Our Adventures on Sea Dream: How To Prepare for a Long Voyage Up the Mississippi?

July 15, 2014

Whew! Preparing for this voyage takes many days. Our “to do” list goes on forever. Groceries are almost overwhelming, with every cabinet full and the fridge stuffed. Who knows when we can shop again?

Mike has made several systems updates. We now have an AIS (Automated Identification System) transponder to transmit our location and course data to other boats while we receive their AIS signals on our chart plotters before meeting around river bends. Commercial vessels have AIS but only a few pleasure boats do. He installed a new helm computer and fresh charts. The portable water conditioner found a perfect new home installed upright on the davit post….much more convenient and works better, too!

We scrubbed all decks, dinghy, and living quarters…. Louie got a good bath, too.

It’s time at last to haul the lines and leave the dock!

Plans for our trip are just that . . . plans! All boat trip plans are written in sand, so we go with the flow, mindful of the unforeseeable.

From Huntsville we’ll cruise the Tennessee River westward to Pickwick Landing (2 days), meet Fred and Linda Mangelsdorf aboard “Young America”, then travel together north on the Tennessee River, through Kentucky Lakes to the Ohio River flowing west to the Mississippi. At the Ohio and Mississippi junction at Cairo we’ll turn north up the Mississippi to the Illinois River junction and meet Joe and Punk Pica on “Carolyn Ann.” Together, the three sister ships will cruise to St. Paul, MN, where the “Great River” originates. Fred and Linda made this trip last year and highly recommended it.

We’re carefully watching reports on the rain-swollen Mississippi, presently closed to pleasure boats. The Kentucky Lakes are a great place to wait while it drops to a safe level.

The Saint Paul voyage should take a month as we stop to check out little river towns and historic sights. Total miles to St. Paul, MN, is roughly 1050 miles. Our goal is to be home by October.

Mississippi River facts:

· It is the longest river in the world, considering the Missouri its main branch, at 4,300 miles.

· It’s perhaps the most crooked river, one part being 1,300 miles yet only 675 as the crow flies.

· It discharges 3 times as much water as the St. Lawrence, 25 times as much as the Rhine and 338 times as much as the Thames.

· No other river has so vast a drainage-basin; it draws water from 28 states; from Delaware on the Atlantic seaboard, and all the country between Idaho on the Pacific slope, a spread of 45 degrees of longitude.