Day 12: Cape Girardeau, MO - Our longest distance day yet

Day 12: Cape Girardeau, MO - Our longest distance day yet!

Last night we had the rain, storms, and WIND that y’all had back in Chicago today. Hit us around midnight, boy am I glad I stowed the bimini yesterday afternoon, it would have been gone.

Set off around 8am as we had 69 statute miles (about 60 nautical miles) to cover today. The current pushing us along certainly helped. It was WINDY (25knots plus) all day, standing in the cockpit all day was not a treat. But now that I’m here in this protected little anchorage it’s a beautiful afternoon to sit out here and write my daily update.

I was the last one to make it in, two boats with deeper drafts are anchored out on the river, 4 of us snuck into the canal. Its protected from the wind and the current keeps you right in the middle of the canal, a great spot to post up.

After getting anchored the boys and I hopped in the dinghy for our evening walk, having dogs can be a pain but they do force you to get up and go to shore at least twice a day which is nice.

The shore on this side of the river is all mud, so we dinghied across the river to the other Illinois bank which is all sand. The river is so low that we were actually walking on river bottom! Hurley found every dead fish in the sand which was… wonderful.

I took a screenshot of google maps when we were standing there, the red circle is the canal we anchored in.

A long but productive day today, tomorrow will be even longer. The goal is to get up and moving by 7 and push as far as we can before dark. We have 49 miles to the Ohio River, 69 miles to the Olmstead lock on the Ohio, and the Ohio has a current AGAINST us that I’m a bit concerned about. So we will see how far we get.

The wind is supposed to die off overnight so tomorrow will be a little more pleasant. Though I expect to be under way 10-12 hours.

Happy Saturday from the Diversion Canal of Cape Girardeau!