Just a Blur The Mississippi River and Hoppies

August 17-19

After spending a night at Alton Marina we set off down the Mississippi River to Hoppies.  By the way, Alton Marina was another great marina, just as nice as Grafton but quieter.  Hoppies is one of those iconic places I have been reading about since Day 1 of planning the Great Loop and Beyond.  While here, you are expected (most willingly) to attend Fern’s afternoon chat on the river.  Fern, with her deeply wrinkled face and piercing blue eyes that twinkle when she flashes you a smile, is a Wikipedia of river knowledge and her information is up to date.  

Fern

(Once again I forgot to take pictures.  This was taken from google images and was probably taken some years ago.)

Some of the anchorages we were considering had to be deleted because of her current knowledge.  I wanted to take her with us but she does have her afternoon chats which she takes quite seriously and all she wants for river boaters is to be `safe’.  Don’t miss this opportunity because Fern definitely fits the definition of `icon’.  Oh by the way, for those of you who don’t have enclosed showers on your boat, don’t expect a nice cool shower after a hot day, haha. 

As advised by the marina when we called ahead, you should bypass the marina, approaching it upstream against the current and they were there to expertly guide us to our slip and take our lines.  Thank you Hoppies Marina!

The current on the Mississippi was 3-4 mph and makes cruising fast even in `go slow’ boats.  Our average speed without current is 6 mph at about 1400 rpms and a hull speed of 7 nm, on the Mississippi our top speed was 12.5 mph.  We were seeing speeds we have never seen on our sailboat.  The fastest speed we have ever seen was 10 mph and that was coming around an island with way too much sail up!  For most people you will probably be okay with this, especially the great fuel economy.  After leaving Hoppies we traveled 110 miles in 11 hours!  We have never traveled that far in that time frame.  The upper Mississippi wasn’t our favorite part of the river, there is a lot of debris, eddies and whirlpools ( MM 131-129 was the worse), and BIG tugs to watch out for and few anchorages and marinas. 

Bucket List item checked.  See St. Louis from the river.

Our last anchorage on the Mississippi was MM 7 between a bridge abutment and an island, a nice place to spend the night and the current was only about 1 nm, we used a 5:1 scope.  We have been traveling with the 'Bear'.  Chuck and Diane are a couple we first met at Springbrook Marina in Seneca, IL.  

We are always last to the party, here is Bear already at anchor at MM7.  Thanks, Chuck and Diane for scoping out the anchorage for us, haha.  
Unfortunately it was a payback day for us because after setting anchor (thankfully) and turning off the engine Bruce did his routine check of the engine and found he had a bad coil and electronic ignition.  As he troubleshooted the issue he found he could not restart the engine.  Soooo after an 11 hour day he spent another 3 hours doing his diesel mechanic thing, while I teared down the boat to get tools and then cleaned up the boat again.  Bruce is anal about having enough tools and replacement parts on board so we had everything we needed. Afterwards we were exhausted and it was so hot that we went right to bed and woke up early to do it all over again.  But payback was over and the next day was much better, although I think it will take a few days before we are fully rested. 

Song of the Day:  Otto Titsling by Bette Midler
Why?  Because who couldn't use a little frivolous information?

On to the Ohio River~~~~~~~→