Progress report

Nov 17 to Nov 23


    
    Monday...Heavy fog lay about Baton Rouge at 5:00 this morning,and I knew we would be late making our way through the heavily industrialized section of river here. We packed the boat in hopes it woud soon lift. The fog gave us extra time to lube the crankshaft. At 8:00 visibility had increased to almost a mile, so we launched. We were lucky as we began our day that the first shipyards and moorings were empty, but soon that changed. Traffic soon got busy, and we began encountering islands of barges moored off shore as well as on shore. I radioed a tow that seemed to be parked with its barges just offshore which side to pass on. I got no response, but another tow captain told me to switch to channel 14 to talk to the tow. Someone else picked up my communications on 14 and said 14 wasn't going to work. Another tow captain said we should be over on the left descending bank, or we would get run over. He thought we were northbound. We cleared that up. Soon I was in communication with Duffy on the Fritz Senca. He took me under his wing like a duck with ducklings. He told me which way to go around parked barges and what to expect as we continued through the industrialized areas of Baton Rouge. He warned of a shipyard on the outside bend of Missouri bend. He said the current would tend to throw us into the pilings. I asked if we could cross over the river so as to be on the inside of the bend. He said we could, so Ted and I pedalled furiouly across the channel to the safety of the inside of the bend. After safely negotiating the bend, Duffy came back on the radio and said we were in slack water and should cross again to catch some current. Duffy went on to offer help for us, and gave me his cell phone number. He told me of places in New Orleans where we might be able to moor. He also told me that we would have to register with GRETNA when we were 12 miles from the inner harbor navigation channel in New Orleans. We would do that by radio on channel 67. I was very thankful to Duffy for all the assistance. At 1:00 we were clear of the industrial zones of Baton Rouge, and my stomach became queasy. I continued pedalling with Ted until we rounded a 180 dregree bend and began to benefit from a tailwind. Wile undersail I had to crawl over to the rear of the boat and heave. I still was sickly and had to lay on the boat while Ted sailed us to a landing near Turnervile at 3:30. We had done 23 miles (a few miles short of where we hoped to be). If we had made it to the Plaquemine Ferry we woud have been able to meet Arlene. I believe the tension and stress of the Baton Rouge navigation caused poor digestion of breakfast. I could barely help setting up camp and Ted did most of the work. As soon as I could, I crawled into bed and slept without eating supper. Soon after dark the winds began to howl, and the sides of the tent began closing in on us. Some fast moving tows or ships passed in the night, their wakes battering the underside of the trampoline we slept on. Some waves were breaking over the back of the boat and crashing into the walls of the tent.
    Tuesday...Unfortunately, our camp on the outside of Plaguemine bend was close to the commercial traffic sailing line. Shortly after midnight I awoke to hear clunking as rollers from a passing ship violently rocked on craft. The rudders had dropped from mooring position to sailing position and were in danger of being broken or breaking their fasteners off the hulls. (Leaving a hole in the hull(s)). Ted and I scrambled to raise the rudders and tie them in an upward postion. Soon after we returned to bed the rain began. The wind blew. The wind raised the door's zipper cover and blew the rain through the zipper leaving puddles on the floor of the tent. The rain and wind continued till noon blasting our hopes to launch. We spent the afternoon drying our gear. It would have been hardly worth packing our wet gear to be able to travel for an hour and a half. Tomorrow is supposed to be drier. After hearing the church bells ringing on the half hours, I yelled to Ted, "CAN YOU HEAR THE CHURCH BELLS?" He held his hand to his ear, and asked "What?" I repeated my question more loudly. He then replied, "No. I can't smell to good anymore." Since his hearing aids got wet early in our journey my voice has gotten louder and my throat hoarser.
    Wednesday morning the weather was calm at 4:30, and we casually packed our gear in anticipation of a comfortable day. After a little paddling the wind began to kick up off our beam allowing us to sail. Soon we were piercing two foot waves off a reaching wind. We had taken our jackets off while paddling, and now it was nearly impossible to retrieve them from the drybags let alone communicate on the radio or read the charts. I had two hands on the sheet while Ted manned the tiller from forward. We were both getting drenched and were being chilled by the wind. A short letup in the weather allowed me to retrieve our jackets. Soon the winds were gusting to 30 mph, and I had to call Ted to the rear of the boat to balance the forces on the sail. I had to take control of the tiller from the rear of the boat as well as control the mainsail sheet. I had Ted on alert to shift his position in case of imminent jibing. (Sail shifting from one side to the other rapidly) On several occaisions we had to sail close to the center of the river to avoid parked barges. Those were the scariest moments in that we were in the traffic, and the wind and waves were more fierce there than close to shore. After seven hours of tense handling of the sheets, tillers, navigational charts, GPS and marine radio I was happy to reach Donaldsonville where we landed on a sandy spot close to the center of town. Although it wasn't pedalling, my body felt it had gone through the paces, and I think I caught a cold.
    When I walked up to the town square and opened my cell phone case, all the little scraps of paper I had in it blew away in the wind, and I chased after them down the main street. I caught up with my boat registration and all the notes except for Arlene's current motel phone number which outdistanced me at 20 mph. Fortunately, I was right next to a visitors center where Brenda helped me get the motel's number and made a contribution to the ALS Association. She called the local press, and Peter, the editor, came out to the boat for an interview. Brenda's son Chris took Arlene to a local cafe where she could get Ted a hot supper.

