Drunks vs Lock Masters

CapnHun wanted to know what was more annoying to me as a Captain of my tug, drunk pleasure boaters or Lock Masters? Well for me that's an easy one. The Lock Master is the guy who controls the Lock he's working, he can if he so decides and the situation warrants it, deny passage to anyone through the lock, except a government vessel. Government vessels(Coast Guard, Army Corp of Engineers)have priority over everyone when locking. So as long as your nice and don't do anything too stupid he's cool. There is a locking priority though as I alluded to above. Government vessels go first, then commercial, then sailing, then pleasure crafts. So if your in your 30' cabin cruiser headed down the Ohio river and are coming up on McAlpine Locks or Green Up or the such and no one is ahead of you and I come along south bound above you, I will lock ahead of you.
Sometimes, if the vessel and his barges aren't too big and the tug doesn't have any dangerous(red flag) barges with him, the Captain may let you lock with him.

Now to those very annoying and dangerous drunk driving boaters. These are are a hazard to me like no other. Why? Because, I cannot in a moments notice stop my barges to keep from running over you. Sorry. It's just like a train doing 60 mph and some unlucky person's car dies on the tracks, nine times out of ten his car is gonna get mashed. But at least the train has breaks, we have to rely on our horsepower and water depth to slow down and hopefully stop in time from running over a boater. So if your in your boat with your buddies and you guys are out having a good time and you see one of us coming, please stay away, give us wide berth and don't throw empty beer bottles at us, only full cans! JK. A responsible boat would not be drinking and boating anyway. If you do happen to own a boat and you frequent areas that have barge traffic, I would highly suggest investing in a marine VHF radio, find out what the traffic channel is on your body of water and pay attention to us. Channel 16 is a good channel as we all must monitor it.

I could tell you guys stories of pleasure boaters getting in our way or doing the opposite of what we tell them and they end up with damaged hulls. We don't own the river, but we're bigger and slower. It's alot easier for pleasure boats to stay out of our way than for us to run around them. :)