Going from Hendersonville, TN to Nashville memorial weekend!

[Fordman]

Trying first time going through the locks in Hendersonville, TN to go to Nashville Sunday May 25th. Looking to hit water about 10 - 11am attempt to be in Nashville around noon. Hang out a bit and go back and play more!

 

[Jack Long]

We will be at Lake Barkley this weekend.

 

[Dough]

Fun trip. I'll be in the south part of Lake Barkley also

 

[2kwik4u]

CALL AHEAD TO THE LOCKS......I can't stress this enough.

Wife and I made this trip in our 190 last fall. We didn't call ahead on our way home and ended up waiting ~3hrs in the rain for a barge to get locked through ahead of us. Lockmaster told us if he knew we were coming he would have made the barge wait the 20 minutes we were behind him.

Also, apparently you are supposed to call ahead and reserve space at the docks in Downtown Nashville. We didn't, and just gambled that we didn't get towed, or otherwise monkeyed with. When we returned a very large cabin cruiser had taken the space we were in, but had nicely moved us up the dock a few spaces. They even coiled our lines quite nicely. I wasn't upset about it, and they seemed like nice folks.

Also the downtown side docks were destroyed when we were there, so we ended up on the stadium side docks. Not a big deal, but it's a bit of a hike over to Broadway from the stadium side.

Here's the thread from our trip. Lots of great info there, as well as some reports back from our experience.

https://jetboaters.net/threads/anyone-local-to-nashville-cumberland-river.19316/

 

[Fordman]

Thank you for the advice. We did call and got a dock space reserved for Monday. Apparently someone wasn't too bright and had the Sunday reservations messed up. So we changed to do this Monday. Also for anyone else reading this, I called the lock master and he advised to call a hour ahead and he would make it ready. So I hope this works. I want to plan for a amazing first time travel through a good one.

 

[2kwik4u]

Thank you for the advice. We did call and got a dock space reserved for Monday. Apparently someone wasn't too bright and had the Sunday reservations messed up. So we changed to do this Monday. Also for anyone else reading this, I called the lock master and he advised to call a hour ahead and he would make it ready. So I hope this works. I want to plan for a amazing first time travel through a good one.

That is exactly how it worked for us. We called a few days ahead of time and he gave us instructions. It's a pretty easy process, but be ready to go once you get there. Once we were on the water we gave him a call and he told us to come back in an hour and he would be ready.

Definitely call on the way back up the river though. Not sure how much barge traffic will be around on Memorial Day, but most barges are broken up into 2-3 lifts because the lock is relatively small. It takes about an hour to do a complete cycle, so if you're stuck behind one, you'll just have to wait.

I can write up our process with pictures of going through that lock if you want, even have pictures of most of the process on the way down.

A couple quick tips.

• Have your PFD's for crew and passengers out and ready to be used. If something goes awry, you want those close at hand and ready to go.
• Have a sharp knife handy. If the bollard you are attached to sticks in position it's a lot easier to cut a line than it is to untie, and will keep you from hanging the boat, or sinking it. This is rare, and I had no porblems at Hendersonville, but have seen it happen on the Ohio at McAlpine locks a few times.
• Once inside, pick a bollard and loosely tie off with bumpers out. Then shut off the engine. The lockmaster won't move the water until everyone has engines off.
• Your bumpers and lines will get NASTY dirty. Just accept it and move on. The bollards are rusty, and the walls are covered in growth. It cleans off pretty easy though. Have some spare rags handy to wipe the drippings off the interior.