The River was Angry My Friend
Start: River Mile 768
Finish: River Mile 753
Day Total: 17 Miles
Segment Total: 484
After a nice day of mostly the wind at our backs, we knew we were in for a challenge when NOAA weather forecast 10-15 mph winds from the Southwest. Most mornings our experience has been that the wind doesn’t really pick up to the predicted strength until late morning. We‘ll as luck would have it, the wind was already at 10-15 mph when we put in at 7:30 am. The first 3 miles were hard work but not too bad.
We then entered a stretch that I would call the worst case scenario. We were in a 3 mile narrow segment, with head winds of 20-25 mph with gusts up to 30 mph. Then in that same stretch we encountered 4 up river barge Tows and 2 now river Tows. These Tows are kicking up huge wheel wash, with wake waves of 5-10 feet. We are always very careful to stay clear of this. In this particular case, the volume of barges in a confined space really stirred up the river to a level that was as close to unpaddleable as you can get. We spent hours battling through this as a crazy slow pace. At many points we were managing 1 mile per hour progress down river.
Our goal for the day was the 32 miles to Memphis, were my wife Christina and son Nik were going to meet us and join us for a visit. My early afternoon it was clear there we no way we were going to make it to Memphis. We set our sights on the Shelby Forest boat ramp, which would make for a 17 mile day, with Christina and Nik changing pick up locations and meeting us at a very remote ramp. Overall it took us 8 hours to paddle 17 miles.
It was awesome having Christina and Nik here. It had been almost 3 weeks since I’d seen them and I missed them very much.
First shipping container on a barge sighting
The calm before the storm
Early morning launch
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