We left our slip at Alton Marina at 10 am and motored over to the fuel dock to fill up before the long trip on the river systems. There are very few places to buy fuel along the 300-mile route to the Cumberland River. The first one is 40-miles from Alton at Hoppie’s Marina where most cruisers choose to spend a night before continuing on. The next fuel stop is another 107 miles after Hoppie’s ; however, they have a 50-gallon minimum and we can only take 36 gallons – if we are completely empty. The next stop is 142 miles further at Green Turtle Marina on the Cumberland River. We figure we have a 400-mile range with our fuel economy so we don’t expect to have any problems along that line.
There are only two locks on the section of the Mississippi River we are traveling and we transited both of them today. The Mel Price Lock & Dam 26 was just south of Alton and we had to wait about a half hour for a barge to finish locking through before we could enter the chamber. This Lock has two chambers. The Chain of Rocks Lock & Dam 27 also has two chambers. We were directed into the “smaller” chamber without any waiting and were allowed to float freely within the lock since there were no other boats locking through with us. Both of us wondered what the “larger” chambers were like since we thought the small ones were pretty big!!
After the locks, the river current runs very fast. With our engine at 2400 rpms and no current or wind, we travel about 6 knots; however, today we averaged around 8 knots with portions of the trip between 9.0 and 9.5 knots. Lucy hasn’t fallen in yet – now would not be a good time for the first slip!
We passed the Arch in St. Louis today. It was certainly a different perspective from the water as compared to looking out from the top of the Arch to the River! We also saw the monument to Lewis & Clark (from the back) that we noticed on Monday when we visited the Arch.
We came by Hoppie’s Marina about 4:30 pm and decided to continue a bit further downstream. We could see a few boats we knew tied up at the dock and several people gathered around picnic tables under a shelter, but we simply waved a greeting as we passed. We came upon a lone canoeist and pulled alongside to ask his story. He was from Maryland and had put his canoe in at the headwaters of the Mississippi River in northern Minnesota on August 10th. He was moving surprisingly quickly and expected to be in New Orleans in another six weeks. He told us that he was having a great time, had not had any problem finding places to camp along the river and that he just thought it would be a great adventure to travel the length of the Mississippi River this way.
We found our anchoring spot behind a wing dam at mile 154.5 near Riverside, Missouri, and dropped the hook at 5:45 pm. The holding was good, but the way the river ran around the wing dam and where we were set put us in a bit of a “slow swirl.” The evening weather forecast was for light winds with a 20% chance of showers, so we thought we’d be fine. Gale felt better sleeping in the salon on the couch with one eye on the chart plotter and watching for barges. Only six barges passed during the night and we experienced no problems at all.
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