Swallow the (Captain) Hook

Well, we made it.  Sorry to leave ya’ll hanging (from the old days of serial novels when they would leave the protagonist hanging by his fingernails from a cliff –cliffhanger- and you would have to wait til next month to buy the next installment to find out what happened).  We are all safe and cozy at Eastern Shore marina (it’s a working marina so we feel right at home) across Mobile Bay from Mobile in a little burg called Fairhope on the banks of Fly Creek. The Fly Creek Café is a stone’s throw away (I wonder:  how big does a stone have to be to be a rock?),  with colored lights and a guitar man in the evening.  How quaint. Fairhope was organized in 1894 by the “Fairhope Single Tax Colony”, followers of Henry George and his single tax philosopy:  “Single Taxers hold as a self-evident truth (I wonder: isn’t truth always self-evident even though we can’t handle it?)  that all men have equal rights to the use of the earth…)”.  Google this- it’s interesting- although it smacks of dirty rotten low-down Marxism. 

     Jan is in Norco, LA (just west of Nawlins) playing nursemaid to her brother Gary who is quite sick.  The Decker’s are some of the finest people I know- Gary, who suffers his afflictions with courage and (mostly) good humor ( even though being a diabetic he can’t have ice cream), and Jan, who always thinks of others before herself.  The salt of the earth ( oh, Jan can’t have salt). "Life is mostly froth and bubble/ Two things stand like stone: /kindness in another's trouble,/ Courage in your own." I’m very busy sanding and painting the masts in preparation for erecting them ( I avoided that one, Bill).  Then we’ve got to tune the rigging, work over the engine, fix the shower drain, get charts, etc. etc.  So we think we’ll swallow the anchor here in Fairhope for a few weeks instead of cruising west past Pascagoula, Biloxi, Gulfport, Pass Christian, Cat Island, Lake St. Catherine, Lake Pontchartrain, to N.O.  From here, we’ll probably cruise east along the Fla. panhandle to Carrabelle or so, and then go offshore to Venice, Fla. to miss the lowlands of the Fla. armpit, home of the great institution FSU- Go Seminoles. It’s just possible that the 35 knot NW winds and 9’ seas of the past weeks have had a sobering effect on me (which is very good) and instilled a desire to have everything shipshape before we wander out on the Gulf.  Bawwk- bawkk- buk- baawwk.  

"Wah IS that thing"

Barefootin this is fun!'

This is no fun

Dave earns his moniker

Jan's fixer-upper

Here pelican watching is a great pastime and we saw dolphins on the trip over.  People’s are fishing here alla time.  One night I saw a guy on the dock with a bright light shining down in the water and he was pulling a fish up with every cast.  Most he’d toss back but a few were keepers. I must go to school on this salt water deal.  Unless something exciting happens at the docks here it might be a few weeks until we slip our moorings and continue this saga.  In the meantime all of you stay warm and be good.  If you can’t be good be careful.  Peace, out.             D&J   abd S/V Visitor

PEACEFUL ANCHORAGES

We jump down the river here to a point where the birds are telling us that we are approaching the Gulf.  We start to see more seagulls and flocks of terns with their swept back wings and forked tails like Sabre jets diving into the water and rising on the wing with small fish in their beaks.  The herons are still just as numerous as they have been since the 45^th parallel.  Jan and I have found ourselves saying “I wonder….” So from here on we will pose these questions to ya’ll in the hope that you might post a reply with the answers.  I wonder why the herons are so prolific when the cranes are almost extinct.  Large sandy beaches are in evidence along the shore exciting us for the gulf shores.  The southern reaches of the Tenn-Tom are quite monotonous with wooded banks bordering a placid stream.  The oaks, ashes, hickorys, and white pines of the north have given way to the live oaks, pin oaks, rutaceae, honey locust, and southern pines which are just starting to be adorned with the somber streamers of Spanish moss.

