Still in Baton Rouge

Looks like we will be here a couple of days to get a better weather window to New Orleans. We got to get off the boat yesterday and go to church. Pastor Val Taylor sent  someone over to pick us up from the boat and take us to church. It was a great service, and then we went out to eat (as all good church folks do). Wes brought us back to the boat and helped us get gas and water. We are all provisioned up to make it to New Orleans now. They are predicting severe weather for tomorrow (and my personal weather router tend to agree) so we are going to wait. This is going to be the busiest part of the trip, and I want to do it in perfect weather.

Thanksgiving

                                             Our boat train.

                                               One of our two dinner guests.

                                          New bridge we passed under.

                                              Morgan at anchor Vadalia,LA.

                                               Abram's camp Thanksgiving.

Amazing engineering.

We had a Thanksgiving to remember. We invited Abram to spend it with us. We left Vadalia about 8 am and motored about 25 miles (that was all we could take). The winds came up and made it horrible. We stopped about 1 pm and had lunch. We towed his canoe behind Rosie. The waves were so bad his canoe got swamped. So we stopped early and found an anchorage between two dikes out of most of the wind. We had grilled potatoes and onions, chicken and sliced tomatoes, followed by pumpkin pie. Abram camped on the shore and we left the next morning. I hope we meet up again sometime. That night though was the roughest we have had to date. The wind was unbelievable. I was up most of the night checking the anchor and tyring to keep Rosie from ramming us. Then in the morning we had fog again. If it was all like that, I think I would rather live in Alaska than on a boat, but fortunately it's not. Today was a good day, sunny, sunny, sunny.

We made it to Baton Rouge

We made it to Baton Rouge just before dark. We are anchored just north of the US 190 bridge. It was a good sunny day today. We may get to go to church tomorrow. We called Val Taylor, who is a pastor here that Sharon went to school with. He is trying to arrange a ride for us. I am beat from a long day at the helm, so I will try to post more tomorrow.

Natchez is great

                                              Lunch at the Pigout inn.

                                                  The Under the Hill Saloon.

                                                   Looking up river from Natchez

                                                       

A great old church in Natchez

We had a great day today. We took Rosie across  the river to Natchez. Abram caught up with us yesterday and camped in Natchez last night. We meet him there this morning and walked all over town, then had lunch at the Pigout Inn. The food was wonderful. It was funny, we were standing at the door reading the menu, and decided to go in and eat. Abram started to walk away to tie up the dog when the owner came out and said "Hey we're dog friendly, bring her on in." So we did. It was a great place with old doors as tables. It would be worth the drive to Natchez just to eat there. We will be leaving early in the morning to get on down the river. I don't know how the Internet will be for the next week, but I will blog as soon as I can.

Pics

The rope we ran over.

                                                        Fog, fog, fog

                                                  And more fog.

                                                 Our dinner guest Abram.

                                            We are anchored by the bridge at Natchez.

                                                  The bridge in Vicksburg we floated under

                                        You see hundreds of loading places like this, half look deserted.

River, river, river.

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.

We are in Greenville MS

We are anchored out in front of the Greenville Yacht club. They wanted $82.50 for us to get a slip. It wasn't worth that to us. We filled up with fuel and water, bought a bag of ice , and left. We have good Internet tonight, but are still running on battery power. Electric sure would have been nice, but not for 82 bucks. They were reasonable on gas though, $2.89 a gallon. I was surprised. We are being attacked by hundreds of bugs right now, I had to close up the boat. We didn't go anywhere yesterday. It was rainy and cold, we had a good anchorage, so we just stayed put. We will be leaving in the morning, our next stop will be Natchez MS. will be there a couple of days, as we have someone there to help us restock. The sun came out today. What an attitude adjuster. It felt good to be on the river again. We followed a large tow all day today named Crimson Jim. He was going about the same speed as us, so we had him in sight all day. Talked to a bunch of tows on the radio today. I am starting to get used to dealing with them. They are defiantly getting bigger now. We follow one the other day that was 10 wide. The river is getting eider to though. I tried adding pics, but the Internet is to slow. I will post some as soon as I can.

