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| Foggy Morning on the Atchafalaya |
Saturday, April 18, 2020, started early.
The alarm was set for 0530 and I was dancing, singing and laughing to the
tunes of “shake your booty.”
I figured
that approach would bode better than banging pots and screaming “rise and
shine,” a mistake I made recently.
Well
she was laughing but still not happy to rise or shine.
I’ll think of another approach.
When
we could see, at 0605, we pulled up anchor and turned the
bow toward the Atchafalaya River. Soon afterward we called Berwick river traffic
on Channel 11, as required.
They sounded
surprised to hear from us and replied that no commercial traffic was moving due
to the fog.
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| Shell Morgan dock at Intracoastal Citt |
The light fog we started into
seemed to get denser as we entered the “20 grand”, a location where Bayou Boeuf
meets the Atchafalaya River, known locally and referred to by Berwick traffic
and commercial traffic.
We made our way
doing about 2.5 knots at 1800 RPM’s.
The
advantage we had was that no commercial traffic moves when there is fog.
As we reached the river the currents came to
life and the boat started moving.
The
outflow of the Mississippi was having a strong affect on the Atchafalaya.
We were anticipating this and also looking
forward to it but we didn’t anticipate the fog.
With radar and AIS deployed we turned south and continued to pick up
speed eventually reaching 8.5 knots.
The
motor was still only turning 1800 RPM’s so the river was obviously flowing
pretty fast.
Before we reached our westward
turn into Little Wax Bayou-a leg of the ICW- the fog had improved but the
current made our right (west) turn a challenge.
Favoring the west bank of the river and starting the turn early, all went
well.
The trip to Intracoastal City
where we spent the night at Shell Morgan, a fueling station along the ICW, was
pretty uneventful.
I wondered if the
current would stop once we turned off the Atchafalaya and to our surprise it
did not.
For the first 30 or 40 miles
our lowest sustained speed was probably 7.5 knots.
With the speed we were making we considered
bypassing Intracoastal City and heading straight to the Mermentau River, forty
miles further.
However, by the time we
reached West Cote Blanche Bay our favorable current had come to an end and we
were traveling 6.5 knots, our cruising speed for 2800 RPM’s.
We pulled into Shell Morgan and tied up at
1530, even though they were closed.
I
checked the fuel and figured we still had about 20 gallons in the tank plus 2
five gallon jerry cans.
Thirty gallons
was enough to get us home but I was hoping to pick up at least 10 gallons
more.
Though the facility closed at noon
the owner happened by and agreed to turn the diesel pump on.
I put the 10 gallons from the jerry cans into
the tank and refilled the cans.
For only
the second time in 5 months, we pulled out the shore power cord and plugged in
to 110 volt service.
I have used the
generator a time or two but only briefly, you know, for popcorn, and popcorn it
was tonight after Ruth’s awesome meal.
During the night we had hard rain, strong wind and some small hail.
No damage occurred to PV.
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| Making Great Speed |
We were up early on Sunday hoping we might find a way to
travel all the way to the Calcasieu lock.
After waking at 0600 we waited until 0730 to pull up anchor because of
fog. We were concerned the Leland Bowman
Lock, ICW mile 162, might slow us down or even ruin our day. However, one of the gates was broken so they
were not locking boats in and we passed through it without stopping. Throughout our travels we looked ahead for
other possible anchorages and even called the Calcasieu Lock hoping they’d let
us tie up for the night. They said no
and we found no anchorages we felt good about.
So, once again we took the conservative route and stopped at the
Mermentau River. Ruth has long wanted to
anchor there so it all worked out. Along
the journey, we saw the usual eagles and alligators. Louisiana is very beautiful throughout the
entire ICW route. The only close call
was when towboat Belle, pushing a few
barges, decided he wanted our side of the channel causing us to spit up a little
dirt. I believe he lost steerage in the
wind and his barged slid our way some.
