We left the dock at 6:55 am, and we moved slowly out of the marina on our best guess of the real channel. The Admiral was carefully watching the depth (below the keel) on the chart plotter while we slowly moved along the outer break wall of the marina. At the end of the break wall there is a huge vertical support column for the new Clark Superbridge across the Mississippi River. Once past the support, we turned to go out into the river. As we cleared the bridge column, the depth readings went from 1.2 feet to over 40 feet in a couple of seconds, which at that speed was about one boat length. ...and then there was collective sighs of relief. Then we called the Lockmaster at the Melvin Price Lock and Dam, which was only 1.7 miles down river from the marina. We went straight into the auxiliary lock and had a slow descent of 22 feet.
About 2 miles down stream the Missouri River entered from the west. The picture at the left shows a view of the confluence looking back up stream. The higher trees near the middle separate the Missouri on the left and the Mississipi on the right. Looks can be deceiving as the flow of the Missouri River about doubles the amount of water flowing in the Mississippi River. Our trip for the day was 99.5 miles, and as the river grew so did the speed of the current. We spent most of the day going about 3 mph above our normal cruising speed of 8.3 mph. With a long trip planned the boost from the current was going to take nearly 3 hours off of the trip.
About 1.5 miles further, we came to this large warning sign (picture on right). The sign marks the start of the Chain of Rocks Canal, which is about 8.5 miles long. Most of the flowing water was in the Mississippi River and not in rather calm canal. The river is not the place to be since it is going down hill with a long stretch of rapids. Rather than dam the whole river, they left the rapids and built the canal with a lock to bypass the rapids.
After about 7 miles in the canal, we arrived at the Chain of Rocks Lock. We were told that there would be a slight delay while they allowed a small tow in behind us (picture at left). on the upstream end of this lock there are no swing gates. You can see what looks like a black "line" between the barge and the far lock wall. This is the gate that actually comes up as a single piece. The variety of locks seems endless.
The next picture show the Admiral holding onto the line around the floating bollard as she waits "patiently" for the gates to open and the horn to sound that indicates it is safe to proceed. Looking through the gate, you can see another tow that has tied up very close to the lock gate. We had to exit and turn sharply right to avoid the tow. However, the tow behind us in the lock had to wait for the tow to back up a little so that he could exit. After another 1.5 miles, the canal ended, and we were back into the swiftly flowing Mississippi River. We were lucky to have minimal waits at both locks since we have such a long trip planned for the day.
At this point we were only about 5 miles from St. Louis, Missouri so we could clearly see parts of the skyline. There are no marinas or public docks in the city so our only views of the city were to be from the river. The Gateway Arch is beautiful from any direction, but we had a pretty much unobstructed view (picture at left). Otherwise, the waterfront is (in my opinion) very much undeveloped. Of course we did see some of the usual big city sights, such as a Budweiser brewery, the domed football stadium, etc. Please don't get me wrong. I have been to St. Louis before by land, and it is a beautiful city, but I just think that the river front is very lacking...
Altogether, we went under 7 bridges within just 5 miles of the city. The newest bridge is shown in the picture on the right, and it is listed on the navigation chart simply as the "St. Louis New Bridge".
Since the river is subject to a wide range of floods (up to 75 feet?), there are also numerous dikes, such as this one that surrounds a power plant. Typically, the dikes have a number of gates, which must be closed and sealed during a flood. There are also pumps inside the dike to remove rain water and cracks/holes in the dike (anybody want to stick their finger in the dike?).
After passing through St. Louis, we still had about 75 miles left in today's trip. So, after a very busy start, the remainder of the trip was less eventful with only 2 more bridges and no more locks today. We had passed the last lock and dam on the river so the tows continued to get larger. On the Illinois River the tows were 2 barges wide by 3 long, and then on the upper Mississippi River they were 3 wide by 5 long. The towboats also keep getting much bigger and powerful. They call them towboats even though they push the barges rather than tow or pull the barges. An example of these larger towboats are like the one on the left that has two smoke stacks and is 4 decks high. The "small" tow boat on the right is more typical of what we saw on the Illinois River with the smaller tows. We also started to see several with 3 smoke stacks and 5 decks, which is a sign of things to come.
We reached our anchorage about 5:30 pm. The picture at the left shows the sunset over the Mississippi River. We are actually anchored just inside a small inlet on the east side of the river. Starting at the point of land just to the right is a wing dam the juts out into the river about 100 feet in front of Lucky Us. The wing dam consists of a 5 or so foot high pile of rocks (usually completely under water) that deflects the current away from the bank and out into the river. Thus, we are just off of the river, and there is only a gentle down stream current that holds us steady and pointed up river into the current. Where are we? Well, the best that I can tell you for reference is that we are about 70 miles by river down stream from St. Louis. The chart plotter has us as near Prairie du Rocher, Illinois. As far as I know, we never even saw that town so I guess that it must be somewhere inland...
Well, it was a long but very good day. Needless to say it was early to bed for both of us. That's the good news. The "bad" news is that we will be up early ready for another very long day tomorrow.
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