AMAZING! ELECTRIC AND INTERNET AT THE SAME TIME

Wow, so much has happened since I was last able to blog. We are in Vidalia LA. It is just across the river from Natchez MS. We are anchored next to the River View RV Park. The owner of the park's name is Cappy. Is is a very nice guy, and also a boater. He and his wife did the great loop on a trawler. When I told people I wanted to go down the Mississippi river they told me I was crazy. I already knew that. I told them I wasn't looking for a vacation cruise, where every night you were in a marina, that I wanted an adventure. An adventure is what I got. We are now 698 miles into our journey. The only disappointing thing so far is that we haven't been able to sail as much as I had hoped. It has been mostly motoring and motor sailing. They keep predicting a north wind, but so far it hasn't happened. On Saturday, we had our biggest adventure yet. We were going through Vicksburg, MS. We had just passed three barges going the other direction, and about a quarter of a mile from two bridges when Sharon said, "There's a rope in the water". we couldn't turn in time and ran over it. When she said rope I was thinking of like a 1/2" rope. I couldn't believe what it was when I saw it. It was a barge rope. It was probably 2 1/2 inches in diameter. Before we could do anything, there was a klunk and the engine stopped cold. I quickly open the engine well and saw that it was tangled in the motor. It didn't take to long to get it off the prop. I thought, "oh well, that's not too bad". Then I tried to turn the tiller, it wouldn't turn. The rope was tangled in the rudder as well. It was wrapped all the way around the rudder. I grabbed a hacksaw and cut the rope in two, hoping to be able to pull it from one side of the boat to the other to free it. It wouldn't budge. All this time we are drifting sideways toward the bridges. Thanks to God we drifted sideways right through the middle of the bridges. But we are still in the channel with no steerage at all. We decide to try and start the motor and see if we can motor out of the channel. The tiller is turned to the side, so I turned the motor towards the other side to try and go in a straight line. It worked (barely). We got over to the side of the river out of the channel and grounded the boat. I got my trunks on, tied a rope around my waist and got into the water to try and get the rope untangled from the rudder. The water was 54 degrees, so I knew I couldn't stay in long. I was so hot from trying to get the rope off from the top I was sweating. I thought for a moment that the cool water might actually feel good. It didn't! I was just about to give up and get back on board for a rest when it came loose. We hoisted the rope into the cockpit of the boat. Now we could steer and motor IF we can get the boat ungrounded. We tried and tried to rock the boat, shift the weight around with the motor in full reverse. No use she would not budge. I put the little 2HP motor on Rosie (our dinghy) and pulled with it and Sharon on Morgan with her motor in reverse. It took a little while but she finally broke free. We put the rope in Rosie, so we would have room to move around. It filled up our cockpit floor. When we got to anchor, I took Rosie up the shore and threw the rope on the shore so it wouldn't float down river and us run over it again. Wow what a day! We have a lot to be thankful for: 1. we floated through the bridges, 2. we were already past the barges, 3. we were able to get out of the channel and into the shallows, 4. we were able to free the rope, 5. we were able to get off the sand.

Last Thursday a john boat came up next to us with two guys in it. We talked for a little while, one of them was canoeing down the river. He had stopped a Greenville to visit with the other guy who was showing him the local area in his boat. We went on. Then on Saturday we were just about to where we were going to anchor and we saw something up ahead. As we got closer, we saw it was a canoe. When we caught up with it, we saw it was Abram, the guy from the john boat. We told him we were about to anchor and invited him over for some potato soup, (we had potatoes and onions we needed to use up). So Sharon made a big pot of soup. We had a good talk about our adventures on the river. He has done 1900 miles so far. On a canoe. Wow. Paddling by day, sleeping in a tent on a sandbar by night. And people said I was crazy. He came over the next morning and we had bacon, eggs and toast and waited for the fog to lift. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you about the fog. We have had fog every morning since we got to Greenville. Thick, thick fog. We haven't been able to leave in the mornings till about 9:30 or 10:00.

When we were in Greenville, we woke up about 6:30, I started getting the boat ready to go, and was about to leave when all of a sudden a thick fog rolled in. We had to just stay put until about 9:30. Friday and Saturday mornings were even worse. On Sunday after we had breakfast with Abram, it was 8:30 and the fog was already almost gone. So we got going, happy to have a bit earlier start. We got about 4 miles down the river and the fog started coming back (and there was a barge coming). So we decided to pull over to the side and anchor till the barge passed and the fog lifted. Little did we know our next adventure was about to begin. When we got out of the channel our depth went from 17' to 10' to 3.5' just like that, and Morgan stuck fast. She was sitting solid. We would walk all over the deck and she would not rock at all. I told Sharon that we would just have to wait for the barge to pass and the fog to lift and try to get her unstuck, but we would probably have to call BoatUS to tow us off. I had almost no hope of us getter her off by ourselves. When it was time to try I put the motor in reverse with full throttle, but she would not budge. We got Rosie back out. With Sharon in Morgan and me in Rosie we pulled and pulled, and to my great surprise and relief she came off the sand bar.

 

                                                                     Abram and his dog.

 There is more I could write but I think this post is long enough. I will post more tomorrow. It is not letting me post more than one pic, maybe too, this post is too long I will try to post the pics in another post.