The Mighty (Meagre) Misssissippi

We headed out from Grafton onto the Mighty Mississip and at first it was everything I expected. The river was wide and fast

At 1300RPM we were travelling 10.7 knots, where we would normally be 8.5. However once past the first lock the landscape changed and past the second the river narrowed and there was significant eposure of the riverbanks. Apparently the river is 15ft lower than normal and is anticipated it will get worse. At St Louis a barge with a crane warned me to go to deeper water as he had just grounded and he only drew 5ft. Several other tows were reporting groundings as well and one captain told an upbound colleague from further south "you will see some scarey stuff up here!"

We arrived at the famous Hoppies Marina in the early afternoon and were lucky enough to have this beautiful riverboat pass us by in the afternoon.

A couple of other Loopers were with us and at 5.00pm the owner Fern gave us a breifing on what to expect downstream. First she told us that this was the lowest she had seen the river since 2003, when they actually closed the river. She also said she expected it to get worse. The advice was to ignore all the anchorages suggested in the guidebooks and gave us a few options for the rest of the Mississippi. These were anchorages up to about 50 miles downstream, a floating dock 100 miles away and an anchorage at the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers 158 miles away. We decided to go for the floating dock (Kidds in Cape Girardeau) and everyone retired early for an early start the next day.

At 6.00am it was still dark but one Looper departed, followed half an hour later by another and half an hour after that we got underway as well. By now the current was running around 3 knots and we were hitting speeds of 11-12 knots, with the highest we saw that day at 13.8 knots. We overtook our fellow loopers and were in the lead for the race to Kidds Landing. There were lots of tows, both directions - we probably passed 20 or more that day. The river got narrower and shallower with a typical sight like this one of the Little Rock Ferry ramp (which wasn't operating for some strange reason.

We reached the dock about 3.00pm and didn't like the look of it and its exposure, so we decided to head for Angelo's Towhead. About 10 miles out from it, it was starting to get dark but we were committed. About 6 miles out we ran into a large slow tow going downstream at a norrow part of the river and we had to get past him or we were not going to make the anchorage by dark. We got past and made it to the Towhead right on nightfall. We anchored in 18ft of water, well away from barge traffic and had a pleasant night after 158 miles in 13 hours, averaging 12.2 miles per hour.

The next day we entered the Ohio River and it couldn't have been more different. Firstly the river was wide and had water in it. It was also running against us as we were heading upstream, so we were doing 7 knots at the same revs as yesterday. We made good time until we reached the first lock, where there was a backlog of tows and we had to wait two and a half hours to lock through. This lock is just upstream of the new Olmstead Lock and dam under construction - an awesome looking project.

We past Metropolis, but had no time to stop and check out the Superman painting on the water tower. We got straight through the second lock, but the delay at the first did not allow us to stop at Paducah, either. We went on to stay at another towhead anchorage at the junction of the Cumberland and Ohio rivers. Another nice quiet night.

The next day was a short (30 mile) trip up the narrow but deep Cumberland river to the Barkley Lock, which has a 57ft lift to Barkley Lake.

From there it was a 2 mile trip to Green Turtle Bay Marina and Resort, where we have booked to stay a week while our Kiwi friends, Dennis and Kathy, come to stay with us. They will have a rental car so we intend to explore the local area and places like Memphis, Nashville etc.

 

Another frenetic few days, with a lot of travel (304 miles in 4 days), so it will be good to relax for a bit.