Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2018
It turns out we were at Grafton for 5 nights. We left on Tuesday morning, 8/27, while the boating traffic was almost non-existent. The weekend river was a bit of a wild place with all sizes of fast boats, jet skis, pontoon boats, and only one sailboat (how sad!). However, we noticed very little barge traffic on Sunday and learned that our next lock on the Mississippi River, the Mel Price Lock & Dam is having problems. Over the last few days, there have been tows/barges going through that have had to wait for two days! Yikes! The current queue has 35 tows/barges with the longest wait time at 46.5 hours. I guess if we had to stop for engine repairs, this is the time to do it.
There are lots of wing dams around here. What is a wing dam? I won’t try to explain… instead, here is a good explanation.
“The Mississippi River has thousands of wing dams, manmade rockpiles extending out into the river from the shoreline, deflecting the current to the main navigation channel. These were originally constructed in the early 1800s to reduce the amount of dredging required to maintain the 4 ½ foot navigation channel.” (https://www.fws.gov/refuge/Upper_Mississippi_River/River_Language.html)
Though the navigation channel is now maintained at a 9 ft minimum, the problem is that when the water is deep enough to cover the wing dams, you can’t see them. Then if they aren’t far enough under, they can destroy the bottom of your boat or your prop(eller). Thankfully, they are charted on the navigation charts. Not knowing the current river depth vs wing dam height made for a challenging entry to our repair harbor, so the harbor radio operator guided us through the slough and channels to get us here.
“Here” is Port Charles Harbor at St. Charles, MO. A very quiet marina, smaller than Grafton but with full service for boat repair & maintenance, a true working boatyard. There’s a large grassy area for Bo to play, a nice laundry room, friendly people and a really wonderful courtesy car that we used to drive into St. Charles for dinner. The town is actually on the Missouri River and our harbor is on the Mississippi River, about 12 miles apart, or less as the crow flies.
The Mississippi River flows from the southwest to the northeast here. (You know, there’s that little indentation on the southwest side of the map of Illinois.) It’s totally non-intuitive, so it always seems like north is south and east is west - it’s crazy!
As for our repairs, the marina owner and an assistant were able to look over the transmissions at the dock and also underway outside the marina. It appears the port transmission only requires a couple of minor new parts. The starboard transmission needs a more extensive repair. A new shaft seal needs to be installed, so that means we are going to be here for a few days until replacement parts can be obtained and installed. Our fingers are crossed that we can get on our way Saturday. If not, it will probably be Wednesday considering the Labor Day holiday coming up. No rush, no worry – that’s our motto!
Wishing you a wonderful long holiday weekend!
... BTW, (CORRECTION: It's NOT the marina owner/chief mechanic with an artistic flair) the marina owner rents out space to Tim Woodson who has quite an artistic flair as you will see in our photos.