     I think we have neglected the geology of the river valleys which are an open book to the past. Beautiful  layers of ochre, sienna, pumpkin, rust, and chalk slant up and down river in testament to the ancient seabeds and upheavals of yore.  Along the southern Appalachian thrust belt, Post-Cumbrian glacial drift formed the detritic medial morains  we see today.  Along the western shore, exposed stratigraphic aquifers have given local geologists hopes of implementing widespread carbon sequestration, but the diaspora of permeable synclinoria have put paid to that notion.  At some widely scattered entropic locations, encrustations of equimolar mixture have provided limited habitat for the  sadly endangered Tuscumbia darters, engendering heated controversy as to the efficacy of the erosional projections of the Office of Ecological Eschatology (OEE).  Strata of feldspar, quartzite granite, limestone, and marbled ecotropic shale are all visible along the banks.  What an incredible history lesson of the earth since it’s creation six thousand years ago!

     We have been intrigued by the metaphor of the river’s surface, which is all that we see.  We see the reflection of our “real” world in the surface tension of the waters, and can only imagine the murky world below:  i.e. what our black hull must look like to the fish.  I wonder, do the aboriginal tribes of Australia really believe that the dream world is the “real” one?  Whoa, as I type, we see our 1^st alligator! No lie.

     Fun place names to say (everyone read aloud):  Tishomingo, Caloosahatchee, Pascagoula, Nawlins, Biloxi, Choctaw, Tuscaloosa, Demopolis, Pass Christian (pah criss-ti-owh), Chickasaw, Bayou La Batre, Zutphen.  At least I’m entertaining myself.

     In the last weeks we have seen:  three coyotes with their black-tipped tails, “skinny legs and all”,  one swimming across the river:  one large chunky beaver on shore (which were introduced to this area in the early 1900’s for natural land reclamation i.e. their dams would drain the swamps????flood them???):  a dozen deer (The best of which was a nice 2 pt. buck who came around the corner as I was fishing, spooked and swam frantically across a ½ mile wide lake and bounded splashing out of the shallows on the other side),  and a fawn crossing the river;  two goats on a small island;  three water snakes swimming;  2 old guys hauling in a huge catfish that we estimated must have been at least 60 lbs(really- now you won’t believe anything I say);  and 3 javalinas at close range.

This morning we were given proof that Alabamians are among the craziest people on earth.  At just sunrise (6:30 am)  in fog as thick as Dave’s bean soup we heard a boat go screaming by our peaceful anchorage on the Tensas R. cutoff.  We thought, “Okay, somebody’s  running their gofaster  on the early morning slick.”  I got up, poured some juice, took my happy pill, and put the coffee on.  Then, in quick succession, at least 30 boats rocketed past, their drivers in snowmobile helmets and camo gear, at, oh, say, 40 mph.  Visibility- 20 yds;  into the Mobile river where a tow might pass once an hour;  logs as big as Schwartzenegger’s thighs;  sailboats anchored;  floating refrigerators.  Word. Crazy. RPBBs(rod-pumping bass busters).  Gary D. says they pay $100,000 in bass tournaments.  I’m goin’ fishin.  D- over and out.                                                                             

White Cliffs of Dover

STILL SOME WILD

CLOSE ENOUGH

FAWN

RPBB

JUST THE FAX MA'AM

check out the name

we took the dinghy down here

Mississippi cellphone

Who's feet? Diek'or Ashley's?

  VAGABOND [vag-uh-bond]   Origin Like this word?

vag·a·bond

 /ˈvægəˌbɒnd/ Show Spelled[vag-uh-bond] Show IPA

adjective

1.wandering from place to place without any settled home; nomadic: a vagabond tribe.

2.leading an unsettled or carefree life.

3.disreputable; worthless; shiftless.

4.of, pertaining to, or characteristic of a vagabond: vagabond habits.

5.having an uncertain or irregular course or direction: a vagabond voyage.

noun

6.a person, usually without a permanent home, who wanders from place to place; nomad.

7.an idle wanderer without a permanent home or visible means of support; tramp; vagrant.

8.a carefree, worthless, or irresponsible person; rogue.

Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway (Tenn-Tom):  234 miles.  First conceived circa 1760 by Marquis de Montcalm.  In 1810, citizens petitioned U.S. Congress for a waterway.  First Federal survey in 1874.  Project authorized  in 1971, work began in 1972 and was completed 12 Dec., 1984.  $2 billion.  Largest civil works project ever by Army Corps of Engineers, it is 5 times longer and has a total lift 3.5 times greater  than the Panama Canal.  They removed 307 million cubic yards of earth, poured 2.2 million yds of concrete, and used 33,000 tons of steel.  Also much larger than the Suez Canal.  The lock walls seem to us to be about 80% aggregate of 2”-4” stone.  28 fixed highway and railway bridges with a min. vertical clearance of 52’ cross the Waterway.  414 feet of difference in water level between Pickwick Lake Ky. And Mobile (sea level).  12 locks measuring 600 feet long x 110 feet wide.  2,640,000 cubic feet or 164,815,200 lbs of water is moved each trip through a lock. This project is famous for its cost. We thank the US taxpayers and the USACE for its past and continuing efforts to make this trip possible.

Our engine on the boat is the original Ford Industrial Engine built in Degenham, England in 1959.  These engines were used in Fordson Major tractors and various lorries (trucks) of the time. 200 cubic inch displacement, 4 cyl., 60 HP, Simms diesel injection, Barr marine manifold.  We used a bit over 100 gallons of fuel traveling 1,000 miles at an average speed of 5.5 mph give or take the current.  Fuel on the water is approx.. $4/gal.  We can carry 150 gal. fuel, about 100 gal. fresh water, a LOT of food, but only one six pack of beer at a time says Jan.

The boat was designed by Philip Rhodes, built in Hong Kong 1960, is 38’ long, 12’ wide, and draws 4’ 9” of water.  It is ketch rigged (has two masts), weighs 13 tons and is built of solid teak (even the dovetailed drawer sides).  It can sleep 6 in the v-berth, main saloon, and private aft cabin.  Refrigerator runs on 12V or 120V shore power, water heater runs off engine heat or 120V, toilet is electric 12V (best purchase we made), stove/oven is propane, water pressure is 12V or shore hookup, 75 watt inverter runs off dual 12V deep-cycle batteries, and in the miracle category, all Dave’s plumbing and electrical work works!  OK, one flare fitting. 

We have Verizon phones and a Verizon mobile hotspot connected to a HP laptop with 2 billion megaRAMROMbyte drivers and have had virtually total coverage all down the rivers.

Jan is a 59 year old retired school teacher/consultant, weighs &%# lbs., is as tough as nails under her luscious, sweet exterior and is always cheerful and willing.  She might just be the best FIRST Mate ever, so I’ll let her finish this blog.

JAN:

Well, why say any more? 

We usually try to hang in there and not go to marinas because that can dwindle my monthly pension check quickly.  Since starting out, we have gone to about 4 of them , at an average of $45/ nite.  Sometimes, though, we will make a quick stop at a marina and ride our bikes into town for that six pack I allow Dave to have.  

Each night, we have to make a plan for the next day.  How many locks we may have to enter and what the current is to determine how far we can and want to go.  Then we have to study the charts and reference our books to pick some anchorages.   Usually, they have been found but it is not easy these days finding enough water to anchor in.  Tonight, for instance we had to kedge off two sandbars before settling in.  Our first priority is to be out of the river and away from “those stinking barges”.   Tonight I thought I could jump off the boat like Bogie and Hepburn in “The African Queen”  and push. 

Dave has equipped this boat with all the necessities to make this trip comfortable.  He makes sure that the boat is in “ship shape” and we have our Herons in a row so I feel safe and secure.  I cannot believe that he has helped me to fulfill a dream I’ve had for years- one for the bucket list.  He writes a darn good blog and I hope you are all enjoying it as much as I am.  I can never write even a smingent as creatively as he has so I won’t even try to walk in his shoes.  We are old hats at hanging together and get along swimmingly and love the pants off each other.  “So if you find someone/ Who gives you all of their love/ Take it to your heart/ Don’t let it strayaayyaay. No matter what you think about it/ You’ll never be able to do without it,/ Don’t throw it all away/ Don’t throw it all away.”  Bob Dylan

It would be great to hear how you all are doing so jot a note (post a comment on the blog) every once in a while, K?    Love ya’ll J and D

