Update from Paris, TN

We're still at the Paris Landing State Park Marina. Yesterday was high winds and lots of rain, so we decided to stay put another night. We've covered about 900 of the 1500 miles to Mobile, AL in our first month. Since we don't want to get into the Gulf of Mexico until hurricane season is over (November 30), we've got a month to travel the remaining 600 miles.

But we didn't leave today either because of a minor malfunction. It seems that after running the Shingebiss minimal hours over the past few years, these past 100+ engine hours are bringing a few "bugs" to our attention. Steve discovered an exhaust leak, evidenced by an ugly black soot all over his beautiful new white Westerbeke. Unable to locate the source, he sprayed the engine and generator with bilge cleaner and hosed it off. He thought he'd look for it once we got out into the channel at cruising speed. But lo and behold, even at an idle he was able to see it bubbling ('cuz it was wet), where the turbocharger joins the exhaust hose. Removing this clamp revealed it was bad and we began the process of phoning marine shops, tractor shops, truck shops and car shops describing to them what we needed. This is no ordinary hose clamp, obviously. After about 8 calls we got lucky. Napa in Murray, KY about 20 miles away, open 'til noon had a clamp that sounded right. (why do breakdowns always happen on the weekend??)

We had made a friend in the marina, Ray Shannon, Jr, of Utica, IL. who has a lovely 40 foot Ocean Alexander trawler...and a CAR. Ray is delightful older gentleman who had told us if we needed anything to let him know, and so we did, and he promptly offered to drive us to Murray. The clamp was right and it's installed now. By this time it was afternoon, and the marina said they wouldn't even charge us for tonight. Ray wouldn't take the gas money we offered either, what a sweetheart, he was just glad to help a fellow boater. There's alot of that kind and helpful spirit out here on the waterways.

I don't know how folks do this who don't know how to fix stuff, I'm awfully glad I'm loopin' with Capt'n Steve. He's quite relaxed now that another crisis is past, he's taken about 3 naps today, it's good to see.

Kentucky Lake

We left Green Turtle Bay yesterday after a fuel up, and traveled through the Barkley Canal to Kentucky Lake. We went a mere 12 miles down the lake (traveling south, but going upstream, very little current) and dropped the hook in Sugar Bay. As you can see from the pictures, the leaves are turning and it's a very beautiful anchorage, even with the cloud cover. We went for a dinghy ride, pulled the dinghy up on the shore and went for a hike. Marty and Jerry (from Monarch) were anchored there as well and they came over to our place and went through all the Florida Gulf Coast charts with us so we could mark their recommended anchorages. They've cruised there several times and had great suggestions for us.

Today, we traveled another 30 miles down the Lake and are at Paris Landing State Park Marina where they only charge 75 cents per foot for transient overnight dockage and they have WiFi. Absolutely no cell phone signal. It's about 70 degrees and partly sunny (or is that partly cloudy). We just got back from a walk around the campgrounds and docks. After a couple of "short" driving days, we are feeling ready to put some miles on tomorrow. We'll look at the guidebooks tonight to figure out how far to go. Moon Beam and Monarch went further than us today, but we're sure we'll encounter them somewhere down the line.

We continue to learn more ways to make life aboard better. Steve learned that the anchor windlass has a "clutch" in it that he can tighten, so today when we raised the anchor ... whamm, it pulled it right up and all the way into the anchor thingy that holds it. We continue to be enamored with our navigation electronics. The "chart plotter" is like your car GPS, obviously for a boat and we also have all the charts for the trip on Steve's laptop which has a little GPS on a cord that plugs into the USB. We run them both as we travel and they show you exactly where you are. As we get further south, we are getting more detail on them, like showing depth and even all the buoys. So we are constantly checking the charts and staying on the lookout for the buoys. Even though the Lake is 3 miles wide, there is a marked channel that a boat with a 3 foot draft (us) should not stray out of. Good thing we have Auto (Pilot) holding the course for us so we can do all this, plus eat and read and stuff.

But the BEST improvement is my new seating discovery. I've been complaining that I have to stand all the time at the lower helm in order to see, and yesterday, i realized that i could sit on the port side counter top and put my legs through the pass through and have my own personal "pilot house". If you've been on our boat, perhaps you can imagine it, but here's a picture and wow it's great. Necessity is indeed the mother of invention, can't believe i didn't think of this sooner.

