October 16, 2008: Port Charles to Hoppie

We returned to Port Charles last night with a long ride through the cut corn fields of Port Charles county to the Polestar Marina. Arriving we found the river had significantly receded so the ramp to The Next Thirty Years was a steep incline down to the floating dock. The final repair of the isinglass window was delivered around 11:00 pm.

This morning we zipped in the last mended isinglass panel and cast off around 9:00 AM.

The first stop was the nearby Port Charles Harbor. The cordial dockmaster in the pink sweatshirt sold us 150 gallons of diesel fuel for $3.54 a gallon, the cheapest fuel we have seen since we left home in April. She was the daughter of a river lamplighter who in the olden days would take oil out to the markers and fill the lamps and make sure they are lighted. It was a fearful job in bad weather but it was essential for boating. She was part of a family that was raised on the Mississippi, and her Aunt Fern and Uncle run the Hoppies Marina (the Grandfather’s dear name was Hoppie) where we will stay tonight.

It was a misty grey morning with rain droplets hanging in the air, encouraging hooded sweatshirt attire. We headed south with navigation towards the ocean dictating that we watch the markers and keep Red on the Left, just like my Daddy taught me as a little girl. Of course, we also have the North Star chart plotter to keep us in the channel. There is a lot of debris (large trees) on the banks and we have Illinois on our left and Missouri on the right.

We heard the Beatle’s song“When I am 64” (Will you still need me ...) on the oldies station and laughed at how our perspective on the lyrics has changed!
We reached our first lock on the Mississippi, the Mel Price lock and dam, just below Alton by noon and found there was a big yellow tug boat named Pathfinder in it moving North. We waited about 30 minutes to enter this huge lock. At 1200 feet in length, it was twice as long as the last lock we went through. There was a lot of debris floating there including a tree, so it was a little tricky getting in. There was also a new technique for the docking in this lock; we tied up to a bollard, a floating cleat in the wall, for the descent of 23 feet. All and all it took about 45 minutes to complete the passage.

After lunch we passed by the downtown waterfront of St. Louis and saw the huge Gateway Archand passed under the Eads Highway and Railroad Bridge. The Eads Bridge, completed in 1874, was the first large bridge to span the Mississippi River, and the first to carry railroad tracks. This famous bridge was built by James Buchanan Eads and was revolutionary in bridge building (built in a time when 3 out of 4 bridges failed). It was the first alloy steel bridge; the first to use tubular cord members; and the first to depend entirely upon the use of the cantilever in the building of the infrastructure. This St. Louis bridge consists of three spans, the center one being 520 feet long, and the other two 502 feet each. The bridge set precedents in that steel was a new and unproven material in 1874 and the proposed expansions of steel longer than 500 feet were totally unheard of at that time. Because of the swift current and heavy sediment in the water, setting the foundations were quite a challenge. Pneumatic caissons were used for the first time in the United States in the construction of the piers, which were sunk to unprecedented depths (125 feet). Eads also invented the sand pump to remove gravel, sand and silt from the caissons so that the sinking operation could work without interruption. The piers upon which these spans rest are built of limestone carried down to bed rock. Tom is reading a book called Rising Tide that spends a chapter detailing the construction of this remarkable bridge include the intrigue involved as opposing parties were at work to get the railroads into the city at the expense of the commercial interests of the Mississippi steamboats. Interestingly, when Ead was a child and his family was coming down the Mississippi on a riverboat, the steamer sank and when they swam ashore they were in St Louis. That is why he had settled there.


I think we are now behind all the other loopers. Although we have seen a number of tugs pushing barges, we have not seen any pleasure craft at all on the river today. We passed where the Missouri River merges with the Mississippi just above the Chain of Rocks Lock. This lock took us down another 12 feet. We overheard a conversation between the lockmaster and a barge south of us on the VHF radio. The barge was carrying reclaimate on its way to Joliet, IL where its load would be crushed to produce gas.

Tonight we are docked at a marina that consists of five permanently anchored barges tied together along the shore. We have power and water and are secure even though there is heavy wave action each time a barge passes. Here we met Ms Fern whose father-in-law, Hoppie, opened the marina in 1934. She loaned us the keys to her van for us to make a run into the grocery store in Kimmswick. She also sat with us for a while and told us about the trip before us. She warned us about spots on the Mississippi where there is turbulence, suggested safe anchorages, giving the mile marker locations all from memory and told us that the barges all monitor channel 13. There are no marinas between here and the Green Turtle Bay in Kentucky so we need to plan carefully for the next three nights. Ms Vern is an expert on the river.