FREE AT LAST

     Twelve miles up the Ohio R. from Paducah (where the Tennesee flows into the Ohio)  we take a right turn onto the Cumberland R., a pleasant, winding stream, which has negligible current although we are still going up river and encounter fairly large tows on the tight bends.  This is a 30 mile detour which takes us to Barkley dam and lock and thence into the lakes region.  Barkley Lake is a 134 mile long lake with over 1000 miles of shoreline and Kentucky Lake, just to the west, is one of the largest man-made (no chicks were involved in its birth) lakes in the world…um universe.  It covers 160,000 acres and has 2,380 miles of shoreline.  “Quiet anchorages and modern marinas abound”  This is one of the prettiest places we’ve seen- it rivals the North Channel for beauty and cruising opportunities.  The water is a little muddy, but it’s warm.  Sailing, skiing, hiking, hunting, fishing, boating, and just farting around are all primo.  Check out the Land Between The Lakes , a 170,000 acre scenic playground with historic little towns and many campgrounds.  Great place for the whole fam damily. 

Just inside Kentucky L. we stayed at a “clean, well-lighted place” –Lighthouse Landing, a primarily sailboat marina.  RULE 21:  NO liveaboards.  Nice cottages and RV spots and many sailboats to 40’. Met a very cool guy who was a cross between Jim Harrison and Jimmy Buffet who gave me a 20 mile ride to get propane, and wanted to know if I needed to go into Paducah for some rum as this was a dry county.  Regrettably, I demurred.  We considered erecting our masts here, but, since we wanted to give them another coat of paint, we decided to wait until Mobile.  Of course the next 2 days we had winds on our six of 20 knots (and waves of 2+feet);  this gave us a nice push south.  Had two of the coolest anchorages anywhere in secluded coves, perfect weather, caught a mess of small striped bass on a little Cleo and two sizeable blue catfish on crawlers.  Chilly nights, warm days, morning fog, no bugs, colors just starting to change. 

In this area, the birds became much more plentiful:  kingfishers, swallows, finches, osprey, bald eagles, vultures, ravens, Great White  egrets (black legs), and especially the Great Blue Heron  distinguishable by its size and yellow beak.  Its numbers were only matched by the rod-pumping bass bashers in their sleek go-fast metal-flake machines.  Every quarter klic down the banks would be a svelte, stilted sentinel with its long curvaceous neck out-stretched, or with its head withdrawn and shoulders hunched like some gray-blue somber medieval bishop waiting its turn to move against the stilted castles of the humans perched on the steep, wooded bluffs in the ancient chess game of nature vs. man.  Whoa, easy, Dave.  We passed “many mansions” with incredible stone walls and stairways on the shores of the lakes that put the cottages of Lake Mich to shame.  Most seem to have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain in the last 10-15 years.  Too bad half of them are for sale. 

Working our way up The Tennessee R., we chugged languidly along in the late summer sunshine through the history of the 19^th century.  Tours of antebellum mansions, plantations, towns with a dozen buildings on the Historic Places Register were accessible.  A woman at a small marina where we did a lunch stop  talked on the radio as if she had a mouthful of pralines and honey.  We stopped to shop in the ville of Clifton where our bikes took us along a country road to Main Street where all that was open were two newish banks, a brace of churches, a brick school, and an IGA.  A 60 year-old pharmacy, the barber shop, the restaurant, an old hotel, and various other small businesses were recently closed down.  A sweet palpable peace hung in the air like the leaf smoke in the autumn of my childhood.  We floated on the river past the Nathan Bedford Forrest forest, past the “Trail of Tears” where the Seminole and the Cherokee were marched to the barrens of Oklahoma in a “relocation” scheme, passed under the Natchez Trace,  and with Steve Earle on the stereo singing about Mc Cullough (sp.), :  “Don’t know what I’m fightin’ for/ I never owned a slave”- we swept past Shiloh.  Here, in April of 1862, 24,000 soldiers were either dead, wounded, or missing in an epic battle of the Un-Civil war.  I guess the blood of the fighters was the Roundup needed for the trees that “bore a strange fruit” (Lady Day Holliday). To paraphrase Hemingway,  Words like honor, valor, patriotism, courage didn’t have meaning anymore. It was only the names of places:  Antietum, Shiloh, Bull Run, Gettysburg, and Zutphen which carried any weight.  Now some of you folks might be getting’ a mite upset with talk like this from a no good non-veteran, carpet baggin’ pleasure boatin’, earringed, tattooed,  damnYankee comin down here flyin' his planet flag..  But please, we come in peace and sadness with hope for a little understanding.  And if that don’t get it, we kicked you’re a$$ once and we’ll do it again.  Come on, I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Please don’t hurt me.

