The Mighty Mississippi River
SV Meshugga
Nicholas & Deidre Mace
Thu 3 May 2018 16:38
Wide, expansive and running at 6 knots.
Further the river has Wingdams, ie rock dam walls, mostly submerged, sticking out from the banks perpendicular to the river to slow erosion of the banks and deflect the current to the centre of the river.
Wingdam with some logs caught on it
Going upstream, we try to hug the banks to get out of the main current, and so have to be hugely on the lookout for these wingdams. Even though on the charts, it seems that some have been extended further into the river hence we can’t just edge past them as we’d like to.
And then there is the debri. Trees, branches, logs, all floating downstream and after rains, more stuff is dislodged and floats down.
Disused jetty with debri stacked up next to and on top showing the height the river rises to
And did I mention the Tows?
Powerful working boats, pushing barges. The biggest we’ve seen so far has been 30 barges. 5 across and 6 long. Huge.
Thankfully we have AIS, so can ‘see’ them a way off so we can ensure we have room to pass as they do not exactly have great maneuverability.
This is a Tow. It ‘pushes’ barges ahead of it.
This Tow is 5 long by 5 wide
This Tow is only 3 long and 4 wide. Small....
This is a small Tow. It moves and ‘Stages’ barges (rafts barges together) for the Big Tows fetch them, and move them up or down the river.
Small Tow staging two barges ie rafting them together.
Lots of beautiful historical bridges
We have 220 miles of the Mississippi to navigate until we can turn into the Illinois River.
For the first time in this adventure I am not having fun. Stressful and tiring.
We could sit in the middle of the river and avoid the dangers, but to make 2 knots headway, would take us forever to navigate this river.
Passing the ‘City’ of Chester. The home of Popeye....
Chester Boat Club.
Chester Railway Station
Another pretty bridge
We continue our slow journey up the Mississippi.
Cell coverage continues to be intermittent, but we do pick up signals sometimes, somewhere on our travels during the day.
Take Care