I am always kinda-sorta on the lookout for new canoe expeditions, and I think I have just found one. It turns out that about two miles downstream of the I275 bridge across the Ohio River, just west of Cincinnati, there is a rusting hulk in Taylor Creek on the Kentucy side of the river. The local kyakers call her “The Ghost Ship.”
She was beautiful once. She came into the world as “Celt”, a 186 foot clipper bowed fantail steam yacht. She changed hands and was renamed “Sachem”, was pulled into the US Navy and hunted submaries during WWI, then went back into private hands after the war; she was refitted for diesel and did a stint as a gamefishing boat. Back into the Navy as “USS Phenakite” in WWII, first as a sub chaser, then as a sonar lab. Back into private hands and a stint as a New York Harbor tour boat, first as the “Sightseer”, and later as “Circle Line V”. She left active service in 1983.
In 1986 she was partially refitted and sailed through the Great Lakes to the Mississippi (which must have included Chicago along the way), then up the Ohio to her current resting place and dereliction.
There are a fair number of small to medium logisical challenges involved in actually meeting this particular lady in person, but as of now I really WANT to meet her…