THIS IS NO FUN

THIS IS FUN!

LIGHTHOUSE LANDING

CALIBAN'S CAVE

STRIPER

Also, we’d like to thank those of you who hold us in your thoughts and prayers for a safe journey.         Salaam alaikum.  Dave and Jan (who is not to blame)   

Lock Nest Monster

Standing wave at Lock 53

Wahl ah shore wooud laak to, but ah cain't

Dave gets a ride

Yep, shore was a baad flare joint.

sheer dredgery

Tips for flaring copper tubing:  1- The nut must be put on the line before making the flare!  If possible use a long-nosed fitting.  2:  The end of the tube must be cut square and cleaned of all burrs inside and out.  3:  Warming the tube before screwing down the spinner will help prevent cracking (ideally the tube should be annealed).  4:  The tube may need to protrude above the face of the clamp by 1/3 or ½ the depth of the bevel to permit an adequate flare.  When made, the flare should just fit into- but not hang up on- the sides of the flare nut.  5:  The spinner should be oiled when making the flare.  6:  The spinner should not be screwed down too tightly- it will weaken the flare.  When the joint is done up, the flare nut will pull the flare snugly onto the flared fitting.  7:  If the flare looks uneven or in any other way unsatisfactory, it must be cut off and remade.  Doing so right away will be a lot easier than doing so later.   Page 530.  “Boat Owner’s Mechanical and Electrical Manual”, Nigel Calder  2005

We got an early start the next morning and were excited to get off the Mississippi and head upstream on the Ohio at the confluence at Cairo.  As we made the left turn to the East, we soon realized that the Ohio is no punk%%% river itself.  We were working upstream against a 2 to 3 mph current and there was plenty of barge traffic to deal with.  The banks were gentler though, with some grassy  areas, and the bird life seemed more plentiful.  We found a nice anchorage on the Kentucky side about halfway up the 60 miles we had to go before meeting the Cumberland R. turn off.  We anchored along side the bank with an anchor fore and aft to keep us aligned with the current, and we were just around a corner which protected us from a stiff westerly breeze which kicked up a 2’ chop against the current.  The next day, as I was steering upstream, a tow headed out from the left bank to our port and angled out into the river on a converging vector with our course.  I couldn’t move too far to the right because of a giant dredge working there.  I had been trying to minimize our radio traffic so as not to interfere with the pros and I thought our speed would take us in front of the barges, but we heard          earzztvbmd,kriuutuhjjfkjfkspiniriut69ifkjaroundmmdkk4k5k.  Suddenly, the bow of the tow turned directly at us and we were just able to take evasive action.  Another close call.  I think the Captain must have had a black cat bone and put the juju on us because listen to this:

