Thursday August 10, 2017
Shifting from fast to
sloooow
Underway at 0605 from our anchorage behind the mooring cylinders
and headed downstream at the exhilarating speed of 10-plus MPH passing many,
many moored barges until we got to the Mississippi at 0740 and made the almost
180-degree turn heading north. That was
where the rubber meets the road on this trip as the current speed was going to
make or break us. As it turned out the
average 3.5 MPH head current we encountered was as expected giving us an
overall speed of advance of around 4.4 MPH.
Our hopes had been to make at least 4; so we were OK. But, WOW is that slow. We ended up in a diversion canal immediately
off the river at mile 49. We get off the
Mississippi at mile 220. Our daily run
distance is governed by two things, speed and available anchorages. We cannot run I the dark safely, so each
day’s run is limited to around 40-50 miles due to daylight, but sometimes like
today because the next three anchorages are 30 and 40 and 40 miles from each
other. So today, we go 30 miles, tomorrow
and the next day, 40 each.
