Finally, the River level goes down!

Finally the river level has gone down to the “high water” level, not major or minor flood level any more—hooray!  Larry Chamberlain, Ron Newton, I was able to take the boat to the marina in St Charles Saturday May 18.  The water was still quite high but conditions were not as bad as I feared.  Ron also brought his "map chip" so my chart plotter display showed exactly where the river channel was even if the buoys were underwater, which a few were.

Port Charles Marina had SaSea Sally out of the water by Friday 5/24 but really hadn’t started working on the boat by Friday 5/24—you have to remember Port Charles is a boat yard and boat yards are on their own time zones.  In all fairness, there were a lot of folks who wanted things done to their boats by Memorial Day weekend but that was for naught as it has rained heavily all three days of this holiday weekend.

Port Charles has a long list of items to install and repair, four pages worth of "to dos".  There are two other parties who have major projects--Kate's Covers is fabricating a new canvas enclosure for the fly bridge (up stairs steering station) and Cory, from Lake of the Ozarks, is installing my new Si-Tex active AIS, Garmin radar and two Garmin chart plotters and integrating them with the other existing electronics on board.

All I know for sure is I planned to have the SaSea Sally to Port Charles the third week of April, before their "busy season" started.  By the calendar, SaSea Sally was four weeks late getting there.  Logic says that puts me four weeks behind my June 1 departure schedule but that may be optomistic due to the fact the busy summer boating season has now started.  Probably, leaving Louisiana around the Fourth of July Holiday is a good guess when we will depart if all goes well.

We'll keep you posted on our schedule as we know more!

The Water Receeds!

"E Dock" where the SaSea Sally is moored.

The water level at Louisiana hit the fourth highest level in history this April.  This flooding was due to a HEAVY rain in Mid April; like 4-6+ inches from mid-Missouri to Chicago.  The river came up very quickly over a few days cresting around the 20th of April.

New way to get to the front door of Two Rivers Marina

The US54 highway bridge closed, the IL levy US54 runs through was closed with 6-8' of sand and sand bags, the inventory in the Two Rivers Marina store and parts area were moved to high ground in MO as was all the machinery in the marina shop.  The drywall in the marina office was cut out, the cabins were put on flat bed trailers, and the place shut down three weeks ago--IT IS STILL SHUT DOWN. 

I wasn't able to get to the SaSea Sally for a couple weeks and can't now without knee boots.  The water went down nicely early last week but late last week we got another 1-2+" of rain; now I need my boots again to reach the boat.

From the Marina office looking north toward E-Dock

All this flooding has definitely delayed our June 1 target to depart on our Great Loop trip.  That isn't all bad as we have been catching up on our "to do" lists!  The boat still has to go to St Charles for 2-3 weeks worth of work.  After they finish in St Charles, we have to bring the boat back to Louisiana on a "shake down" cruise, provision it, and make final departure plans. 

Our current target to leave Louisiana is around June 20th, subject to the next revision!

Cabins hoisted on a flat bed trailer by crane before the flood.

Please remember that these pictures are AFTER the river went down around 3' and AFTER the US 54 bridge was reopened.