Oct 6th. Day 4. Lansing Iowa to Cassville Iowa... 72 miles!!

It was a dark and stormy night. We'd planned a 7 am departure but no one wanted to move when they heard rain pouring down, and the cables supporting the mast twanging as they rubbed against a maple that hovered too low overhead. I moved to get up atleast three times, and each time the rain seemed to double. I had no choice but to dose off again. Finally at 8 oclock we all agreed it was time to take what was coming to us, and headed into Lansing for fuel. We only ran aground once on our way to Lansing! Dad loaned me a depth finder, but I thought I had the one that came with the boat working, so I left his behind. Well that was a mistake. Live and learn.

Lansing is a quaint little town. I'm actually impressed with both the scenery, and the architecture of all these river towns. This is Iowa? I make fun of Iowa, but it feels a little like Maine down by the river atleast. We donned our rain gear, tied up COTS ( Chicken Of The Sea. it's bad luck to rename a boat ): )at the city pier, and trudged up the river bank with gas cans in hand. An hour or so later, with our food and fuel supplies replenished, we where back underway. Jenny took the first shift, and drove through some nasty windy rainy weather for over two hours. Meanwhile Karla and I slaved away at the computer (some game called Jewel quest? I beat Karla at the very first game and she has tons of experience! But this isn't important). Jenny came in to warm up by the beater for the second shift, and I took over. The sun actually peeked out a few times in the early afternoon, but so did the rain and wind. I don't have any dramatic weather photos to post because I had no desire to destroy my new camera, but who wants to remember the rainy days anyway? Part of my shift included lock number 9. I expected it to be just another lock, which, after having gone through five already, had become fairly routine, but apparenly the weeds break from their roots in the fall, and drift down river, pooling in front of lock number 9. Sailboats aren't known for having smooth bottoms. COTS is actually fairly streamlined, but she still has a metal keel that cranks up and down, but even when fully up still draws roughly 25 inches. The rudder hangs down even further, and the outboard is a sailboat special, which means that it's 9 inches longer than your average long shaft outboard. All of this added up to a less than gracefull entrance to lock number 9. The weeds stopped us like a brick wall would stop a cyclist, and I actually had to back up to clean some of the weeds off. This usually works, but not this time. I just backed us into more weeks. Forward again, more weeds. Finally I punched through them but I was facing and traveling in the wrong direction. I backed halfway along the wall leading to lock 9 before pulling a 180. I guided COTS into the lock weed laden and with a damaged pride. If they saw it all happened I hoped they atleast knew why. A guy tossed a few lines down from the lock wall and peered over grinning. "How ya doing?" This was my big chance. "Good, except... you have a lot of weeds here." He grinned harder.

Some time in the early afternoon Karla took over and I started searching the internet for marinas with showers. There are three in Debuque but none of them accept sailboats because of their height and draw. Today is day four of the trip, but more importantly it's day four with no shower. We have a little propane one and an enclosure, but the girls seem to have some kind of phobia of it. Maybe two more days will cure them of that, we'll see. After failing in my shower hunt I climbed up on the deck, and started rearanging the rigging that was coming lose. Suddenly a gust took my hat! I looked back and searched the water for it but it wasn't there. I yelled down to Karla, and she turned to face me with the hat in on hand and the tiller in the other. She caught it mid air as it blew over her head. She's like some kind of a ninja or something! The rain started again and I retreated to the cabin. Karla and Jenny switched when the tank ran out of gas. Once again the rain came. I think Jenny might be cursed when it comes to weather. It poured on her for atleast an hour of this shift and I only poked my head out a few times to give advice. One of those times was on hour to deal with barge that was motoring up the wrong side of the canal. That's the barge behind Jenny in the pic. It's the biggest one we've seen so far. Luckily they're very slow and visible. We arived at lock number 10 arround 5 and I switched spots with Jenny. This one went much smoother and we switched back on the other side. around 6:30 we passed cassville and left the channel for a backwater to search for a harbor. The wind had picked up big time and none of us had any desire to spend another night rocking under a tree. All we saw where houses and yards even on the island to our right and before long it was dark. Karla broke out the spotlight. We ventured into several narrow channels in the island but both acted as wind tunnels and amplified the rocking effect we where hoping to avoid. We drove until we cleared the island and that's when we realised how much the wind had actually picked up. It had to be a steady 30 mph. We decided to double back and anchor in randomly on the island somewhere so I brought us about. When I did the wind caught our mast and healed us over a good ten degrees or so, freaking the girls out, and making me glad the sails where down. We found a spot out of the wind and set up the new oven. Later we enjoyed a feast of canned corn and pizza bagel bites. Day four complete. Survived it!