1st Anchorage

 We left Hoppies around 10 am for our 2nd leg on the Mississippi and arrived at the desired anchorage spot (in the middle of nowhere) about 2 pm.  There were 3 boats ahead of us that had left Hoppies before us and we could see they were already in the anchorage.  You were supposed to lock thru the Kaskaskia Lock and anchor upstream of it and the dam, but the narrow entrance to the Kaskaskia River was clogged with dredging equipment, tug boats and there was a barge coming down that river who planned to lock thru towards us.  The lock master said we would have to wait out in the Mississippi for at least an hour, so we proceeded to “station keep” which was a struggle in the swift current.

As luck would have it a tug with a huge load of barges was heading up river our way, so Steve radioed him as to where he would like us to be when he passed.  Keep in mind, these things are like being passed by a Boeing 747 on water, so we were not excited about this.  The tug captain instructed us to go outside the channel on the other side of the green buoys until he was past us and since we were still waiting, Steve and Kathy dropped their anchor. After some discussion we decided it was a large, safe place to anchor in 9 ft. of water and we joined them for what would be our anchorage for the night.

This is where the real fun began.  Anchor out, they say - it’s so peaceful, they say - you’ll love it, they say….  Hmmpf… We rafted to Steve’s boat and prepared to drop anchors side by side.  Kathy and I were each on the bow of our boat and it all went well when I let out the first 50 ft of chain.  Then some ghostly force took over my windlass and chain started rolling out uncontrollably.  You can’t stop it without losing fingers, so I looked on helplessly as it kept going. Long story short was that apparently some gear must have broken inside the windlass and it won’t hold the chain and anchor.  Wonderful…..  We went ahead and attached the snubber to take the pressure off the chain and went straight to docktails mode until tomorrow morning.  I guess there will be some “manually” bringing up the anchor, which sounds horrible - just hope I sleep tonight and am not awake hoping the barges stay in their channel.

Steve and Kathy were on our boat for snacks and drinks and then we watched a movie to pass the time. Tomorrow is day 2 of anchoring.  Can’t wait.  😒



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