Green Turtle Bay Marina, KY

Here's a picture of the towboat that almost ran us over as we exited the Diversion Canal at sunrise on Sunday. I was looking way upstream and way downsteam, instead of right next to us. Good thing Steve was looking too. We completed our final 48 miles on the upper Mississippi before noon, thanks again to the fast current and made our "left turn" onto the Ohio River. At this point, we were headed upstream and immediately slowed to about 6-7 mph. It was a another very long day, but finally got anchored near Metropolis, IL. We were way off the main channel, but as soon as we got settled in a small tow with 6 or 8 barges came right by up. Steve called him on the VHF radio, and he told us that this side of the river was an "alternate" channel...it was deep....but that we would be fine there for the night. We stayed, and we were.

Monday was sunny and warm enough to ride on the flybridge by noon. We continued up the Ohio and "hung a right" on the Cumberland River. Good bye to the big tows and big industry. I've always loved the old Mississip, but have to say, now that we've done the entire "upper", the best part is right up in good ol' Minnesota. I also don't know why anyone would want to do the Lower Mississippi in a pleasure boat, but apparently some do. The Cumberland is narrow with lots of bends, and few other boats. After 30 upstream miles at 6mph, we got to the Barkley Lock, where they were holding the doors for us, thanks to our friends on Moon Beam, who told them we were coming. We had kicked up the throttle as best we could for the last couple of miles and were grateful to cruise right on in. The Barkely is new and huge, a 57' lift.

The Barkley Lock and Dam holds back enough water to create Barkley Lake, a beautiful 100+ mile, very wide lake (like Pepin, only bigger and cleaner) that is a very popular recreational area. We are back in "vacation land". Green Turtle Bay Marina is only a mile after the lock, so almost all loopers stop here for a couple of nights. It's a very big marina/resort complex with all the amenities, including the wonderful WiFi. We shared a courtesy car with Peter and DiDi from Moon Beam today and went to Paducah to the SuperWalmart. Our cupboards were bare and our water tank empty when we got here, but no longer. We're going into town tonight for a dinner out. It's raining, but supposedly only for a day.

Tomorrow we will head just a mile or so down the lake to a free flowing (no locks/dams) canal that leads to Kentucky Lake, formed by the Tennesee River, "sister" lake to Barkley Lake and similar in character. We need to be on the Tennessee River to continue south, but both Lakes look equally beautiful....lots of great boating to be had down here. I keep thinking, "where do they land store all these boats in the winter?" .... and then I remember that the boats don't need to come out, it doesn't freeze. We'll be slowing down the pace and enjoying this section for several days.

Turbulence, barges, and current, oh my !!

We stayed at the Alton Marina an extra night due to the torrential downpour that dumped 1-2 inches of rain. It was good to be under the covered slip for that one. We left early yesterday, transited our final two locks on the Mississippi and came through downtown St. Louis. Here is a picture of the Gateway Arch complete with the flag on our transom, just to prove we were really there. Then it was on to Hoppie's, one of the most famous stops on the loop. Hoppie's has been in operation since 1936 and is right on the main channel, south of St. Louis. It's 300 feet of barges, all tied together and the boats are tied along both sides, all very well orchestrated by Hoppie and Fern. There was a large group of houseboaters who had come down for the Kimmswick Apple Butter Festival, plus several loopers, so there was a full house last night. We met 2 other couples who are looping with bigger boats and more loop experience than us and decided to travel with them today. Really nice people and so we got to attend our first looper "cocktail party" last night. Here's the view of Hoppie's as we left early this morning.

Fern had told us that the river was expected to rise 12 feet over the next couple days and it had risen 8 feet at Hoppies from the night before. Wow, back home in Newport, we call that a flood. Down here, they just take it in stride. So with a 4 to 5 mph current and no locks (don't even mention no wake zones, there are none), we made an incredible 109 miles today. Even though this is still technically the "upper" Mississippi, it is in fact much more like the "lower" Mississippi, because without the locks the tow boats really increase the number of barges they push at one time. We passed many of them, along with lots of floating logs, and alot of turbulence. This tow had 30 barges 5 across and 6 long. Here's a view of the front, the side and then the crazy rollers that result from all that horsepower pushing all that weight upstream against all that current.

