Day 6 - Thursday, November 1st, 2007

Barnacle II Cruise Day 6 – Thursday, November 1st, 2007
Leaving Marrisach Lake off White River Canal, AR

We fired up the generator at 6:30 to start coffee and get the water heater operating again for showers. Morning is clear and bright, cool and in the low 50’s.

The wind shifted during the night and the water started slapping the hull differently, so Kenn got up a few times to make sure the anchor was holding. No problems, but it did make rest more difficult as night crept toward morning. A brisk, cool shower took care of the rest of the cobwebs that were left over for me. Barney beat me to the hot water.

The anchor came up and we were underway by 8:00 AM. We were through lock #2 by 8:30. Again, this was a lock with no name, so now Vickie and I don’t have to share…we can each have a lock named after us. The lockmaster was friendly, wanted to know where we came from and where we were going. We tossed him the last of our Halloween candy bags, and he wished us well.

Lock #1 (Norrell) was just 4 miles downstream, and Kenn and I had cleaned up our fenders and lock line before I remembered it. I apologized for the extra practice, but we needed one more for good measure. Lock 1A at Montgomery Point at the mouth of the White is totally open. We just have to navigate it at no wake speed. So we won’t have to get our lock line out again until New Orleans.

We should be at the mouth of the White in the Mississippi at 10:00 on Day 6. We’re a day off plan. Since we didn’t get to leave home port until the water pumps were replaced, we lost a half day on Saturday, then having to shut down our days early because two locks were jammed up with tow boats cost us the other half day. Not too bad, and we knew we had a good chance of it happening.

At 9:55 we started navigating the pass through lock 1A. The lockmaster already knew the boat was heading for Key West, and he wanted to tag along. The lock is right at the entrance to the Mississippi and while we were navigating through, we saw one two going downriver and one going upstream…just like a busy four-way stop, but without the stop.

10:00 and we are in the Mississippi!!! We passed the downstream tow by the time we got to the mouth of the Old White River 3 miles downstream. Our engine RPM is kept steady at 1500. When we were in the Arkansas/White, we were running at 8.9 to 9.0 knots. When we got into the Mississippi, we picked up speed to 13.2 to 13.4 knots, occasionally jumping to 14 – 14.5 knots in the bends. So we have a 4 to 4.5 knot current helping us along. The boat is wallowing a little more with the current, so she’s a little harder to steer, but it isn’t too bad.

Spotted another eagle, first on the Mississippi, at river mile 590 (we came into the river at mile 599). By the time I got my camera ready, he had flown to the east bank and I missed him. But he flew over us for a few seconds, and that was neat. It was another baldy…beautiful bird.
Things are busier now. The tows coming upriver are bunched up in twos, so their wakes can get a little rough…not helping Vickie’s stomach any, I’m sure. The tows are much bigger now, we’ve seen a couple 5 x 7 (35 barges) and one 6 x 7. With going faster, one person is navigating while the other steers. Kenn has been at the wheel mostly, and I’m verifying the marks on the river to the charts and to the GPS and looking for debris. We’re seeing quite a few snags.

To break the monotony of mark after mark after mark, we’ve tried to find a few distractions to keep us alert…from finding electrical gremlins (albeit some human manufactured) to writing country/western songs. As Kenn was relieving me after my turn at the wheel, he asked where we were. I showed him the chart and three ‘nun’ buoys coming up on our left. He made the remark, “there’s got to be a country song in there somewhere.”

When I got back from my trip to the head, I yelled, “I’ve got it!” Then sang, “Rollin’ down the Mississippi contemplating my soul, when what should appear but three nuns in a row.” If my trip to the head had required more time to think, I might have come up with the whole song…we’ll never know.

Then as we were nearing the end of the chart that corresponded to our section of the river, I made the remark that we were about to run off the page. Kenn said in a smart-a** way, “then turn the page”, and his eyes lit up. I facetiously reminded him that Bob Seger had already written that song.

We turned into the Greenville, MS cut at 2:15 and got to the marina about 2:45. It’s about 5 miles up the channel off the river, socked in the middle of casinos. As we were pulling up to the fuel dock, we saw all of these people waving at us. It was Winfield and Linda of the ‘River Rose’, and Cliff and Eddie on ‘Seldom’s Escape’. They had berthed at Applegate for several months before coming downriver in the early fall. Winfield and Linda’s Sheltie, Cleo, was ecstatic to see some old friends from the marina. It was really good to visit with them.

When we refueled (232.7 gallons), it worked out that we made our 1 mile to the gallon by the time we reversed out the fuel usage of the generator and the time we spent idling at the locks. So we made Barney’s plan on that one. Afterwards, he and Kenn had to work on the upper steering station. It had a hydraulic leak that Kenn was able to take care of with a turn of the wrench, then they had to re-pressurize the system.

We needed to make a quick grocery run, and Vickie didn’t feel like going out to eat with us. So we went to the yacht club bar and had a drink with Winfield and Linda, then called a cab to take us to dinner. The cab driver was a sweet lady named Irene, and she had a fare when she picked us up. She was a little lady named Miss Elizabeth who was 78 years old. She said she had 20 children, ten still living, and she had no idea how many grandchildren…she had never stopped to count. She is another gracious little lady to cross our path.

The taxi took us to an Italian restaurant called Fermo’s. They had wonderful lasagna and tortellini, bread and honey butter. When we were through, we called our cabbie, Irene, to pick us up and take us to Kroger’s. She waited on us while we sped through the aisles buying bread, sugar, coffee, turkey, chips, 7-Up and jello for Vickie.

We called Winfield when we got back to the marina to have him come to the gate and let us in. As we walked down the fuel dock to the Barnacle, Eddie was waiting with a plateful of brownies that she had made for us. So good.

I think Winfield and Linda are planning to stay in Greenville a little while longer, but Cliff and Eddie are wanting to head downriver again in a week or so. They’re having trouble finding gas along the way, so they want us to send word back to them if we find any on our next diesel fill. It appears that some of the gas delivery trucks, that used to offload fuel to pleasure boats from barges tied to the bank, are no longer doing so. I would guess that with the price of fuel, there are fewer pleasure boats making the river run, so the trucks just stopped offering the service.

It is 100 miles to Vicksburg from here, then another 70 to Natchez, and 135 from there to Baton Rouge. When we see how long it takes to make Vicksburg tomorrow, we’ll have to decide how we’re going to run the next three days. We don’t want two hard days back to back, since it’s also 135 miles from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. So Saturday may be a longer run that Natchez, and we can anchor in a navigable oxbow off the main river channel. Then we could have an easier time of it to Baton Rouge and refueling. We’ll see how tomorrow’s run turns out. Any way we slice it, it looks like we’ll make New Orleans on Monday, in 9 ½ days…right in the middle of our 8 to 11 day spread from Applegate. That’s about 850 miles. It also looks like we’ll arrive in New Orleans in full darkness, which I hate. The river there is bad enough to navigate in daylight with all of the ship traffic, from my past experience; but it’s much worse to try to discern shoreline features and channel marks with all of the light clutter from the banks when running there at night. I’ve done it before and I don’t like it, but there’s really not much choice.