Daily stats
Start: 6:40 AM- Outside Greenville MS
Finish: 1:40 PM - On the river
Time: 7:00
Daily dist: 50 miles
Total dist: miles
Companions: None
Weather: Very thick fog delayed launch and slowed progress all morning. Things cleared and became very nice in the afternoon.
HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYONE!
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Hey guess what… It’s raining. I think this is three nights in a row that I’ve had rain. I can’t complain though I pulled off the river early today to take advantage of sunshine and warm temps in order to spread out and get things dry. It felt good to get the dampness out of everything after yesterdays all day rain. This rain tonight is supposed to pass through by morning followed by a cold front that should bring dry conditions for the next several days. A dry cold front is good news to me, I’ll take cold and dry over warm and rainy any time.
I was prepped and ready to go nice and early this morning but a very heavy fog delayed my launch until I could at least see the fog rather than just bottomless darkness. When I finally did launch I had to navigate by staying within a hundred feet of shore to be sure I wasn’t drifting into the main channel. All was going well until I came to the inside of a bend and the shore line moved a half mile from the edge of the channel and a gauntlet of wing dams (at unknown depths) transected my course. The water is up fairly high but after running into a wing dam last week I’m a little gun shy.
Very thick fog this morning
Thankfully the first inside bend put me into an old cutoff channel which ran behind all the wing dams and far from any barge traffic. After about three miles of stress free travel the channel deposited me back into the main river channel. Still I was able to continue on by again following the shore line. After an hour of following the long route along the outside of every bend the fog lifted enough to allow me to see both sides of the river. I was lured away from shore in search of the buoy lines I like to follow then the wind shifted and in a matter of seconds a foggy trap closed in leaving me in mid channel with zero visibility. For the first time in this trip I fired up my GPS and along with a compass I did fly by wire navigation to follow the flooded edge of a towhead which put me safely at the edge of the channel and beyond the reach of wing dams jutting out from shore. I couldn’t see anything around me and had to put my trust in the GPS reinforced every so often by the sight of a buoy straining against its anchor chain on the edge of the channel.
The thick fog persisted until 10:30 when I was finally able to see both sides of the channel and far enough ahead to know what kind of barge traffic was on the river. Finally I was able to get up to speed and put on some miles. A gentle tail wind helped smooth out the river and I set a brisk pace to try to make up for the slow start.
The perfect sand beach for New Years Eve camp
My plan was to put in about 50 miles (shorter than I have been doing) and pull off the water early to have time to dry out. As I rounded the last bend I eyed a likely towhead in search of a nice sand bar to camp on and was rewarded by a perfect sunny, dry, and accessible spot… The perfect New Years Eve camp.
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