At the start of the trip I was concerned about the time I would lose waiting to go through a lock. Obviously the commercial traffic takes priority and it can take a couple of hours for a large barge tow to be split in half and lock through.I rarely encountered a barge tow at the locks at the same time and the usual waiting time was only 15 -20 minutes. On one occasion they saw us coming and opened up the gates b/4 we arrived.
An even quicker method of getting through is to shoot the dam. Some times the flood gates were up and I could paddle through. We heard that this was illegal but on the two occasions we enquired we were told that they would neither permit it or prohibit it.
I was caught by surprise at the last dam. After I was committed to by-passing the lock I realised that the current was going a lot faster than on previous occasions and as I got within 100 metres I saw that there were some rather serious looking standing waves on the downstream side. I made it through with a bumpy ride but didn't have my spray skirt on so shipped a lot of water. It was quite an adrenaline rush. There was a barge tow approaching on the other side and I am sure the crew wondered who the idiot in the kayak was.
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