M/V ILLUSIONS                        TX TO TN TO TX CRUISE TRIP 4 SUMMARY August 30-September 7, 1998 Grand Rivers, KY to Houston, TX      We began our trip one day late due to a pilots strike at Northwest Airlines.  We flew to Paducah on TWA and arrived tired and nervous about getting there at all.  We overate in downtown Grand Rivers and went to sleep early.      Our trip was a fast one, with early departures and long days.  We actually made it to Galveston in 5 days, a distance of over 1100 miles.  Our longest run was 264 miles from Vicksburg, MS to Morgan City, LA in a 15-hour day.      We descended the lock at Kentucky Dam, since the distance to the Ohio River was closer than using the Cumberland River route.  That was our first experience on the Ohio River.  It was wide but not deep where we were, but deep enough to go over one dam without going through the lock.      Cruising the Mississippi requires planning for fuel, and we had not mastered that art.  We didn’t fill up immediately before we left and worried about fuel until we arrived in Memphis and found we had plenty.  Then the fuel pump in Greenville, MS malfunctioned and we counted on filling up in Vicksburg.  Then there was a mis-communication in Vicksburg and we were shorted 100 gallons.  When we arrived in the Morgan City area, we put 445 gallons in our 500-gallon tanks!      Another big problem on the Mississippi River is where to anchor for the night.  There are some good anchorages, but it was hard to tell by looking which ones were good.  We used an anchorage we had used before; it was fine.  We chose another that looked okay, and was generally fine; but there was a sand bar at the entrance, which could have caused some troubles.  We also stopped at dockages in Vicksburg, MS and Berwick (Morgan City area), LA, and then we were in Galveston.      We ran offshore from Freshwater Bayou to Galveston, which was what made it possible to get home in 5 days.  It was a good day for it.  The offshore community seemed to be a world of its own, with the oil platforms, helicopters, supply boats, tankers, shrimpers, and pleasure boats out in the Gulf of Mexico.      Hurricane Earl was a potential threat to us while we were on the Mississippi River, but it turned and moved to the northeast, away from us.      We made it to the TMCA Labor Day happenings at Offatts Bayou in Galveston and rested there before going up the ship channel to Houston.  The trip logs have all the statistics for the trip, which was a dream come true for me.  I had wanted to see the Tennessee River from the water since I was a young boy, and now that dream had become a reality.