7/1/2026 - Near Mt Vernon IN - Mostly Sunny - 94F

 7/1/2026 - Near Mt Vernon IN - Mostly Sunny - 94F

This was supposed to be an Underway Day taking us to Louisville KY.  Instead, American Heritage is "docked" next to a barge instead of sailing on the Ohio River. The nearest town, Mt. Vernon, is on the other side of the river in Indiana. Do boats have emergency flashers? I wonder.

How did this happen?  At about 4 AM, I woke up to a huge bump.  According to the captain who came on to explain the crash, Heritage collided with a towboat that didn't heed the right of way and didn't respond to radio communication.  The collision was major and scary - strong enough to wake me up. We were told that the Heritage can't sail until the USCG comes aboard and checks things out. Didn't get much sleep after that.  (NOTE: The collision must not have been below the water line or we would be off the boat at this point.  One person told me that the boats deck railing was damaged forcing a safety issue - can't sail like that.  There were other hypotheses put forward: The boats collided in heavy fog (no fog in the early morning; the towboat broke its moorings and tugs were not able to keep it from striking the Heritage. Mute point - we are stuck here for now).

I was in the Sky Lounge for breakfast.  Taking no chances, I brought up a box of Special K I had in the cabin (none available in the lounge). I couldn't sit outside because, for some reason, everything - seats, tables, and deck - was soaked. I wonder if that wasn't some kind of post-collision safety protocol.  All I could do is get some pictures including the closest town, Mt Vernon, IN.

Ellen and I went to the Restaurant for the rest of breakfast. My veggie skillet looked good on paper but didn't really taste good.  Good think I had the Special K earlier and the bagel that came with the skillet. Ellen had French toast, which is always good.  During breakfast, the Captain announced that the Coast Guard was on their way to assess the damage to the Heritage with an ETA of two hours.

9:30 AM: Now up in the Sky Lounge waiting for the Coast Guard. The USCG does have authority over the major rivers in the US and has specialized boats that can deal with sandbars, shallow water, and other issues associated with rivers.  

We hung out in the Sky Lounge (Ellen reading 

and me sketching 

and listening to Pandora, which I like better than Rocket Player) until lunch. 

We special ordered egg salad sandwiches this morning and they were there in the Restaurant when we got there.  We had the sandwiches with Sun Chips, from the Sky Lounge, which made for an acceptable lunch. The egg salad is better than the tuna salad. We didn't stay for dessert - nothing really jumped out at us.

We are now in the Paddlewheel Lounge (normally very noisy but the paddlewheel is not running so it's quiet). Decaf and a fig newton - perfect dessert.

Another ship, the "Miss Sheila" pulled up next to us.  The boat, owned by Archer Daniels Midland, the Agricultural Processing Giant. It's a towboat and someone, maybe a crew member, told us that she dropped off USCG Inspectors (people did get off the boat). Perhaps those bespoke USCG River vessels were not needed.

No updates at 12:54 PM.

2:00 PM - no update

Some Math.  On the Ohio River, the distance to Louisville is 193 River Miles. At max speed, it will take more than 20 hours to get there. At best we might get there tomorrow afternoon sometime,, assuming of course, we got the "all clear" from the USCG.

The Plan. Here's the plan that finally came over the PA System: The boat will sail to Evansville, IN. Passengers will board our own busses for a two hour ride to Louisville. They will stay in a hotel for two nights. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner will be complimentary. Excursions will leave from the hotel tomorrow at the regular time. On Friday morning, passengers  will get bussed to the airport. Sounds like a good plan.  Sounds pretty straightforward.  Timing details were missing.

I hadn't heard anything about the timing so I asked the Restaurant host about dinner. He said dinner was at 4:30 PM probably to get people on their way. The part of the plan wasn’t announced – I could tell by the confusion in the restaurant.

American Heritage did push away and started sailing up the Ohio River.  

Math (continued). The distance from Mt Vernon IN to Evansville IN is 33 River Miles - at current speed, which is probably less than the 9 MPH she usually pulls, it will take about four hours - that means we will get to Evansville around 8:30 PM.  And maybe get to Louisville by 11:00 PM. 

Well, that's not quite how it shook out. We did have dinner - we special ordered two pastas this morning - tomato sauce and pesto sauce. There was no tomato sauce (how can that be?) so we both had pesto. My salad w ranch dressing was tiny - a garnish size. The macaroni with pesto was inedible. I ordered a second salad, which was smaller than the first one. No idea what was going on - had the kitchen run out of lettuce?  We had sour cream cake with vanilla ice cream for dessert.

We went to the room to pack and get our bags outside the cabin. It seemed urgent to do so.  We packed and were concerned about luggage tags. In the meantime, we found out that we wouldn't get to Evansville until 8:30 PM.

Johnathan Len actually put on his second show (I'll bet he was surprised). 

It was a good show. 

We went to the room and luggage tags were on the door (name misspelled). I had also made tags per Brody's advice. I tagged the bags and put them out.  We watched the sail in and docking.   

The entire crew - including the captain - unloaded the bags and moved them to the busses in a kind of "baggage brigade" process.  One person would push two bags a ways to another person, etc.  There were at least 280 bags,  It look a while.

Long story short - we didn't disembark (Deck 5 to Deck 1, in that order) until 10:45 PM. I don't think we even scanned out and walked a fair distance across a bridge to the busses. It was dark and crew members used flashlights to illuminate the walkway. 

We sat on the bus for 40 minutes for reasons unknown. The driver looked ready to go but then she disappeared.  We finally got underway and went only one block and stopped. It seems that two people were found sleeping on the boat. We waited for them to get on the other bus so I guess we are convoying. 

11:47 PM - we are rolling but it's unclear when we will get to the hotel. I watched the progress on Google Maps.

The bus was comfortable enough and it did have a bathroom in the back.  The bus was dark. At the 90 minute mark I got up and found the door to the bathrom.  It was quite an experience because the ride was very bumpy and I was holding on by pressing against both walls.  There was no hand sanitizer or sink in this bathroom and I had lost my little bottle in Paducah.  I tried not to touch anything in the bathroom.  I did manage to get back to my seat in the darkened bus.  Outside, it was pretty pitch black with only the full moon providing any light.

I was relieved when the bus turned on to a highway that said "Louisville".  We drove through the dark and deserted downtown area until we came the Galt House Hotel - our destination.  

We were told we would be taking our bags to our rooms.  We retrieve our bags from the sidewalk, got room keys from crew in the lobby, and hopped into the first elevator we could.

1:50 AM - We finally entered Room 1223 in the Galt House Hotel

Louisville is on EDT - 2:50 AM. 

Lghts out at 3:00 AM.