Another Nighttime Adventure

Don’t travel at night. Don’t be on the rivers in the dark. Never travel the Mississippi at night. The Mississippi is dangerous!

Ok. Words of wisdom from everyone around us. Our record of night travel isn’t so great, but now having thoroughly learned our lesson we would never make that mistake again!

PSYCH

If you’ll remember, we got stuck at Hoppies an extra night due to a surprise river closure. Thankfully we found out about it 5 minutes before we left the dock- happy to retie most of our dock lines and very relieved we didn’t have to fight the 4 knot current back upriver for 10 miles. Momentarily saved, we now faced an even greater problem. The river closure 10 miles downstream was in effect from 7 am to 7 pm. With sunrise around 7 and sunset around 6, we had the option to stay another 10 days until the river opened up again during daylight hours or make a mad dash before dawn to make it past the closed section. Unable to face the prospect of no showers for that long, we geared up for another nighttime adventure.

Technically 5:30 am is morning, but it was absolutely pitch black out when we started the engine. I kept thinking to myself “this is a bad idea” repetitively as we peeled off the dock into the current just behind our friends Dan & Donna of Syzygy and Jerry & Marty of Monarch. Thankfully, both their boats had radar and they were able to easily spot the barges and keep us informed on what was coming next. It wasn’t just us trying to beat the clock through the closed section- all the commercial traffic (monster barges) had to get through as well and that spiced up our morning.

Emily and I have a pretty good amount of nighttime water experience between local racing at home and racing the Mackinac. Being on the water in darkness isn’t anything new, and we pulled our resources to make sure we were on the right track. Emily drove while I sat next to her scanning the water with our brightest flashlight (thanks Pat!) and watching the GPS. I would rotate between checking our path on the screen, matching up channel markers with where they should be, and scanning the water for rogue tree trunks and logs. Conveniently, none of the channel markers are lit and they are often missing or off station. We only ended up on the wrong side of a marker once- not too shabby! It was tense, but we had a system and it worked out.

Things got interesting as we made our way through the darkness. Sort of where shore was supposed to be we noticed a small orange light in the distance, with a small red light nearby. Trying to figure out what it was, I noticed it seeming closer until I realized with a panic it was a barge! AH. BARGE. AH. I immediately hailed the captain and we figured out what side of the river to skirt, and quickly a huge silent black mass of moving wall was just a few boat lengths away from us. It was spooky. A huge gigantic moving island of metal was lit only by three small running lights in the front, and a few lights on the tug itself. Seemed sketchy. Now that we knew what to look for, any mysterious lights instantly became a suspect barge.

This first encounter was shortly after we left the dock, so we had missed the radio chatter from our leaders while we were shoving off- hence the surprise. For the next barge, it was well lit and we were ready with plenty of warning. Chatting with the captain, we thankfully found out that our boat was showing up clearly on radar, so maybe we wouldn’t get run over. To make sure we knew where to go, this captain even took his spotlight and waved it all over the bank. It was goofy- sort of like the iron giant was making sure we were safe.

Now experts, we figured out that the next mass of lights on shore wasn’t just a factory, but it was a factory that had a barge moving just in front of it. Thanks to the heads up from our friends, we hailed yet again and maneuvered safely out of the way. Barges in stealth mode- not fun.

By now, we had cleared the traffic but the clock was still ticking. I knew that as soon as the sky grew light, we were out of time. The day before our friends unknowingly had tried to pass through the section, but were stopped by the Coast Guard and had to head back upriver to Hoppies. We couldn’t afford that. We most likely wouldn’t be able to fight the current with our small engine, and if we could make it, it’d take all day. We had already made it so far in the dark, and we just had to finish the last few miles to be clear.

I was in a constant loop of wishing for light so we could see, and wishing for time to stand still. It was stressful. I started configuring conversations in my head of what I’d say to the Coast Guard if we got stopped before the closure, wondering if we could be escorted through the closed section. Slowly, gray started to seep into the landscape. The deck started to brighten as the sun started to creep up behind the clouds. I held my breath as I counted every tenth of a mile, counted every passing minute. Up ahead, a powerline on top of a hill in the bank crossing the river appeared. This was it! This was the powerline receiving the maintenance, the very reason we were out on the river at such an ungodly hour. It was 6:55, and we were sliding through the forbidden mile. All I could think was, “They can’t stop us now!” Rather anticlimactic, there were no other boats around, no lights, nothing. It was just another stretch of river. Likely we could have snuck through a half hour later, but my body relaxed as we made it out of the danger zone with minutes to spare. We made it! By now the sun had climbed over the horizon, and we were safe to sail another day.

If you are wondering, this is a photo accurately captures the essence of our pre-dawn dash.