Detailed Locking

We awoke to plenty of bass boats leaving Ingalls Harbor in Decatur this morning.  We untied from the free dock at 7:00 a.m.  We arrived at Wheeler Lock before 10:45 a.m. to find two other pleasure boats already there waiting to lock down.  A pleasure boat finally came up and out of the lock so we were able to proceed with entering the lock.  We wanted to be courteous and allow everyone to enter in the order they were there, but we had to actually yell out the window for the 22 foot sailboat "Fiddlers Green" ahead of us to get moving.  Well his moving was even slower than the trawler "Friar Tuck" ahead of him.  We traveled into the lock behind him doing about two miles an hour.  Just about the time the sailboat finally entered the lock the motor quit so we saw him pulling on it several times to get it started again.  This made for an hour to lock through for a 48 foot drop.
"Friar Tuck" traveled faster than us so they moved across Wilson Lake ahead of us as we left "Fiddlers Green" behind us.  We discussed trying to keep up with "Friar Tuck", but they were pulling away so fast we decided it was not worth the waste of fuel.  We were happy that we didn't as we got closer to Wilson Lock the tow "Joe Cain" was going down ahead of us so there would be a wait anyway.  The Lock Master was not answering either of us pleasure craft on the radio, so we really didn't know how long it would be.  We slowed down for a short while, then decided to pull into the tiny cove we have ducked into before to wait out a storm.  It seems it always rains on us in Wilson Lake on our way down.  Once we were anchored and protected from the winds we called the Lock Master on the telephone.  He stated it would be about 45 minutes until he was ready for us.  We actually pulled out of the cove about ten minutes early to find that "Friar Tuck" was already in there.  The Lock Master was nice enough to lower the gate and let us in also.


Here we are inside the lock, tied to a bollard that floats up and down with the water.
On this particular lock, the upper gate (usually a set of doors) lowers and raises.
Here the gate is up to stop the water from the lake beyond from entering.

It came to my attention over the summer that some people do not know/understand how a lock works.  A lock is attached to a dam.  Instead of spilling over the dam we pull into the lock to get lowered.  It is the opposite when coming back up to get above the dam.  These pictures are of Wilson Lock, the highest lock east of the Mississippi River.

These are the lower doors while the we are still at the "top" of the lock.

They drain the water out of this chamber we are in.
Here again are the lower doors as we are dropping in water level.
Towards the bottom right of this picture you can see one of those bollards we tie to.
There are different amounts of bollards in each lock.

At the top of this picture is that gate that raises and lowers.
Again, this is usually another set of doors, although the bottom section is always a concrete barrier.
Yes, it does leak a little bit.  They all do.  Some worse than others.

We exited Wilson Lock just after 3:00 p.m.  Once we got out of the lock channel with no current and into the dam water being released we were traveling two to three miles an hour faster.  That put us at our anchorage in Little Bear Creek at 4:30 p.m.  The delays at the locks did not help our average speed today as it took us nine and a half hours to travel 51 miles.

Here are the lower doors opening to let us out at the much lower water level.
You can see the dark water stain starting at the top to see how far we dropped.
On this particular lock it is 93 feet.