Integrity Cruise

Day 151: - Kaskaskia River Lock to Mississippi Mile 7.4, IL

Home

The Adventure

The Boat

About Us

Contact Us

Day 151: Friday, September 16th: About 3:15am we heard talking on the marine radio. A 97 foot luxury yacht was coming in to tie to the lock wall with us. There was about 100 feet of wall space left. We arose just before daylight, to see what had come in:

This was the Naples Royal Princess VII. She had suffered damage in the path of hurricane Katrina. A professional delivery captain was taking her to somewhere near Chicago for repairs. The boat was virtually brand new. This is a look at some of the damage:

The port side didn't look damaged - just dirty:

The rest of us planned a dawn departure. Here is the "Kaskaskia Lock Yacht Club". Left to right: Main Course, Integrity, Joken, Kokopelli, R Enchantment, Synergism, Silver Boots and Freedom. We all left together and headed down the Muddy Mississippi:

Soon we encountered the largest tow we had seen. It had thirty barges and was struggling against nearly three knots of current:

At the bends in the river the water was swirling in big eddies and whirlpools; here's an example:

This time of year, with the relative drought, the river level is quite low. In the spring it would be 18-20 feet higher. This bank, mostly sandy mud, would be well below the surface:

The nature of the swift river makes for interesting engineering. This is a "bridge", but all it transports is a pipeline:

Here's another example of how the Mississippi wears away the land:

We passed the first "twin engine" tow we had seen. Sometimes the load is too much for one of these tugboats, although they typically have two or three engines with 1000 horsepower each:

Here is evidence of the current they fight. We were enjoying going with the current and making about the equivalent of 12-13 miles per hour over the ground:

This bridge (one of few highway bridges across the Mississippi) was quite pretty. It's a suspension bridge of a modern design:

Here is a more detailed view:

We made good time downriver to an "island" called Boston Bar at mile 7.4. We had all planned to anchor behind the bar, but the river level was so low we had to anchor in the main part of the river just out of the channel. Here is the bridge we were upstream of. You can see Synergism (anchored already) and Freedom turning in:

All of us finally got anchored in about two knots of current. Here is what our anchor line looks like holding Integrity against that current:

This was not an ideal spot but it was all there was. Later, the cloud cover began to break revealing an almost full moon:

We had tow wakes rocking us a lot during the night but no one's anchor broke loose. The highway bridge was abuzz with truck traffic; we slept fitfully.

Position tonight: N37 01.570 W089 12.717

To return to our Main Page simply

close this window.