By about 4:30, Shingebiss and her traveling companions, Monarch and Moon Beam were all tucked away into the Diversion Canal, a secure and peaceful little anchorage just off the main channel. It's like a little tributary, but was man made to "divert" runoff from the nearby town and farm fields. We took our first dinghy ride of the loop up the canal, followed by snacks and drinks on Moon Beam. We dinghy'd back to our little home ship and had a great steak dinner. Tomorrow we exit the Mississippi onto the Ohio River.

Alton Marina, Alton IL

Greetings from the Alton Marina. We arrived here yesterday after passing the confluence of the mighty Mississippi River and the Illinois River. I took a picture for posterity, but it's not much to look at. The point is that we are now LOOPING. The Alton Marina (www.altonmarina.com) is very nice, we got the BOAT US discount so we decided to stay 2 nights. If you go to the web address, you can see an ariel shot of it and read about all the amenities. The first thing we did was clean the entire boat inside (took about 30 minutes) and showered. We met Joyce and Dennis (JoyDen is their boat) who have been living aboard and cruising since 1991. They've looped a couple of times. Last night we went to dinner with them at Fast Eddies, where, honest to gosh, hamburgers are 99 cents and french fries are 99 cents, and it's a half pound burger and good fries....dinner for 2 for less than $5. JoyDen is wintering here and next summer heading up the Mississippi to the head of navigation, so look for her in our neighborhood. She's a beautiful 37 foot trawler with lots of shiny varnished teak. Today Joyce took us to the grocery store with her and we stocked up. Also did ALL the laundry. When you are cruising, every day chores like laundry and groceries take up an entire day and become monumentally significant and satisfying. After all that work, we decided to have another dinner out and walked up to a local Italian spot, can't remember the name, ran into another cruising couple that we had met, and had delicious salad and pizza. They are from Minnetonka !

The plan tomorrow is to head for Hoppies, but big rain is expected, so we'll see. Hoppies is south of St. Louis and then there are no marinas for the next 228 miles. The Mississippi portion of the stretch is without any locks, so the current is commonly 5 mph and up. Then comes the Ohio River portion where you are heading upriver into heavy barge traffic, coming, going, sideways and sitting still. At Hoppies Marine, owner Fern Hopkins, gives a daily briefing to all loopers to guide us all safely through this stretch, and make anchoring recommendations to go along with all the recommendations in our guidebooks. We will be anchoring for 2 or 3 nights depending on how far we get each day. I've no idea when I'll be able to connect to the internet next, so just wanted to send out an update as we begin this pretty exciting part of the journey.

Lucy Report

Some of our loyal blog followers have asked about our cat, Lucy. Here's a pretty good picture of her....cat's are SOOOO hard to photograph, so uncooperative. For the first couple of weeks she stayed inside the boat and only left her bed (Steve's bed, really) when the engine was shut down. She is getting braver as time goes on. She's been out on the back deck, front deck and even out on a couple of docks; but only during the day and only with supervision. We think she is adapting well, and turning out to be a fine boat cat.

Onward to Hoppies

We’re in the middle of our final “push” to Hoppie’s Marina, just south of St. Louis, famous stop for all loopers. Let me bring to you up to date since we got the water pump fixed. The UPS truck came at 9:30 on Saturday morning and Steve got the pump in and we were back cruising by noon. Since then, the boat is running great and our boat confidence and happy spirits are back. Pictured is Shingebiss passing through the Fort Madison (IA) swing bridge.

It carries trains on the bottom and cars on top and is quite long for a River Bridge. With only 12 feet of clearance we had to call and have them open for us. We stayed at the Keokuk Yacht Club on Saturday night, they have a fabulous location at a place where the river is almost as wide as Lake Pepin. The Club is right on the water with big windows, a big bar and big TV’s. The slips are behind a low breakwater, facing the river and each slip owner has added their own little deck area extending out over the breakwater. On the road side there are unique individual boat houses. Here’s a picture of us leaving there early Sunday morning. We cleared 3 locks on Sunday. Here’s a picture of me handling my first “bollard” lock.

