Day 10 - Monday, November 5th, 2007

Barnacle II Cruise Day 10 – Monday, November 5th, 2007
Leaving Bayou Goula Towhead Anchorage

We were awake at 5:00, Barney cranked the generator to heat water and start the coffee. We were really fogged in so we had a breakfast of pancakes and bacon. I was also able to get our lunch put together before we pulled anchor. Tuna salad was made and put in the refrigerator. We had time to visit for awhile and talk about our plan of attack for the next few days.

Barney is going to have to come back home with Vickie and me next Sunday. We’ll probably fly out of Panama City to Fort Smith. They’ll drive back to Oklahoma City from the marina, and I’ll get Kenn’s truck home. They have a couple of board meetings to prepare for and I’ve got to go back to work next Monday.

Our anchorage was really nice. It was quiet and had very little current coming through. We also felt very little of the wakes from the tows and barges passing outside the island. Of course, the fog bank came in sometime during the night, so the tows ran to the banks with their barges and holed up for the night.

I was able to get caught up on postings to the blog and answer a few emails. I had a full 4 bars on my broadband signal with Alltel; Vickie only had one bar with AT&T. It was the strongest signal I’ve had on the Mississippi, if I had signal at all.

We got underway at 9:00 AM, three hours later than we intended. It was still really foggy, but the sun was burning it off quickly. Barney was on radar while Kenn, Vickie and I were sighting the buoys, barges and ships through the fog. We were in the clear by 9:30 and running at our normal 1500 RPM. The barge and ship traffic was a lot thicker because they had been hindered by the fog, too. It took awhile to navigate around and stay clear of them. By the time we made it to Donaldsonville, we were around most of them, and traffic had cleared out a lot. For all of our trying, it still looks like it will be 6:00 this evening before we get to the Industrial Canal Lock in New Orleans, and we’ll be stacked up for 3 hours waiting on the barge traffic to clear through. Then maybe we can get to the marina by midnight. Then again, the Lord could be smiling on us and we won’t have a wait at all.

Mile 172 – saw a depth of 111 ft. in the bend of the river.

Noon – Mile 156: Rounding College Point, 60 miles north of New Orleans. We might make it to the lock before it closes at 3:30 for rush hour. If so, it will be mighty close.

Mile 155 – saw a depth of 130 ft. in another bend in the river.

At 1:00 we were slowed down by a fuel filter problem. Barney took over the helm while Kenn and I went to the engine room to switch over to the parallels and replace the primary filters for port and starboard engines. Barney brought her down to 1000 RPMs; we put our ear muffs on and I handed Kenn supplies while he drained the bowls and pulled out the old filters. We had particles in the bowls as big as my thumbnail mixed in with the diesel. It only took us 15 minutes to do the replacements, reprime the filters and switch back to the primaries without even so much as a sputter from either engine.

We’ve had rough water around some of the barges and ships, so we’ve sloshed fuel around in the tanks and broke up some of the sludge on the sides and bottom of the fuel tanks. Then filling up from the fuel barge with their high pressure system, we probably knocked some nasty stuff loose. This was the first fuel filter change on the trip, so I think we’re doing well.

When we get tied up to the dock tonight, the plan is to run the Algae-X and fuel polishing system to strain out the big stuff. But we have an abundance of fuel filters if we need them, too.

Well, we made it through the last 40 miles of barges, ships, tugs and tows that were stuffed in the river bow to stern, everyone maneuvering in tight quarters. We got to the Industrial Canal lock at 5:00 PM, missing our original mark of 3:00 because of a 3 hour fog delay and the 30 minute fuel filter replacement relay race.

The canal lock reopened after rush hour at 5:40; the locked-in tow and barges came out, a single tow and barge went in, a smaller tow, then us. We locked through in 25 minutes or so, made it through the channel into the Pontchartrain and over to the marina by 8:30. Kenn yelled from the bow of the boat that he smelled seafood as soon as we turned out of the canal. As luck would have it, our marina happened to be behind a Landry’s Seafood Restaurant.

After we got the boat buttoned up, we found the way to Landrys. We asked our waiter to make the building stop moving, and he was doing this annoying little side to side motion while we were placing our orders, too. (We hadn’t set foot on solid land since last Friday night at Greenville.) We barely made it through dinner without getting sea (land?) sick. Actually, the food was wonderful…it was the walk back to the boat on full stomachs that nearly got us.

We made a great decision while at dinner…take the day off tomorrow and enjoy a bit of relaxation. We’ve got to do laundry and boat clean-up, but we’ll have some time to play, too. Then we’ll pick back up on our journey on Wednesday. We didn’t really have it in our plans to get to New Orleans until tomorrow anyway. That was just a silly little itinerary that Vickie and I came up with to turn over to insurance; who knew that it would actually work out close to a doable plan.

We’re all tired and really could use a break, so this works out well. Today was pretty rough as far as our stress levels went, but we’ve had a wonderful trip to this point. 900 miles on a boat that had probably never gone more than twenty miles in one day until it became Barn and Vic’s.