If my memory serves me correctly, we shoved off the barge/dock at Vidalia about 1:30 or so and anticipated an interesting trip as the Muddy Mississippi became wider, muddier and much more congested. I had figured the fuel use carefully and my calculations had been pretty close to correct to date. However, the delay of the morning and the anxiety of a close schedule lay heavy on my mind and heightened my natural tendency for a need for speed. My plans were to get as far as light would take us and find the safest anchorage possible on the lower/lower Mississippi... which in any ones terms is the grandest of "oxymoronisms".
If I haven't mentioned it before now I want you to be sure and understand my shock and awe of the lower Mississippi River. It is almost without description, at least any I could craft, and I won't attempt it except to say that it is, in its own way, beautiful with a hint of terror. It has a mesmerizing personality that lures you into compliance with its aura and snaps you to conscientiousness with its strength and its vast array of inhabitants, biological and man-made.
After a few miles on the river, we put our "waiting for gas" frustrations behind us and settled in to our river cruise routine of watching for nasty things in the water before they smoothed off Detour's bottom of all mechanical implementation. As I think back now of all the things that could have gone wrong on our adventure, I wonder why we didn't destroy the running gear on partially submerged flotsam. It was our good luck because there was no way we could see it all. The best that I can recall, we made about 105 miles or so after the long delay in Vidalia; not a bad day's run. We found a large cut-off or Towhead at about mile marker 258, called Fancy Point Towhead and pulled in as closely as possible to anchor. The water was 80 to 100 feet deep in the river but as we carefully pulled out of the channel, the depth jumped up to 12 or so and we anchored in about 6 feet as I best remember.
Anchoring on the Mississippi is, as I have alluded to before, is a practice of faith. You know stumps abound in the shallows but you must get far enough away from the channel to ensure one of the monstrous tows won't run you over. I wanted to get close to the towhead point to keep out of the way of small tows that might decide to use the channel behind the island to save time and cut-off a portion of the river. Now, about the current; I would say that it was flowing 4 to 5 miles per hour. Now, that doesn't sound to fast but believe me it is very fast and very frightening. I could see us in the night with a broken anchor rode and cruising backwards to the Gulf of Mexico, or worse into the path of a big ole tow.
The evening came quickly and we hurried to get the gas we had in barrels transferred into Detour's tanks. Now, lets see, those dangerous river things I was describing a while ago paled in comparison to having 60 gallons or so of gasoline in the cockpit and using a hand pump to move it from the barrels to the tanks. I tried not to think about it in hopes that our luck would continue to hold up. It did and we settled in for the night after another quick supper.
If I haven't mentioned it before now I want you to be sure and understand my shock and awe of the lower Mississippi River. It is almost without description, at least any I could craft, and I won't attempt it except to say that it is, in its own way, beautiful with a hint of terror. It has a mesmerizing personality that lures you into compliance with its aura and snaps you to conscientiousness with its strength and its vast array of inhabitants, biological and man-made.
After a few miles on the river, we put our "waiting for gas" frustrations behind us and settled in to our river cruise routine of watching for nasty things in the water before they smoothed off Detour's bottom of all mechanical implementation. As I think back now of all the things that could have gone wrong on our adventure, I wonder why we didn't destroy the running gear on partially submerged flotsam. It was our good luck because there was no way we could see it all. The best that I can recall, we made about 105 miles or so after the long delay in Vidalia; not a bad day's run. We found a large cut-off or Towhead at about mile marker 258, called Fancy Point Towhead and pulled in as closely as possible to anchor. The water was 80 to 100 feet deep in the river but as we carefully pulled out of the channel, the depth jumped up to 12 or so and we anchored in about 6 feet as I best remember.
Anchoring on the Mississippi is, as I have alluded to before, is a practice of faith. You know stumps abound in the shallows but you must get far enough away from the channel to ensure one of the monstrous tows won't run you over. I wanted to get close to the towhead point to keep out of the way of small tows that might decide to use the channel behind the island to save time and cut-off a portion of the river. Now, about the current; I would say that it was flowing 4 to 5 miles per hour. Now, that doesn't sound to fast but believe me it is very fast and very frightening. I could see us in the night with a broken anchor rode and cruising backwards to the Gulf of Mexico, or worse into the path of a big ole tow.
The evening came quickly and we hurried to get the gas we had in barrels transferred into Detour's tanks. Now, lets see, those dangerous river things I was describing a while ago paled in comparison to having 60 gallons or so of gasoline in the cockpit and using a hand pump to move it from the barrels to the tanks. I tried not to think about it in hopes that our luck would continue to hold up. It did and we settled in for the night after another quick supper.
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