This lock is 1200 feet, twice as long as most, big enough for a double tow. Instead of holding the lines, you lasso the bollard with a rope, tie it off, and the bollard rises and falls with the water level. This one had a 37 foot drop. Sunday night we stayed at the Hannibal Municipal Marina. What a neat town, they were having a Folk Festival, but we missed most of it, so had to be amused with a walk around the town.
So here’s a progress summary for those of you following along on your Atlas. We began our journey at Mississippi Mile 830, which is 830 miles from the mouth of the Ohio River (Mississippi Mile Zero) where we take a left. We’re now at about Mile 300, so we’ve traveled over 500, and are still at least a week away from the Ohio. Another important milestone will be passing the mouth of the Illinois River at Mile 217 because that means we are actually on the Loop. Should be an interesting week, and I’ll report more next time we get a connection.

Have not had a decent connection since I wrote the above, especially for uploading the pictures. Today is Tuesday and we should pass the Illinois and be ON THE LOOP today, soon actually. We're staying at the Alton Marina, supposed to be fabulous. Also, it's about 70 degrees and sunny out, so I'm heading up to the flybridge to join Steve.

Departing Burlington

Good News! Our rebuilt pump has been shipped and should be here tomorrow am, so we'll be departing Burlington as soon as Steve gets it installed. We've had our ups and downs during this delay, and had some fun too. I have to confess that it was a bit disconcerting to have this fairly major malfunction happen so soon, but there are lessons to be learned from adversity, and we're trying to learn ours !! The weather up here remains colder than normal and cloudy, but a warming trend is forcasted. Resuming our steady movement south ought to help too.

Burlington has been a dandy town to be stranded in, the people are very proud of their town and want us to get out and see everything it has to offer. We rode the bikes everywhere we could and rented a car for a day, and drove around the country side. Many of the towns date back to the 1800's and have historical homes that rival those on Summit Avenue (St. Paul) or London Road (Duluth).

Although it's been fun, we're very anxious to get moving again and hope you keep reading as we keep moving.



The night before this happened, which would be last Saturday night, we stayed in Muscatine at the Municiple Marina, very nice, and when it got dark, the bridge over the river began its nightly light show. The bridge is outfitted with thousands of ever changing, computer controlled colored LED lights. I took some pictures, but they don't do it justice, so here's a UTube link if you want to see a video of it. It's pretty cool.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nObPOkD7T4U

Another "bad pump" saga

Oh, where to begin? Who knew the technical writing skills I practiced in my career would come in so handy for blogging? A couple of days ago Steve became concerned with a noise near the front of the engine and yesterday, while waiting for a lock, he diagnosed the problem. Still running okay, we proceeded to the Bluff Harbor Marina (http://www.bluffharbor.com/) where his suspicions were confirmed. The cooling system for the boat is quite complicated, and there's more to it than the system that pulls in the river water that caused our previous problem. The river water that gets pulled in doesn't really cool the engine, it just cools this other system via a "heat exchanger" This other system is filled with antifreeze which circulates to cool the engine and includes a pump attached to the front of the engine that keeps it going. Well, it seems that this pump, which is original equipment, has some worn bearings. When Steve rebuilt the diesel 15 years ago, he got his rebuild kit from Blue Ridge Marine in Washington State...the only place in the country that has parts for our engine. So this morning, Steve called Keith, who actually remembered him. A replacement pump would have to come from JAPAN to the tune of $2900 (that's not a typo), but the rebuild option is to send the pump to Washington. So....Steve pulled it out, we got on the bikes and rode up to the nicest hardware store ever and shipped it out. The UPS guy showed up at the store for the daily drop just as the package got sealed and labeled. Overnight air, Keith is going to expedite the rebuild, and send it back to the Marina. If the boat gods are with us, we might be outa here by the end of this week.



Not that Burlington, IA isn't a very nice little river town and everyone we've told our story to has been very kind and helpful, but staying here a week was not on our agenda. So it's been quite an experience so far, a bit discouraging, but we will carry on. The marina showers are out of commission, so we've used the boat shower for the first time this trip. We've got electric, which equals heat and we keep telling ourselves that this is so much better than if the pump had failed in the middle of the river. The towns and marinas are pretty far apart down here so that would have been a bad situation. The good news is that this marina has WiFi, so we're connected. We have grown pretty dependent on the internet, and always feel better when we have it.



We've heard from everyone about the SNOW back home, and although the weather here is still unseasonably cold, at least we're still heading in the right direction, or hope to be soon.

