Topic starter
20/10/2006 4:16 pm
For all the fuss at Tall Stacks over a four foot rise, imagine the result if the event were now. The Cincinnati gage is going to 41', up 15'. That would have stopped the event. This is the second time they have dodged the bullet by less than a week.
20/10/2006 4:47 pm
It amazes me how quickly the Ohio rises and falls. I was telling that to my NOLA colleagues in the Gift Shop as it rose on Thursday, but I figured we'd be ok in a day or less, which we were. So in relation to the ramp below the phony AQ wheel, to where will 41' feet of water reach? Aren't both DQ and MQ over there somewhere now? I suspect they've got a few bridge issues in addition to the current and landings. Yes, we certainly lucked out for TS, and temperature-wise too. Since I've been home, we've had below freezing temps at night several times, with daytime highs only in the 50s. To put the Ohio in perspective with the UMR, our all-time flood level here was 23 feet. Flood stage is 15, and normal readings in the summer are about 4-8 feet. So you all have much more volume to cope with than we do.
20/10/2006 5:36 pm
P.A. DENNY Cruise on the LAURA J
On Tall Stacks Saturday, Cap'n Lawson and Mrs. "Mamma Jean” Hamilton invited me to ride the LAURA J, and what a thrill it was to be a guest aboard the Jones flagship with so many distinguished voyagers. Captains Nelson and Robin showed their boat-handling abilities in a rather brisk current, and could Nelson handle that sternwheeler! Captain Jones remarked that the current had been much worse the day before.
ORASANCO, operators of the P. A. DENNY, Sternwheeler, presented Cappy Hamilton, my former boss and DENNY owner, with an engraved plaque for his kindness and co-operation in providing the sanitation commission with the DENNY to use as a floating classroom. Mr. Hamilton returned their gratitude by announcing that he was forgiving them of further debt owed on the DENNY; so in other words, he was donating the DENNY to ORSANCO lock, stock, and barnacles. Talk about jubilation amongst the multitudes! For such a tiny boat, the DENNY has the biggest collection of boating boosters, and they were gathered together on the LAURA J.
Ross and Sandy Tuckwiller, the PAD’s first management team, were on board, too. It was Ross who supervised the completion of the DENNY into a popular Charleston, WV excursion boat, in 1976, while Sandy did the booking and ran the office with YT on the boat with deckhands Nelson Jones, Tom Cook, Tony Harrison, Todd Mace, Bradley and Tommie Price, Jeff Sanders, and others in the crew. That year, there were rumors on the river that the P .A. DENNY team was going to rival the Delta Queen company.
The climax of the trip was Captain Nelson's downstream landing, facing-up on the side of a barge projecting perpendicular to the Newport shore. Robin was down on the bow gingerly guiding Nelson into position with none other than Cap'n Reed Lee Cohen tossin' lines and assisting as a celebrity deckhand. That’s just the way those Kanawha River Rats are.
20/10/2006 6:51 pm
The MQ was at the Louisville wharf yesterday afternoon when I crossed the Second Street bridge in a POURING rain en route home. She was landed head down and the wheel was rolling like departure time was imminent.
21/10/2006 5:06 pm
Additional List
Add "Steamboat Bill" Barr to that list of notable deckhands who served on the P. A. DENNY. And I might also add, most of the fellows listed got their Master's license and served as Captain of the boat. The late Captain Todd Mace may well be the one most remembered as the longest serving Captain of the DENNY.