6 October 2014

We pushed off of Hoppies at 7:10 headed down river. Our “flotilla” of Moondance, R&R, Corkscrew, Roxanne, Diablo, Hotei and Quo Vadimus churned our way through the mud and the floating wood.

It was a long day in time (8.5 hours) and a long distance (96 nautical miles) trip. The current helped push us along at a pretty quick pace of 11.5 – 12.5 knots (about 14 regular miles). Much faster it would be harder to dodge the stuff.

We passed four “up bound” tows. Two of them were fully loaded and they were really working hard to battle the current. Out the back there was a 4′ wave of water. It was very hard to get through. One of the boats is a smaller houseboat, they needed to be careful they didn’t get swamped.

The two that we passed “down bound” were nice enough to slow some so we could scoot by.

It was a tough day, it was paying attention and driving around the debris. Susan and I traded driving, even though we were pretty pleased to get to the anchorage.

The “flotillia” anchored in Little Diversion River. The river is the drainage system for storm water runoff for Cape Giradeau,MO. It normally is a good place to stay, and for us it works for tonight. It would not have worked a few days ago since it would have been spewing trash from the town down river.

Moondance went in first to scope out the space. Lots of deep water because of the river being high, but not a lot of current. They anchored and R&R moved into place next to them. We went next and anchored a little farther up river, closer to the rail bridge. Roxanne came up and tied along side of us after deploying their anchor. The others soon followed and we were anchored. The crews of Roxanne, Moondance, R&R helped get lines tied to the shore to keep us from swinging in the wind.

They also grabbed a large log that was heading downriver towards us and were able to shove it into the mud along the bank. It was a good thing they had caught it, if it had gotten hooked into our anchor chains, we would still be there.

It is great to have other people around, traveling in the “flotilla” has made everyone feel safer and more secure. This is one of the few times we’ve rafted up on the trip (last was in Canada) and I know that I was happy to have the crew of Roxanne next to us watching for issues. (Plus they are really nice people, lots of fun to talk to!)

For dinner we had Susan’s Noodle Casserole, she calls “Train Wreck”. It’s one of our favorite meals and it was nice to have a filling hot meal after such a long day. The 96 miles is our longest single day ride to date.

We were both exhausted and were in bed about 9PM.

Goal in the morning is to get up past lock 52 on the Ohio River so we can do the Cumberland in full daylight.