Busted down in Davenport

This morning finds us tied up to a Sea Wall (River Wall?) in East Davenport, Iowa (aka the Quad Cities) while Captain and Chief Mechanic Steve has replaced our toasted water pump impeller. See photo on right: black pieces are the remains of the impeller blades which used to be attached to the center. This vital device keeps the fresh water flowing through and cooling the engine. So how, you ask, did this happen? The left photo of the cup filled with green stuff is not the latest yuppie salad ingredient, but is an algae that is prevalent in the river, and yesterday we went through a lock that was full of it. When we exited the lock, the engine overheated because the pump had sucked up algae which blocked the strainer and stopped the water from moving through the system. He removed this full cup of algae from the strainer at the time, and then worked on the whole system more at the marina last night and it was pumping water adequately, he thought. We were only a half mile out today, however, and the overheating occurred again, so this time, he had to dig deeper, and pulled the water pump out to find the toasted impeller. When the pump was without water flow, it ran dry, and that tears up the blades. Fortunately, all good boaters carry a couple of spare impellers, and we do have our ace mechanic aboard. All should be well shortly, putting the pump back in is a nasty job, in a small space with unreachable connections, but he's doin' it.

So you might have heard the old saying about boating being hours of boredom interrupted by moments of sheer panic and that's certainly been true for the last couple of days. The scenery has flattened out, the leaves are all still green, and the weather remains cloudy and very chilly. We've only anchored out twice so far, the marinas are reasonably priced and it's nice to have the electric so we can run the heat at night. We've heard too many CO poisoning stories about boaters who ran their generators at night to take a chance with that.

Yesterday, we took the bikes down for the first time and went on a grocery run. Of course, it was up a steep hill, but turned to be a fun trip and the exercise felt great. The little baskets on the bikes are very nifty. We've got more food aboard than we left with, but when you can get a good burger, fries, cokes and watch part of the Twins for $12, like we did last night, what the heck. We've cooked on the boat only twice and all the NEW wonderful galley ware works great and it's fun to work down there. Steve is learning more about the navigation software every day. I think we're holding up okay, but some warm weather would really help.

The pump is in now, and it just started snowing !!!! I'll be going out on the bow soon as we are right upstream from Lock 15, so I'll close for now and get on my parka. Miss ya'll !!!

We're Boatin' but not Loopin'

yes, we are boating, but not yet Looping because the first 600 miles of the trip is on the Upper Mississippi Spur. We join the Loop where the Illinois River dumps into the mighty Mississippi, or should we say, the Loop joins us !!! We're cruising along at 9 mph (with current !!) but enjoying every minute so far. The beautiful bluffs of the river below Lake Pepin have been our backdrop today, and it's a little chilly so we have the River to ourselves. We've done 3 locks today and plan to spend the night at the Sunset Bay Marina in Trempealeau, WI and find a place to watch the Vikings battle their arch rivals the Green Bay Packers. We're also cheering for the Twins who managed to tie the Detroit Tigers on the last series of the season. One game playoff tomorrow night, maybe we'll see it, or maybe we won't.

We spent last night anchored out in front of our friend's (Mark and Jo, 2001-2002 loopers) house on beautiful Lake Pepin. It was only 49 degrees in the boat this morning, but Steve fired up the genny, and turned on the heat and the coffee, so all was well. We hit a little fog coming out of Pepin, so got some real life practice with the Radar. Today's picture is looking out the front window of the boat into that fog.

People always ask "what do you do all day on the boat?"....there's always something to do on a boat that is moving. When we're not gazing at the scenery, we're planning ahead, blogging, of course, or updating my spreadsheets of daily data and expenses. and then there's reading, always reading to do. oh yea, and driving the boat too. We let Auto drive most of the time (Auto Pilot), and wow that is really a cool gadget. Even the regular daily stuff like eating and keeping the place orderly seems to be more enjoyable on the boat.

Well, we just passed a large (about 30 feet) rowboat with a canoe tied alongside with 6 adventurous people aboard and rowing, sort of. I think this expedition passed our house about 2 weeks ago. I can't imagine how they spend the night, or prepare food, but wow, give 'em credit, eh? We're in the "lap of luxury" here on Shingebiss compared to them. Lucy, the boating cat, is adapting well too. That's enough for now.