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| Another town along the way welcomed us today |
Not much sleep was had by Erik last night. 12:45am-3am was spent answering alarm calls, dispatching police and talking to Andrew, a coworker, on houses at work….ugh. Darned thieves!
We awoke at about 6am and began preparing things for our 100 mile trip (~50 down the Ohio and ~50 up the Mississippi).
Because there is no fuel available on the water for the next 210 miles of our trip and the majority of those miles would be upriver against the stiff currents of the Mississippi we had purchased a 150 gallon fuel bladder in order to increase our range. It is a pillow style bladder that measures 7’x6’x1’ high. We set it up on the aft deck. The hose, fill stem and valves needed to be put on.
Also prior to departure we had to fill up our tanks and bladder This became quite the time consuming task. The dock attendant was supposed to be there at 8:30am but did not show up until after 9am. He then was having issues with the credit card processing part of the pump. After resetting it multiple times he went back up to his vehicle to get his iPad stating that he had an alternate way to run the authorization and charge utilizing Dockwa (a marina online platform). He got the authorization and we proceeded to fill up the tanks and bladder. After the fill up the attendant went to run the actual charge and accidentally somehow entered a $12,000+ transaction on our Discover card. Now, this is certainly an expensive trip for gas but not $12k expensive. Lol. We almost immediately both received calls from Discover fraud services and we instructed them that it was not fraud but rather an accident. Oy vey. After continuing to struggler to create the correct transaction amount for another 20 mins the attendant finally agreed to write up an IOU/receipt and he would run the charge through later when he could work with Dockwa and/or Paducah City Parks management. All of this delayed what should have been a fairly early start for us to about 10:15am.
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| Fill er up! The shaft stuffing boxes that were discovered yesterday to be dripping WAY too much water also needed attention. The bank of two deep cycle group 31 AGM batteries that are paralleled for the inverter house bank had to be removed on the port side in order to access the stuffing boxes well enough to make the needed adjustment. The starboard side was significantly easier only requiring a single battery and it’s box to be moved to gain access. This fix proved to be successful. After our departure Erik checked on them while underway and they were only dripping slightly, as they are designed to. |
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| A little morning maintenance |
We finally shoved off and were in our way down the Ohio. These last miles on the Ohio were an easy cruise with the current. We were able to cruise between 10-11mph at our usual 1500-1600 rpm. It was a fairly industrial area with lots of barges and tows all around.
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| Barges are BIG in these parts |
At about 45 miles into the trip we approached the Mississippi and barge traffic picked up even more There were many groupings of barges anchored all over the place. As we made the turn onto the Mississippi it was instantly apparent that we were now going against the flow. We quickly slowed from 11 mph down to 5.4 mph at the same rpm’s and fuel burn.
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| Channel markers were a good indication of the increased current |
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| As was the stats. Bottom left (5.4) is our speed. Left, middle numbers is the fuel burn per hour per engine (4.7 and 4.4) |
It was time to test Erik’s theory that we could likely get better fuel efficiency at a higher rpm and rate of speed. To him, physics says faster speed means less boat in the water and thus less drag against the ~5 mph current. We cranked up the throttles and began doing the math at different rpm’s and speeds. The fuel flow sensors that we had installed in the spring would tell us exactly what our fuel burn was under different conditions. We bumped up to 2000 rpm and then 2200 and then to 2500. It was determined that our best fuel economy was at 2500 rpm which had us cruising between 13-14 mph. At this speed we were now burning 22.56 gallons per hour which equated to .625 mpg…..almost like driving a hybrid! At the slower rpm (1500) we were burning 9.16 gallons per hour while achieving only 5.4 mph equating to .59 mpg. Erik is sure his science will someday be feature on an episode of Myth Busters!
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| As hot as the day was we were both happy to settle that traveling against the current was most efficient for us at a higher speed (14 mph) |
The mighty Mississippi was choppy in many areas. The water seemed to be affected by the wind and contours of the river bed much more than other rivers we’ve traveled. There are ‘wing dams’ mainly all along the inside of all curves. We’ll have to read up on the purpose of these but we suspect it is to push more water out into the main channel during times of higher water in order to keep the channels from shoaling.
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| Lots of ‘wing dams’ |
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| And sandy beach banks |
The banks are barren of any homes or business for many miles. Many areas of sandy islands are formed by it the overflows. The sandy beach shorelines are very inviting looking but it was apparent that it is way to shallow to traverse to them for access except possibly in a dinghy. We laughed at the thought that our dinghy with the trolling motor only goes about 4-5 mph; these currents would likely match or exceed that speed. The first house or business that we saw was 40 miles upriver.
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| This was the first home or structure we saw for 45 miles since being on the Mississippi |
We arrived at our destination of Cape Girardeau at about 7pm and slid onto a small, rusty fuel dock that we had made arrangements with the owner to use for the night. This fuel dock only sells diesel; no gasoline.
We fired up the generator since we would not have access to shore power and turned on the AC. Riva had done splendidly on the nine hour cruise but was ready to go up to shore for a potty break. To get to shore we had to go up a ramp from the dock to a rock bank with a VERY steep sidewalk that made its way up to a ledge where the flood wall is. There was a city park near to the top of the ramp where a good number of folk were out enjoying their Sunday evening river watching. The park has placards along the path along side of the flood wall describing much of the town and river history. We learned that the Mississippi River has a flow rate under normal conditions of over 1million gallons per second. While ashore we walked the main drag through town to check things out. Nice town with a few places to eat but mostly looked pretty sleepy.
Back to the boat it was a quick and easy dinner of cheese and crackers and a bowl of soup for us before relaxing and eventually turning in.
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