We're off again

We are getting ready to leave the marina here in Memphis in about 30 minutes. I don't know if we will have internet tomorrow or not. If not I will post as soon as I can. Thanks Seth, the depth sounder worked out great. The numbers are much larger.

We are in Memphis

                                           Making biscuits

                                            Sunset at anchor

                                          In Memphis with the I40 bridge in the background

                                           MMMMMMMMM biscuits

                                                         Memphis from our slip
Sorry for no updates the last two days, but we have been in the wilderness. No Internet or phone service for the last two days (much to Sharon's dismay). It has been an absolutely beautiful trip so far. We have been going through some really remote areas. We anchored across from New Madrid Mo. Monday night. We ran out of water in our main tank, so I put in the six gallons we had in a jerry jug and then took our dinghy over to New Madrid  and found a bait shop close to the river and filled up the jerry jug again. It was nice to get to Memphis and fill up with water, gas and groceries. A friend of ours from Lighthouse Landing named Seth lives here in Memphis, and was very kind to take us to walmart and Home Depot. It was a great blessing to have his help. Our depth sounder has been acting up the last couple of days. So Seth went to The Bass Pro Shop, and picked us up another one. I will install it tomorrow. So far that's the only mechanical failure. We have been getting into a routine, and that's a good thing. Cooking on the boat is going really well. Sharon made biscuits the other day, yummm. So far we have gone 299 miles. Our next marina stop will be in Greenville, Arkansas. It's about 200 miles from here. Should be about 4 or 5 days if the weather is nice.

Beautiful day today

We are at mile #888. We made 70 miles today. It was a little chilly, but other than that it was a truly beautiful day. It put some of my concerns about the Mississippi to rest. Most all of the wing dikes are about four feet out of the water. The river is really low right now. Even if they were under water, the are pretty well marked. We have paper charts and a chart plotter, so navigation has been pretty easy so far. As far as barges go, we meet 13 of them today in the 70 miles we traveled, and none came up behind us to pass. So far that's not any worse than the Ohio river, but I imagine that will pick up the further south we get. We motored most of the day. We did get in two hours of sailing without the motor at the end of the day. It was pure joy to turn it off, and sail at 6.5 to 8.4 mph under sail alone. Hoping for some more of that tomorrow. The interent is too slow to upload pics, so I will add them when we get closer to civilazation.

WE ARE ON THE MISSISSIPPI

                                             Morgan at anchor on the Mississippi

                                          The cofluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi

                                          Look up the Mississippi

                                           The comercial stop where we got gas

                                          We passed Mound City where my dad was born.
We had an excellent day today. We had a light wind. We motor sailed all day today. We are currently about five miles down the Mississippi river. We talked to a nice lady at one of the commercial barge companies, and she offered to take us into town to buy gas. So we are full again.When we entered the Mississippi our boat speed went from 6 mph to 9.5 mph, with a max speed of 10.4. We were flying. Amazing what a 4.5 mph current will do for you. I don't think it will take long to get to Memphis, which is our next stop. The sun is shining bright and it feels warm. I think I will grill some hot dogs tonight.

Going nowhere today

We left the dock we were at last night, and motor sailed for about two miles. Then I had to turn straight into the wind. The wind was blowing so hard we could only make about two miles per hour. And it was very difficult at that. So we pulled over to the edge of the river and anchored. Tomorrow is forecasted to be alot better. We spent the day relaxing. Well, I did any way. Sharon did her online school, and made tortillas. Yum!

Morgan has left the marina

                                                     We are docked at Massac State Park

                                                 Inside the lock at Kentucky dam

                                              I can't wait to get to Florida

                                                Sharon in her high fashion PJ's

                                            My 30 minute sail today

We got away today.y at 7:30. We had a northwest wind all day today, so that meant wind on our nose  the whole time. So we had to motor the whole way. I did manage to use the sails for about 30 minutes, but that was all.The wind was so strong that at one point even with the motor at full throttle we could only go between 1.5 and 3 miles per hour. It's not supposed to be that bad tomorrow. We only made about 35 miles today. But we also had to go through two locks today. One at Kentucky dam, and the other was lock #52 on the Ohio river. We are currently docked at Massac State park in Illinois on the Ohio river. Tomorrow we should make it to the Mississippi river quite easily. Well the Internet here is really slow, so that's all for today.