We definitely had the promised quiet night’s sleep last night and woke up refreshed to a sunny 60 degree morning with just a hint of low water fog. We pulled back into the Mississippi river channel and “Rose’s Pick” took the lead today. It takes us little boats a long time to warm up to full throttle and “Rose’s Pick” had the opposite problem and needed to go faster to warm up her engines.
There are no big river towns on our trek today. Instead, we are treated to a hillier shoreline on the west shore with a touch of Fall color. We talk to our fellow Loopers on Channel 17 and monitor commercial traffic information on Channel 13 and are often doing both channels. When we came upon the “Potter” pipeline barge, we were advised to pass on the “Ones” and then had an upcoming pusher and barge which we passed on the “Twos” and we coordinated with our fellow boaters to go down through the slot.
River current today is about 4mph and we had a number of turbulent areas around Milepost 92 and 81 complete with eddies, swirls and even a vortex.
The Fountain Bluff area is narrower and we took an AIS reading and did not see any upbound barges approaching but also announced our intention on Channel 13 so the “big boys” know where we are. This area reminds me of the Hudson River with its hilly shoreline and curves and it even has a camping area.
We hit a top speed of 13.4 mph today which is almost 2x our hull speed. It took us a while to throttle back so that we could make a sharp turn to starboard to enter the Little Diversion Channel where we planned to anchor. We entered first as we only draw about 4’ and slowly but surely anchored in 15’ of water in a narrow channel. The other Looper boats entered and dropped anchor and even the newbies got a gold star.
I spoke with a fisherman who told me that the channel cut back about at least 3 miles and Bob and I went for a dinghy ride. He also said that the largest catfish on record, 130 pounds, was caught in this area. We did hear gunfire in the distance and thought maybe we were on the set of ‘Deliverance.”
Rose and Gary on “Rose’s Pick” invited all the Loopers over to their beautiful 50’ Carver for the Captains’ Meeting. We had a great time and on the way back to our boat, I noticed the beautiful moon.
There are no big river towns on our trek today. Instead, we are treated to a hillier shoreline on the west shore with a touch of Fall color. We talk to our fellow Loopers on Channel 17 and monitor commercial traffic information on Channel 13 and are often doing both channels. When we came upon the “Potter” pipeline barge, we were advised to pass on the “Ones” and then had an upcoming pusher and barge which we passed on the “Twos” and we coordinated with our fellow boaters to go down through the slot.
River current today is about 4mph and we had a number of turbulent areas around Milepost 92 and 81 complete with eddies, swirls and even a vortex.
The Fountain Bluff area is narrower and we took an AIS reading and did not see any upbound barges approaching but also announced our intention on Channel 13 so the “big boys” know where we are. This area reminds me of the Hudson River with its hilly shoreline and curves and it even has a camping area.
We hit a top speed of 13.4 mph today which is almost 2x our hull speed. It took us a while to throttle back so that we could make a sharp turn to starboard to enter the Little Diversion Channel where we planned to anchor. We entered first as we only draw about 4’ and slowly but surely anchored in 15’ of water in a narrow channel. The other Looper boats entered and dropped anchor and even the newbies got a gold star.
I spoke with a fisherman who told me that the channel cut back about at least 3 miles and Bob and I went for a dinghy ride. He also said that the largest catfish on record, 130 pounds, was caught in this area. We did hear gunfire in the distance and thought maybe we were on the set of ‘Deliverance.”
Rose and Gary on “Rose’s Pick” invited all the Loopers over to their beautiful 50’ Carver for the Captains’ Meeting. We had a great time and on the way back to our boat, I noticed the beautiful moon.
