Greetings from Davey Jones
Start: 225
Stop: 202.5
Day Total: 24
Trip Total: 74.5
Our camp site at Yacht Club of St Louis was so nice to wake up to. Plenty of room to spread out our wet tents to dry and do a final organization before launch. Launch was much more of a drama than I thought it would be.
Since the landing and launch were on a pretty high dock I new that loading my boat, while laying on my stomach would be complicated. My idea was to put my boat on my portage wheels at our camp and load both the front and rear hatched there, and lower the partially loaded boat the 3 feet height from the dock to the water.
All was well, with Jons help we got the boat lowered without any serious complications. Once this was done, Jon jumped in his boat, thinking as I did that I would be launching 10 minutes later. To say that the loading of my spare paddle, portage wheel, deck bag, cockpit bags, food bag and map case was sooo optimistic. In reality it took closer to 40 minutes. Once I slowly and carefully lowered my self in to the Kayak, I inched my way forward to untie the bow line from the dock cleat. Getting within 3 feet of the cleat my boat came to an abrupt halt. I had failed to adjust the line length and there I sat, well and truely stuck. I tried in vain to use my paddle to un-loop the tie line. Eventually had to go through the delicate process of getting out of the boat, untying and tying the line to give me more room. Add that all up and I was almost an hour behind floating Jon.
10 miles down river we were hoping to find a marina with a soda machine. In the little marina of Sioux Yacht Club, we came a across Davey, in his pirate flagged sail boat. Asking were we could get a cold drink, he said he had cold bottled water, and gifted us 4 bottles. He was very interested in our paddle trip, and wanted to follow our progress on the blog. Such a cool guy. Meeting Davey was a total highlight of the day.
The rest of the 12 miles from Portes de Sioux was a grind. Big stretches of open water, wind in our face and for me problems with my rudder foot peddles. Ad to that my phone battery near zero I had some trouble shooting to do. By the time I got my rudder sorted out I dug out my solar charger and got my phone back up and running I was almost an hour behind Jon. I finally pulled into the Alton Yacht Club at 4:30 with Jon waiting for me, having made friends with Jill and a room at a local B & B all set up. Jon is a rock star to paddle with.
As I write this, we are at an Irish Pub, seating on the sidewalk, listening to a five piece Irish band. Cold Guinness and Irish caught Cod, make this the perfect end to and amazing day on the Mississippi.
Jons quote of the day “We are either 5 miles, 17 miles or 24 miles from Grafton” See tomorrows blog for the back story.
Jeffs quote of the day “I will NOT be make a prisoner in my own cockpit”.
See tomorrows blog for the back story.
Today’s coded message: “Come on over, we’re open” That is code for a restaurant that is open only for curb side, when we are walking all over Alton looking for a place to eat dinner.
No comments:
Post a Comment