Well, to much ice to sail but time well spent

[ghockaday]

Remember this one?

https://www.baltimoresun.com/bal-mptfre ... 0Christmas.

[John Stone]

Remember this one?

https://www.baltimoresun.com/bal-mptfre ... 0Christmas.

I was not in Baltimore that winter. But, I was a deckhand on a upper Mississippi River towboat. It was a legendary insane winter. All of our grain barges got frozen in the ice. We abandoned them. I remember we joined forces with a couple other towboat companies to get two fuel barges out of the ice. We had four 4,000 HP twin screw towboats lined up end to end like locomotives to push those barges. The locks were getting jammed up with ice. We lived in insulated Carhartts, Sorel Pac-boots, and parkas. It normally took us a week to make the down current run from St Paul MN to St Louis. It took us three weeks to get half that distance. I remember minus 80° wind chill in Keokuk, Iowa Lock 19. My life consisted of ratcheting barges together with huge wires, handling big hawser lines at the locks, chipping ice, being cold, and trying not to get killed. We were tough back then....

[tjr818]

. . . I was a deckhand on a upper Mississippi River towboat. . . .

John,
That is where we sail, the Upper Mississippi River in the Alton pool above L&D 26. We see the tows going up and down the river most days, but when we are out sailing the weather is usually nice. Our harbor will freeze up before the river does so we are never out there seeing those crews working in conditions like that. They are still tough. One big change on the river these days is the computer aided traffic management. The towboats know exactly when the will be locking through so the pace their progress toward the locks, often the are coming down stream at less than a knot or two, saving fuel. In the "good old days" they would be zipping along and they would be out of our way in a few minutes, now they seem to linger in the area as we sail past them at our 4-5 knots.

[ghockaday]

What other site of any kind can you just wander all around on any topic you want and no one cares are gets upset. I really enjoy this board. Dee

[tjr818]

Way too much Ice, the Mississippi is frozen over above Dam 26, where we sail. It would be a beautiful day, 68° and sunny, much better than the 4° we had last week. The harbor is frozen solid.

Mississippi Ice.jpeg (190.55 KiB) Viewed 313 times

[Seaweed2]

Just posting a little info about the folks from Norway: The Norwegian Navy has bar codes on all of their ships so that when they return to port they can Scandanavian. How about that?

[John Stone]

Just posting a little info about the folks from Norway: The Norwegian Navy has bar codes on all of their ships so that when they return to port they can Scandanavian. How about that?

Those Norwegians...so efficient.

[gonesail]

in WW2 when imported briar was scarce .. pipemakers used mountain laurel instead.