He said nothing over the VHF and neither did I so as not to embarrass
him amongst his buddies listening in. Or
perhaps embarrass myself and Ruth. We
dropped anchor about 2 miles north of the ICW in the river at 1420, in 14 feet
of water. The chain rode transferred a
ton of mud to our next anchorage, it made a mess. The VHF weather alert came on several times
with tornado warnings in the area. We
also received a text from our good friend, Steve Romeis, alerting us of the
forecast of inclement weather. We planned
to up anchor early on Monday, if fog was not an issue, hoping to get an early
jump toward the Calcasieu lock. We heard
tugs and tows discussing that the hold up at the lock was as long as two days. Often the lock allows pleasure craft to slide
in with non-hazardous barges or light boats (tugs and tows without barges), so we
were hoping our wait would not be too bad.
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| Sunrise over the Mermentau |
On Monday, April 21, 2020, we were up at 0545.
I went on deck expecting to be saturated by
fog, as we had been the previous two days.
It was still dark but I could see distant outlines of cypress trees with
hanging moss, and no fog.
So I woke Ruth
and we went into fast action mode.
Coffee in bed seemed to get her up faster than my previous lame stunts.
Why didn't I think of that before? By 0605 the anchor was clanking through the
windlass and soon we were off.
It was
still dark for the first 10 minutes but we were able to follow our track
through the river back to the ICW where we entered at mile 200.
We were determined to make it back home to
Port Arthur.
We had 85 miles to go but
one giant barrier, the Calcasieu Lock.
The day slipped by quickly.
We
felt cheered on by friends, calling, texting and John even wrote and posted a
poem in Facebook about Ruth.
As we
traveled we heard towboat captains discussing the state of the Calcasieu Lock.
It seems there truly was an extreme backlog for
transiting through.
The commercial
vessels in tow are required to contact the lock and are given a number which
they follow in order for transiting.
They were backed up for as much as two days.
This didn’t sound promising to us.
When we were about 10 miles east of the lock
we started seeing the barges waiting passage.
Most were pushed up against the bank waiting to move forward.
As we got closer many were just drifting
toward the lock at less than one knot.
They would bump their engines occasionally to keep it straight or keep
it moving slowly.
As we made our last
turn toward the lock it was actually hard to get by as some had swung in a way
in which they were almost across the canal.
In one case we skirted by in 6 feet of water.
We were not going to be denied.
When we were about a mile away I contacted
the lock on channel 14.
They told me to
move up and wait.
That didn’t sound good.
At noon we pulled up close to the Black Bayou
Pontoon Bridge and dropped anchor.
We
listened as boats were called and given directions.
To our surprise at 1245 the lock master
called out
Pura Vida.
We answered and were
told we could proceed directly through the open lock.
We immediately pulled up the muddy anchor,
not taking time to rinse it, and proceeded forward.
By 1300 we were through the lock and on our
way home.
It was an extremely fast day
and at the same time everything slowed down as we got closer to home.
By 1730 we turned south into
1000 foot cut
and the Sabine Lake.
At 1900 I could see
Art’s sailboat, with his colorful jib sail near the entrance to the PAYC
channel.
In ‘Art style’ he and Craig
greeted us by “doing donuts,” circling under sail.
We pulled into our slip at 1930 and were
greeted by friends.
We enjoyed distant
socializing into the night.
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| AIS showing boats stacked east of the Calcacieu River |
It has been a trip of a life time. I’m thankful to have been to beautiful places
and to waters you can only see by boat, to have accomplished a goal that I
studied about and planned for 12 years and experienced meeting wonderful people
and a beautiful culture. I’m thankful
that I got so spend time with my two sons, Bryce and Blake and best friend
Chris, my sweet daughter-in-law Veronica, my brother Art and of course Baby Ruth. I appreciate the encouragement we were given
along the way from old and new friends and family. It was not an easy journey but perhaps that
made it more rewarding.
And if I might add: Get off the coach, get into your pucker zone a little and enjoy life.
Don’t regret what you didn’t do.
Regret that you lived maybe a little too hard.
Until next time…….
( I will write a follow-up sharing things I learned
about cruising for anyone considering such a trip.)
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| Mr. Gator crossing Pura Vida's path |
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| Pura Vida finally resting at home |
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| The water bottle I used for 5 months |
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| Ths same bottle 2 months earlier |
