Louisiana

Today was fun. And somewhere along the way the right bank switched from Arkansas to Louisiana. I’m stopped for the night here.

After I checked in yesterday my plan was to go ashore and seek out dinner. But that turned into a bust, as there was no suitable place to secure my dinghy. I did go ashore this morning, pulled the dinghy up on the bank next to the casino. I walked around the old downtown looking for coffee, breakfast or provisions and came back empty-handed. Zero stars. But it was foggy so I couldn’t leave early anyway.

River was not busy, and I passed my companion travelers for the third time. Saw two aboard today. They’re going very slow.

Oh and met a paddlewheeler leaving Greenville.

I had a list of things I wanted to do today, and I think I did them all.

I’d been thinking more about current and drift. Today with the river pretty much clear of traffic – I had a southbound tow about 4 miles in front of me and only met a couple of northbound – I was free to experiment. So I attempted to go directly down-current by keeping my heading and COG as closely aligned as possible. I also had a split screen to the scrolling sounder to get a mental image of depth contours, which are not on my plotter. I’m making good use of my new electronics 🙂

The results were about as expected. Current was 4-7 mph. Interesting watching the depth, going over wiers, sweeping to the deep outside of the bends.

I also wanted to get off the big river and poke around a bit. And with the water high I figured there are a bunch of places outside the channel that could be explored. Carefully.

Greenville is at mile 537. I was thinking of stopping at a working harbour at mile 483 to look around, and as I got closer and started to look I saw a meander starting at mile 489 that appeared to connect, and that got closer to the little community of Lake Providence. So I poked my nose in. Lovely little diversion.

At one point we were separated from the main river by just a small strip

The current was about 2 mph, depth 20-25 feet and smooth. Idling along.

Then into the working harbour

I was quite keen on going ashore. So I anchored up in the head of the harbour near what looked like a service road and went ashore

But it was too swampy, so I ended up blasting back in the dinghy to the towboat dock, chatted with the guys there, and rode my bike over the big dike and a few miles into Lake Providence from there. Then back to spend the night at anchor. It’s lovely, about a mile above the industry in a dead end, no current, and excellent internet.

All in all an enjoyable and interesting day.