Rockwood Island

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 167 - September 14, 2017

Today's blog post photo is the last one I took during the day because, well, it is a prettier picture than the picture of the six by five tow! This is the after-sunset glow from our Rockwood Island anchorage!

After sunset glow across Mississippi River from our Rockwood Island anchorage!

Now, on to today's blog post proper!

When I got up this morning at Hoppies, I put the pan on the NuWave to heat the water for our coffee, but the power light on the NuWave did not light up. I checked the breaker panel on the boat. There was no 110 to anything on the boat, although it had all been good when we turned in last night. I plugged the NuWave directly into the extension cord connected to the 30A socket. No she go. Finally, I took the 30A adapter off the extension cord and plugged it into the regular 15A socket. Still no joy. There was evidently just no juice going to our power pedestal. So I heated the coffee water on the Coleman propane burner. This is kind of representative of the state of affairs at Hoppies!

 

The other Looper at the dock, Bill on High Spirits, remarked that Hoppie had not done any improvements, and barely any maintenance, for about the last 10 years. Hoppie is 81 and Fern is 80. It is the last fuel stop for 250 miles. Maybe Hoppies will go on, maybe not. Loopers will be in a world of hurt if it closes, that's for sure.

Daydream had been pulled back downstream from the fuel dock barge after fueling to the next barge, which was set back maybe four feet from the upstream barge, so our bow was pointing directly into the side of the fuel dock barge. There was a boat a little ways downstream on the same barge we were on. So our immediate issue when we were ready to cast off was how to safely leave the the dock. I thought briefly about trying to back out, but took one look at the boat behind us, and the current ripping past us, and gave up on that idea. I was pretty sure that no matter what I did with the outboard in reverse, the current would sweep us right into the boat behind us. There was not enough clearance in front to pull out upstream without moving back at least a few feet, and we were tied with three lines. The bow and stern lines were both slack, but the midship line had all the tension on it. The dockhand had referred to that as our "brake" while he was moving us back, so basically the entire weight of the boat against the current was on that one line, I did not see how Patty and I would manage to move the boat back ourselves. The dockhand was nowhere around, so I walked up the ramp.

Fortunately, a gentleman named Eric was working on something at the far end of Hoppies compound, and said he would be glad to help us get off the dock. I am not sure of the sequence of releasing the lines, but somehow he got all the lines untied, moved us back and I was able to pull out from the dock facing upstream without anything untoward happening! We got turned around and pointed the bow downstream!

Our cruise was uneventful, a word we have come to appreciate a lot! 

On our way, we passed the Pathfinder USACE with a load of fresh new red nuns and green cans. The Corps of Engineers has the responsibility to maintain a 9 foot navigable channel within certain boundaries. In the Dredging Operations program the first method is to use the Pathfinder to identify possible dredging locations by performing channel reconnaissance surveys. The Pathfinder also assists the Coast Guard with buoy positioning on the navigable waterways within the St. Louis District Boundaries. I was at the helm, so did not get a photo, sorry!

A little bit farther on, we passed the largest tow we have encountered yet, a six wide by five long going upstream. I understand that somewhere we will encounter tows larger than this, but so far this it its. In fact, we had expected to see a lot more tows on the Mississippi, but so far there has really been very little traffic.

Six wide tow coming at us! We moved over for it!

The Jeffrey G towboat pushing 30 barges, six wide by five long!

I have mentioned wing dams. Patty asked why the Corps want to funnel the flow to the center of the channel. Here is what Wikipedia has to say. "The action of wing dams is complex. Where they are installed, sediment is removed from the center of the river, but sediment is also carried further down the river where it has secondary effects. Some researchers believe that flooding is increased by wing dams; a 2013 theoretical analysis predicts that wing dams may lead to water level lowering for in-bank flows and to water level increases for out-of-bank (flood) flood flows."

So it seems the wing dams maintain channel depth by scouring the center of the channel with the additional water volume and velocity, but may not be such great things. Wing dams show up on the charts, and so far due to the fairly low water level in the Mississippi, we think we have seen most of them, but there were probably a few that were below the surface. We stay away from the areas where wing dams are shown on the chart, but the Corps apparently can and does build new ones at will, which may not show up on charts for some time! Here is what a wing dam looks like.

Wing dam on the MIssissippi

Wing dams are on our minds because our anchorage for tonight is between two wing dams off Rockwood Island. We picked this spot because it is just halfway between Hoppies and the Little River Diversion Channel past Cape Girardeau, about 56 miles from Hoppies. Even running at just 1,800 RMPs, the river current is giving us a speed of up to 9 mph, so this distance is very reasonable!

Screenshot of Rockwood Island anchorage.
The black lines at the top and the bottom are the wing dams!

This anchorage was very favorably reviewed in Active Captain, but prior reviewers must have been here at much higher river water levels, as they reported anchoring in 10 feet and having the current hold their bows pointed upstream when anchored. We found depths, almost immediately on entering, of less than 6 feet, and we anchored in 3 feet. There was virtually no current between the wing dams, and we floated around like a cork, and our bow ended up pointed downstream, probably from the breeze!

When I took Baxter to shore, the kayak grounded about 20 feet out from the shoreline, and when we went back to the boat, it was with muddy paws (Baxter) and muddy shoes (me)! 

A couple of pleasure boats and a couple of tows have gone by, and there was a bit of rocking from the wakes, but it was not violent. We should get a good night's sleep, and tomorrow on to the Little River Diversion Dam!