Just as we were relaxing again into our routine we came up on Lock and Dam 53.  Because of the high water from the recent rains, the pickets of the dam were down which allows boats to pass over the dam without locking through.  We contacted the dam on CHNL 13 and received permission to pass through.  We noticed some standing waves and quite a bit of current as we were passing over the dam, but were busy checking out and waving to another boat which was passing us.  When we looked abeam at the lock wall it soon became apparent that, although our speedo said 6.5, we were actually standing still and then were inching backward.  I signaled the engine room for full speed ahead but Scotty said “I’m givin’ ‘er all she’s got Captain Kirk!”  The speedo soon read above seven but it felt as if a giant hand had taken ahold of us from below (perhaps it was the Lock Nest monster). My next impulse was that we had fouled a large line or were hung up on the pickets.  Thump, thump, went our hearts.  After working the boat back and forth across the current (which resulted in some alarming forward ferries (canoe lingo)  we finally broke free of Satan’s grasp and inched our way up river.  Phfeeewww.  Soon, Jan said, “Do you smell paint thinner?”   I replied in the affirmative and scrambled below to check the paint locker.  No dice.  On deck again we kept sniffing and I wondered, “Maybe it’s diesel fuel.  I’ll bet Cindy has stowed away in the aft cabin.”  When I opened the engine room I was met with a fountain of diesel fuel squirting from a fuel line.  I was about to tighten it with my trusty left-handed crescent wrench when I decided that I might break it off and really cook our goose.  So I wrapped a rag around it and we limped upriver a few miles to Paducah, KY where by a stroke of serendipity there was a tie up open at the floating town dock.  Bad luck couldn’t have transpired in a better place.

I have never been in a friendlier place.  The “dock committee” , comprised of several ancient fishermen , assorted layabouts , retired rivermen, tourists, loopers, and even Tom and Huck (see Picture) greeted us, supervised our landing and tie up, assessed the situation, offered cogent advice as to methods of repair offered us rides into town, and, believe it or not, during the two days we were there, three people offered us their cars.  Incredible.  Jan, of course, offered to take Huck and Tom with us to which Tom replied, “Ahh shore weeesh ah cooud, but ah cain’t”.  We cleaned about 2 gal. of fuel out of the bilge and gave it to a guy who needed it to burn his brush pile.  Half a bottle of Dawn and a couple rolls of paper towels, and we had a semi-livable boat again.  The next day, two different guys gave me repeated rides to NAPA and a radiator shop where we had a new flexible fuel line custom soldered and crimped and we had the old girl purring again.  I had replaced an old fuel line with copper flare fittings, neglected the finer points of flaring, so the fuel line cracked when we reved the engine up. 

If you’re ever in the area, check out Paducah.  It’s got a cool mural on the flood walls, a beautiful, peaceful, cool little tree-lined avenue where you can find a 100-year old bakery and a hip new coffee shop, and make sure you stop at Coop’s BBQ for some of the best pulled pork around.  And, if you like Museums there is the railroad museum and quilting museum. This is a quilting mecca.  Most places have some local food market goods and we were able to stock up on some fresh vegetables as well.   

THE BIG MUDDY

Dave heads for danger with a bottle of wine

Jan braves another bridge

Huh, what?

“Ole man river keeps rollin’along”. (?)   “That ol’ river keeps on rollin’ though/ no matter what gets in the way/ or which way the wind does blow”.  (Dylan)   “Can’t put the rain back in the sky/ once it falls down,  please don’t cry./ Can’t force the river upstream/ when it goes south, know what I mean./  Are you down, babe, down with that.” (Lucinda Williams- ESSENCE). 

     Now we’re on a REAL river.  If you consider the Missouri a part of it, it’s right up there with the Amazon and the Nile.  Big currents, big tows, big turns, big banks, big bridges.  “Past nun gut auf!” (Pay attention).  From the confluence we shot down the river at 10 knots (6 on our speedo, 10 on the GPS= 4 knot current.  We flew by the arch at St. Louis which city has no welcoming, safe waterfront facilities for the pleasure cruiser ?????  Why not?  We are known to the tow captains as PC’s (pleasure craft),  an apt appellation from our point of view, if, perhaps, a derogatory one from theirs.  I’m sure that we are akin to the mosquito to them, a constant if not particularly egregious irritation.  We try to blend into their traffic patterns by communicating on channel 13 with them, but to the neophyte, it’s a precipitous learning curve.  “The one whistle” means passing port to port when meeting, but port to starboard from the overtaking vessel’s weltanschauung.  The “two whistle” is of course the reciprocal.  The VHF transmissions are usually quite garbled with static and arcane references as to places and identities.  A 1500’ tow might suddenly decide to do a 180 deg. spin in the middle of the river.  They might want you on the “one” or the “two” when meeting or overtaking on a tight turn or in a congested situation.  These guys are incredible masters of their craft(s) and are unfailingly considerate, polite and calm.  The majority have a deep drawl with a predominance of Cajun influenced patois.  An amazing, and, I believe, very well paid subculture.  Thanks for your forbearance, guys.

