October 24, 2009 - Little Diversion River, Missouri

A sunny, beautiful – cool at 44 degrees – morning dawned. We cast off and made our way down the Mississippi. Along the bluff we could see houses high above the raging torrent.

The bluffs on the right descending bank were spectacular.

Along both banks of the river there are hundreds of wingdams or weirs, running perpendicular to the river. These are an attempt to stop what Mother Nature intends for the river. The weirs underwater, at various depths, and are designed to deflect the river current toward the center of the river, to prevent erosion of the river banks and curtail shoaling of the channel. Because the river level has such variation, mariners cannot be sure of the depth of water – if any – over these weirs. So we stayed close to the middle and on the “sail line” recommended on our charts.

Because of the river level being up 10 feet from two days ago, there were lots of logs and flotsam to steer around.

The river has ample navigational marks, and the speed of the current is evident from the “wake” around this stationery navigational buoy. Fern from Hoppies terms this fast current “the river is hot”. We were getting a 4-knot boost, which is about a 50% beneficial push.

Here is the Chester Prison, on the left descending bank. The inmates have rooms with a river view!

This is the American Heritage, a 6 X 4 barge pusher. This large raft of barges made a three-foot wake.

We anchored for the night in the quiet Little Diversion River just up the right descending bank. This is the river that diverts water around the town of Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Behind us was Liz and Steve’s Shingebiss, shown here at anchor with a large tug and barges passing safely beyond her stern. This was a fine anchorage, with friends DiDi and Peter anchored upstream of us in Moon Beam. The current was .9 knots, and this kept us nicely taut on our anchor. We all convened for cocktails on Moon Beam prior to switching on our anchor lights and turning in for the night.