Day  Four - Thursday - Clifton to Diamond Island Anchorage 

AURORA ready to leave Clifton Marina

          There are times when hurrying makes no sense. It has taken me about 30 years to learn this lesson.  There is a road that hugs the Adriatic Sea for several hundred miles along what is now Croatia but when I was driving it, was still known as Yugoslavia under Tito.  It is a daunting path mostly two lanes carved out of the mountain range on one side and precipitous drops to the sea on the other. This picture is new but when I was driving it there were no guardrails, just loose gravel and a lot of air all the way down to the rock-strewn shore. 

Adriatic Coast Freeway

Because it was the only coast road, it was heavily traveled by slow trucks of all dimensions and I reveled in pushing the under-powered Fiat rental car to its limits as I brazenly passed truck after truck on this narrow two lane deathtrap.  Youthfulness promulgates the denial of reality.  After a couple of hours of this daredevil foolishness, Kristine espied a scenic overlook ahead and demanded I stop so she could empty the contents of her stomach that threatened sudden release due to my insane driving. While she got her stomach under control, I watched at least thirty of the trucks that I had painstakingly passed, go by with more than a few of them blowing their horns, waving and laughing at me as they whizzed past our parked car. What was I thinking? We were vacationing and I had no earthly reason to be in a rush but being in a hurry is an affliction that percolates steadily in the young. Standing on that gravel shoulder watching those whizzing trucks was not my sea change moment, however. That lesson would take a few more years to take hold in my reasoning process.   

As AURORA pulls away from the dock at Clifton, we have a relatively short run to the Diamond Island anchorage and we all dial back the RPMs to match the slowest of our three boats, GLASS SLIPPER. There is no rush, no need to hurry today.  We want to arrive at Pickwick Lock and Dam in the morning in case of heavy barge traffic.  Commercial traffic has priority on the Inland Waterways and pleasure craft must wait for barge traffic to pass through the locks first. Arriving in the AM allows plenty of time to traverse the lock regardless of the traffic. The Diamond Island anchorage is only a ten or eleven mile run to the dam and even with the strong current below the dam reducing one’s speed by two or three knots, it assures one plenty of time to get through the lock.   

The run up river is uneventful and we three select our anchoring spots behind Diamond Island with Vela Narcosis going in first, me heading a bit further up and finally Glass Slipper sliding even further up river than AURORA. The sun sets on a most idyllic scene.  

Diamond Island

The previous night, James and Stacey had mentioned an ugly night they had spent a couple of years ago in this very same spot. Listening to the crickets and frogs dial up their evening symphony, it seems the perfect anchorage… off the main channel and well protected from anything but a north wind. 

       Whenever I am on the hook I sleep lightly being attuned to changes in the sound of the wind and the movement of the boat. Sure enough, at two in the morning, the wind has come up and it is out of the north.  It is not a strong wind but I get up to check our position regarding the close-by shore.  I have an all chain anchor rode and it is easily keeping us out of any trouble, but I notice in the moonlight that James is out in his dinghy.  He is setting a stern anchor to keep him away from the shoreline.  I know he’s using all rope for his main anchor and I am thankful for my heavy chain lying on the bottom holding our position. Although I get up a couple of more times before sunrise, we do not move very much in spite of the unexpected wind out of the north and I rest easier than I would have imagined under these conditions.  Perfectly content to not being in a hurry, I must have lost my youth somewhere along the way while I was not paying attention