Donaldsonville, LA... A mooring close to town


    Thursday...The chilling 45 degree morning made packing our gear and wet tent all the more difficult. We launched late at 7:40 into mild headwinds, (I think I am getting a cold from yesterday's wild sailing) that increased gradually to 5 -10 mph. We had to pedal hard to maintain 1-3 mph. The large shipping terminals, mooring stations, and fleeting stations took an eternity to pass. An endless stream of ships, towboats (pushing strings of barge), and tugboats passed us going upstream and downstream, as we struggled on staying close to the west shore. We started seeing tugboats once we starting seeing ships. The towboat captains refer to the river directions using the term "southbound &guot; to mean downstream. Northbound is upsream no matter which direction the river flows. The right descending bank is called the west side of the river. In a long three hours we made 8 miles and I made about 8 radio calls. The typical call would be, "This is little sailboat, southbound at Bringier Point, following the west bank." Usually there was no response, and sometimes I would hear back, "If you stay over there you'll be OK." Shortly before 11:00 I received a call from Jonathon, a tugboat captain. He asked me to switch channels and after doing so he said he liked the way we kept close to the shore, when lots of others, similar to us, would use the middle of the channel. He then asked us to meet him downstream 3/4 mile for coffee and a chat, since he thought we probably had an interesting story. We hoped he would be patient, as the 3/4 mile journey took nearly 1/2 hour. Ted was wearing out, and I needed a break also. Jonathan helped us moor to his moored tug.
    Tonight the dew is beginning to form on the outside of the tent. Every breath brings a cloud between my headlamp and pen. The darkness has brought out the animals, and their splashes, chirps, and raucus chattering pierce the dark, cold and calm night. I've brought all the food into the tent. I don't know if that is good or not. Ted is bundled up in bed fighting a sick stomach. Mine is finally back to normal. Ted believes his problem is exhaustion. We only did 19 miles today, but they were hard. It seems the closer we get the harder is gets, as if some spirit wants us to pay for what we get. Some things in life are not easy. We have decided, due to considerable advisement, to take the boat out on the edge of New Orleans, rather than to continue through the industrial canal and across Lake Pontchartrain. We will still have travelled 2003 miles considering the side trips up bayous, harbors, bays, and tributary rivers. Besides the traffic and GRETNA registration there is a requirement that your craft meets certain power requirements to successfully navigate the crowded area. This morning I had hoped to reach New Orleans in 2 1/2 days, but today may change that. I am not sure we will make 54 more miles in 2 days. Each day brings a new chalenge and also some rewards.
    Earlier today I was being moored by Jonathon, the tug captain, a likeable person, who after seeing to our safety brought Ted and I coffee. He shared his knowledge of the river with me and made notes on my charts for good landings. His crew was very sociable. They held our delicate craft away from bumps and gave us bisquits and bacon before they had to go back to work. For being a short day of travel, we sure had a lot of experiences. Soon after leaving Jonathon's boat we approached a dredging bridge like the one we saw at mile 773. The fountain of mud and water was spewing fifteen feet into the air several hundred yards off the west bank. Of course we were obliged to leave our shore hugging habit and break for the center of the river around the floating bridge leading to the fountain. We were barely past the fountain and on our way back towards the shoreline when a voice on the radio scolded, "You better get out of the middle of the river or them big ships are going to hit you." I radioed, " This is little sailboat rounding the dredging operation and heading for the west shore." A little later I heard someone call the Delta Queen cruise paddlewheeler to let them know we would be passing each other soon. When the Delta Queen was in sight, I radioed her captain and told him of our craft and cause. He said he would inform his passengers. The headwinds finally began to diminish as did our remaining daylight. Our best hope for a landing was the downstream portion of the inside bend at College Point. Our charts indicated 1 1/2 miles of shore unfettered by revetments.
