambers was closed for repairs when we made it to Racine Locks and Dam. There was already one tow boat with a full barge pack waiting and we arrived at the same time as a second tow with a full pack of barges.
After some long radio discussions, we were allowed to lock through with the first tow boat. The boat was the Omega. He had nine jumbo covered barges, three deep and three across, filled with Aluminite. He explained to the Lockmaster it was the powdered form of Aluminum and not explosive. In total, the boat and barge pack was 960 feet long and filled the chamber from side to side.
Our biggest concern, and that of the Lockmaster, was that when Omega fired up her engines to push the barges out of the chamber, we would be swamped. The captain of the Omega promised it would not be a problem and true to his word, he pushed out of the lock chamber with barely a ripple in the water. We stayed put until he cleared the chamber, however.
It is sort of amazing to realize that the Omega was 960 feet long so we still had nearly 300 feet of chamber space left. At our longest point, Cheryl Lynn II and her party barge, we were only about 80 feet long.
The only problem we had with that lockage was being over cautious about space and not realizing which way the chamber doors swung shut. We tied off on the back floating pin with our stern line thinking this would give us as much room between the Omega and ourselves.
Then doubt hit. Are we far enough away from the gates? Will they hit the wheels when they close? So we untied and tried to move up to the next floating pin which was about 20 feet further in. You have to understand, sternwheelers are not the most maneuverable vessels on the river. Even the three boats ties together with their ability to act independently are not as responsive as newer towboats.
We started floating and got away from the wall. At that point we decided to back up and return to the pin we were on at first. As soon as we did that and got tied down, everything went smoothly.
The rest of the day on the Ohio went smoothly and uneventfully. We all relaxed and chugged up the river. Occasionally blowing the horns for people standing on the shore or in boats and generally just enjoying the day.
About 8 p.m. we approached the final lock and dam on the Ohio River between us and Marietta. It was the Belleville Locks and Dam. Imagine the difference in this lockage and the first one. We were in the smaller chamber, which is still around 900 feet long, by ourselves. So what did we do? We still tied off on the first pin we came to just like at Racine.
For whatever the reason, there was a lot of trash in the water at Belleville. It made us all very nervous for a few miles watching for big logs and other floating debris in the water that could very easily break a spinning wheel. Needless to say we didn’t make very good time. At around 10 p.m. we finally pulled into our planned destination for the night. Hockingport. At the mouth of the Little Hocking River.
Gary and John on Lakie Marie and Cheryl Lynn II had stopped there the year before and everything had been fine. Things were a little different this year, however. The docks had changed and expanded and there was no one around.
We pulled up to the main open dock at first but quickly Hobby III’s bow was in the silt. After looking around and debating for a while, we finally decided to back out and pull into a fuel dock about 50 feet away. Once that little feat of maneuvering and docking was accomplished, a few people showed up and sold us ice and shore power for the night. All in all it turned out to be a good place to dock but we were all a little skeptical when we went to bed that night.
During the night a cold front moved through, bringing with it a thunderstorm. When day broke, the air was clear but it was cold and windy. We started out immediately. Immediately after fixing a couple pots of coffee on shore power, that is.
The only real adventure we had that next morning was docking in Marietta. The wind continued to blow from at around 20 miles an hour the rest of the way up the river making controlling the three sternwheelers a bit more of a chore than it had been for the last two days.
By around 2 p.m. we came into sight of Marietta. The sky was blue and only an occasional cloud filtered by. At least 20 sternwheelers were already along the river bank and the city’s levee.
That is what made docking a little hairy. Turning across high winds to dock was like raising a sail and daring it to push us. We hoped to dock on one end or the other so the landing wouldn’t have to be as precise but that wasn’t to be the case. There was a space between the boats big enough for our three to dock but that was about it.
 So we turned across the river. Just about the time that our position was critical, the wind died down for a few moments and we made a perfect landing. Harry was watching out for us. Within 15 minutes of docking, people were coming by to tell us how good Hobby III looked and tell us stories about Harry. He was with us all the time.

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