The only choice for a stop on the first day was Hoppie’s marina, which is a barge moored along the right descending bank run by an old riverman- Hoppie- and his semi-famous partner, Fern, who holds an informational and precautionary confab with the Loopers who wash up on their bank each day.  Brilliant, piercing blue eyes, deeply lined face, and a cloud of smoke swirling in a halo. A group of boats will naturally congeal together due to lock timing, mooring opportunities, and a natural affinity of anxiety and shared adventure.  Rock Chalk, Confetti, Duddon Pilot, Oceanus, Last Dance, Last Chance, Sonata, Cap’t Sharon abd. Something Landing, et. al. all became radio personalities, happy hour raconteurs, boating stylists, sources of info, etc.  We must learn to make friends on shorter notice, because too soon the pace of travel will widen the gap.

  Then, in the morning, gird up your loins, screw your courage to the sticking point, and back on that horse (and don’t change it in midstream).  A quick 60+ miles down the river we pulled off into Little River Diversion Channel, a placid anchorage near Cape Girardeau with room for many boats and a chance of a barge tow entering in the night.  That night and all the next day it was buckets of rain, buckets of tears, got all them buckets comin’ out of my ears.  The ‘puter showed rain all the way up the Miss. and the Ill. Now we had to worry about a wall of water coming down the channel.  God willing or not, the creek was gonna rise.  We decided to take a lay day here anyway, so we did.  The GPS showed that town was 1.8 mi. away, so being bored in the rain and in need of certain comestibles, we set another anchor, downed dinghy, buzzed up to the RR bridge and struck out on foot in our foulies.  Well, we should have stayed on the RR tracks (There's a whole lot for a boy to think about as he walks along the tracks./  As he walks along...Greg Brown?)  because the two-track short-cut (Diek) turned out to be a morass (now that’s just grade school, Bill- there’s no need to denigrate a perfectly good word) of mud and quick(-mud)sand.  Every step Jan would take for 1/8^th of a mile she would almost lose a boot or fall over.  Oh,yeah, real funny, now. (Gonna’ do a little dance in that Mississippi mud.  Hank Wms. III) The path did take us by a couple of really cool caves  which Tom, Becky, and Huck could easily  have inhabited.  It turned out that the trek lasted 3 hours in the deluge and the thunder and lightning and nary a one Missourian to give us a ride.  Finally, we reached “town” and found a groc store, gas station, and, dripping wet , shivering, in our foul weather gear and mood we were served a fantastic authentic Mexican meal by a very bueno senorita.  Somewhere the sun was shining.  We then got our groc, talked the manager of the store into a ride back to the tracks near our boat and hiked back to the channel.  Here we were greeted by our dinghy riding 2’ higher than when we left it and a 5 knot current in the channel.  As we coasted down past the other boats anchored there, people were shouting, “What’s the name of your boat?”  Nrrrgsdtk dragging!  Oh, good, another dose of adrenaline.  Someone had come in, dropped anchor, and he quickly took the dogs ashore.  (Hi, Blucifer!) Well, she was on the boat alone when it started dragging out towards the raging river.  She started blowing the horn.  He, meanwhile threw the dogs in the dinghy, and headed toward the boat when his little outboard quit. Now he was being sucked out toward the big water in the dinghy and the big boat was dragging.  The horn blasts became more frequent and frantic.  We started out towards them but I glanced at the bow of our dinghy and we had 3” of freeboard with all our supplies and a 2 horse motor.  We about faced and inched our way back up current to the Visitor.  Some deft, brave soul in a Great Banks or possibly a Monk trawler ventured out to the edge of the current and threw the dinghy a line.  Disaster was narrowly averted. 

Jan stowed the groc., I cleaned the gluey mud off of our traveling gear, we heated some leftovers, and sank wearily into our dank, damp sleeping quarters.  Goodnight, Irene, good night Irene, I’ll see you in my dreams.