    As we rounded the bend, barge after barge, six barges deep, were fleeted next to shore. On and on we pedalled looking for a break in the seemingly endless masses of barges parked next to shore. At the end of 1 1/2 miles we could see where the rocky revetment began at the very end of the barge parking lot. There was no beach left, so we slipped into shore through a slot between the last two sets of barges. There was a slack cable between the two barges closest to shore and our hulls scraped over it just 15 feet from shore. There was a lot of deep mud on the shore, so mooring was difficult and dirty. While pitching the tent, I looked out and saw the cable was now 5 feet above the water.The barges were tied together by that cable and were separating due to wakes from passing ships. The cable was like a drawbridge closing and opening our access to the river. Its schedules of operation were as unpredictable as our next day's river mileage. We were fortunate that it didn't rise as we crossed over it to our landing in the mud. We threw lots of rocks into the mud near the bows of our craft to keep our feet out of the mud during our casual debarkings. The rocks wiggled about in the mud like pineapple slices in Jello. After several trips across our rock bridge water began to seep around the edges of each rock. I walked down the revetment to make a cell call to Arlene, and before I could turn on the phone, I heard a voice coming from on top of a nearby barge. It was David, the tow captain who maintained this fleet of moored barges along College Point. Fearing being ousted from our only reasonable mooring for miles, I pleaded our cause and misfortune to him. He was good natured and allayed my fears of being kicked out. He gave me lots of info about the river and the great crabs taken from Lake Pontachatrain. His job was to tend to all the junk barges moored along College Point. He had to get lights on them at night, push them around for adjustments, and insure that the leaky ones were pumped out. He invited us to come to his towboat for breakfast in the morning. He also told me that one of his ancesters, a Rutledge was a constitutional signer. Every so ofter a plop sound could be heard in the darkness about our tent. It sounded like a rock being thrown in the river. It turned out to be slabs of rust falling off the junk barges. The owls hoot a bit, I turn off my light, and fall asleep.
    Friday...This evening the sun sets under streaks and puffs of scattered brilliant orange and purple clouds. A towboat with four barges idles up the river, followed by another. They are not creating much of a disturbance to our mooring five miles downstream of last night's camp. We had some equipment failures early on today and had to land prematurely, rather than negotiate this difficult, highly industrialized section of the river in an unshipworthy fashion.
    This morning we launched over the slack cable in the water and were lucky that it didn't rise while we were over it. We had to pass up the offer of breakfast since we were in a hurry to make time. After pedalling a couple of miles in neutral winds, I tried to make a radio announcement and found the radio battery was too low to allow transmission. This was the third in a series of breakdowns. The GPS accidently got turned on and ate its batteries overnight. Ted got sick to the stomach and isn't eating, so we are running at three-leg power. Without a radio and a shipshape engine we were not going to navigate this stretch of the river. I figured that by following the charts closely, I could navigate our course without the GPS, but not missing the other ingrediants.
    We landed at a good beach far off the sailing channel. I planned to walk to the levee and ask Arlene to meet me with batteries. I marked my trail through the forest to the levee 1/4 mile away. Soon the levee was in sight, and at the same time a swamp was evident that ran the length of the levee as far as I could see. Checking my charts I saw I had landed at the midpoint of a one mile finger swamp. I returned through the forest back to the boat, and Ted and I set off for a landing 1/2 mile down stream between two ship terminals. An ideal sandy bay lay behind the tall metal mooring structures. From there I found an easy path to the levee and highway. I called Arlene to let her know that all our batteries were gone and to tell her where we were moored. There was a lot of breakup of the cell signal so it was hard to communicate. An hour and half later she arrived with Jim, Ted's son, and we hiked the 1/8 mile back to the boat. Ted couldn't believe his eyes when he saw Jim standing in front of the boat. His eyes watered as he gazed without his glasses in disbelief at his son. Ted had expected that only Kathy (his daughter living in Colorado) would be in New Orleans to greet him and help him arrange air transportation back to Ohio. Arlene and I knew early on that Jim would be there to greet him and take him home. Ted was in for another surprise. Two of Ted's granddaughters, a great grand child, Jim's wife Debbie, and Ted's daughter Kathy all arrived at our landing a couple hours later. You should have seen his face then. He held his baby great granddaughter as everyone gathered around the boat with him. I had hoped we would have been closer to New Orleans for the reunion, but circumstances have dicated differently. We are still 43 miles away from a take out on the edge of the city. Arlene and I reviewed the charts for potential landings tomorrow for Ted's weekly mass. There are possibilities at 15,20,25 and 30 miles downstrean for accessible landings. It was over an hour drive from New Orleans to where we were now. I hope tommorrow we will be a more reasonable distance from their motel. Brad and Mick, the angels we met near Cincinatti, are also expected here for our arrival and I hope they are not too inconvenienced by our tardy progress. After the kinfolk had to leave Ted settled into his bed, and I worked on our journal.

