It may not be easy to see here, but today I learned there is no pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Instead, there's a loaded coal barge.
Conditions were right as the M/V Patsy Coleman came down the Ohio River past Huntington, W.Va., today (This was taken from Huntington; that's Chesapeake, Ohio, in the background). The Ohio flows east to west here, and as the sun tracks across the southern part of the sky, it was at my back. The time was around solar noon, when the sun is at it highest point in the sky no matter what your watch or your phone says.
Being a Crounse boat, the Patsy Coleman was pushing 15 barges loaded as deep as they could get. There was a stiff wind blowing from the west as the Coleman headed in that direction. The wind was pushing some sizable swells into the Coleman head on. As you can see, there were times when the water went flying.
Because the sun was at my back and I was at about the same level as the spray (or whatever mariners call it), for a few seconds I got to see rainbows form in the spray. If I had pressed the shutter button for another second or so, I would have gotten a better picture. I guess seeing the rainbow surprised me.
If it helps, you might be able to see the rainbow (bargebow?) along the top edge of the spray.
That was my big thrill of the day.
I had planned to post a thoughtful piece about an artifact of Ohio River history that has come into my possession, but I forgot this is Super Bowl Sunday, so nobody would want to take a deep dive into something so old. Maybe soon.
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