A reunion near Paulina, LA


    Saturday...We were up at 5:00 and Ted said that his stomach was OK. He felt alright but he didn't want food. As be broke camp the mosquitos plagued us, and we found we had ants everywhere on ship. We brushed off what we could and launched just before seven. Against light headwinds we snaked our way between fleeted barges, some moored to shore and some offshore. We had to cross to the west bank to avoid a long line of ships moored on the east side. There were no moving tows or ships in the area, so Ted and I pedalled hard, straight across the river, gaining negligable mileage, but now we were on the less congested side of the river. We've had to waste time and energy many times on the Mississippi River making crossings perpendicular to the river course. This morning we managed to cross before any tows or ships came around to see us in the middle of the channel. We pushed on into 5-10 mph headwinds. It was Ted's day for church, and he wasn't eating enough yet, so I chose a landing at 11:45 just 17 miles down from our last camp. A couple hours later, Ted's family and Arlene showed up to get Ted to a shower, meal and church. After Ted left, Arlene stayed with me as I continued to fight our stowaway ant colony. Even after Ted and I had drenched the boat with gallons of water, the ants were still pouring out of every nook and cranny on the sailboat. I believe the queen was(is) stationed under the mast base. After hours of drenching and thumb work, I believe they are mostly under control.

Near Lucy, LA... Ted's church day


    Sunday morning we were still brushing ants off the boat as we packed our wet tent, wet sleeping bags, and other assorted wet gear. Ted had been able to eat well yesterday evening, but he still was off his feed this morning. Headwinds of 10 to 20 mph were already against us as we launched at 7:00. After two hours of strenuous pedalling we had progressed only 3 miles. Each day lately I feel like I am butting my head into a brick wall. The closer we get, the more the river spirits impede us. My attitude about wakes from ships and tows had become casual now, and I paid no heed to a speeding tugboat that passed us going downstream. I didn't notice the four foot swells marching across the river toward our port beam. When the leading lesser swell rocked our craft precariously from side to side my adrenaline jumped as I tried to turn our craft to nose into the following swells. I had to yell at Ted to pedal hard to help give me rudder control. A second larger swell rocked our oat violently before we finally got the bow turned into the remainder of the series of swells that lasted a full minute.
    The winds were so strong that if one of us stopped pedalling, the boat couldn't be controlled. We were moving at 1/2 mph at times and were becoming a hazard to shipping when we had to leave the shoreline to negotiate the numerous terminals and fleeting operations. Large freighters were zipping down the river at 15 mph. Tugboats were travelling at near those speeds. Only the towboats, pushing dozens of barges, were travelling slowly in this area. I think they were very concerned about the large speeding ships. The radio was constantly abuzz with traffic communications. The tone was different here. Impatience and temper were evident here, while on the upper reaches of the Mississippi the transmissions were more jovial and casual.
    Our course shifted enough to allow a touch of sailing. We were sailing about 60 degrees off the the wind, and with pedalling we were able to beat our way up river for a mile before the wind shifted to back in our faces. We were struggling upwind when Ted asked, "Do you think we should make a landing?" On the whole trip Ted has never requested a landing. I certainly agreed with him, and attempted to make a 90 degree turn toward shore so we could sail into a 200 yard section of shore outlined by fleeted barges. I had a difficult time making the boat respond to the rudders, and just before we nearly drifted into the downstream packet of fleet barges I got the sail to power up. I turned the wheel over to Ted and jumped to the rear of the boat to balance the boat for our quick wild ride to shore.
    We had done 7 1/2 miles in four and a half hours and Ted's condition was weakening. Every attempt to reach New Orleans was being quashed by the river spirits. Ted was sullen as we sat on our beached craft. The wind was whiping up a froth on the water and blowing our flag straight upstream. Ted's demeanor improved as I pointed out that my tally of the extra miles we had done in the last three months brought our total miles to easily over 2003. We were on the outskirts of New Orleans and all the signs were saying stop. I walked over the levee to see where we were and found a convenience store nearby. I brought Ted back a pint of icecream, and he was surprised in that we always joked about having icecream each time we landed. We agreed to call it quits, and I went back to the top of the levee to call Arlene. She got in touch with all the family and friends waiting in New Orleans, and had them back to our landing about an hour later. With all the people we had, it was easy to lift the boat out of the water and haul it up the 50-foot bank to the trailer. With the help of Mick, Brad, Arlene and Ted's family we had the craft disassembled in a short time. We toasted with champagne, I tied down the pieces and parts, and we all left for the motel.

Hawnville, LA... Our final landing


    After 99 nights aboard the ship, Ted was ready for a real bed. Jim, Ted's son, took us to a steakhouse where we enjoyed a relaxed meal, and we returned to the motel to get some much needed rest.

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