Sailing down the Missouri

[Rashido]

Sailing down the Mississippi

Hello, a few high school friends of mine want to build a true to life Norwegian snekkja type longship, and we want to sail it down the Missouri. We were thinking from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. Our boat would be pretty small, only designed to hold 5 or 6 people. We would also use modern triangle sails, rather than the Norse square sails. However, we wouldn't use a motor of any sort. The benefit of this type of ship is it has a really shallow draft and is very light, so we could beach it anywhere if that was needed. Would it be able to handle the Missouri? We would be setting aside a summer to sail. Are you even allowed to simply sail down the river?

 

[JohnShannon]

You might consider the Ohio river instead. The Missouri is a couple of hundred miles from Pittsburgh. Other than that I think you got to worry about some Coast Guard stuff and you should be good to go. Are you building this boat?

I would if I were you invest in some kind of map or chart, I bet somebody has done this before and written a book and or blogged about it.

I am also miles from the river, but I would worry about barges and large traffic. They can't maneuver much so it is up to you to stay out of their way. If all you have are sails might get tricky if for example the wind died.

Small boat you will need oars of even a trolling motor something to get you to safety in the event of no wind.

 

[kloudie1]

Yup.. will be lots of fun but you really do need a motor of some sort because of the traffic that you will encounter .. and the need to get through locks .. You'll want to have navigation lights for night/poor visibility.. you'll want to have a VHF radio.. a radar reflector on the mast..

 

[Stu Jackson]

https://www.google.com/search?q=sai...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Google is your friend. I typed in "sailing the missouri river"

Sam McKinney's book is very good, I've read it a few times.

Are you confusing the Missouri and the Mississippi? Jonathan Raban wrote a great book about a trip down the Mississippi.

 

[Scott T-Bird]

Oh Shenandoah, I long to see you ...

Away, I'm bound away ... Across the wide Missouri

If you guys are as good at boat-building as you are at geography, you'll go far .... sheesh!

But the Snekkja would be pretty much the style of boat that Lewis & Clark used to travel up and down the Missouri. They even sailed when the winds were favorable. That would be a cool trip. If you started down the Ohio in Pittsburgh, you would sail upstream once you got on the Mississippi (hang a right at Cairo, Illinois) to St. Louis. Hang a left and you would be heading upstream on the Missouri. New Orleans isn't in this scenerio. You may not want to sail the Mississippi south of the Ohio anyways, due to the barge traffic and lack of anyplace to park!

 

[Ross]

Here is a link to the Capt. John Smith shallop story. It is the boat that he used to explore the Chesapeake Bay and an example of the use of oars and sail on a small boat. http://www.smithtrail.net/captain-john-smith/the-shallop/

 

[Rashido]

Thanks for all the responses! I think we may have been a bit confused about which river is which. I guess we were thinking of the Mississippi. We would have oats on board as well as sails and poles to direct us away from rocks. A motor might be a good idea, but how would we incorporate that into the Viking design? It's important to us to do build the ship in a traditional manner.

 

[Scott T-Bird]

Well, if you go traditional, you don't have a motor, you have oars, and crew of Vikings to row with them.

If you want to hide a motor in that boat, find a mounting location on the sole of the boat near the aft end and use a direct drive shaft and propeller such as a traditional inboard engines is designed. You want the shaft and propeller protected by the keel of the boat so that if you run aground you won't be as likely to damage the components.

Seriously, it seems that most people avoid the Mississippi ... it isn't nearly as romantic as you would think by reading Mark Twain. You might consider the Tenn-Tom waterway to the gulf instead ... or duplicate the Lewis & Clark Expedition and go from Pittsburgh and truly head upstream on the Missouri. That trip would be so much more historical!

 

[Stan Breaux]

You might want to check the speed of the current in the Miss

I'm not an expert, but it runs faster than you think... at least south of St. Louis.
Sailing against the current (not even for a long distance, but just to get to a particular dock) might be almost impossible.

Knowing how to use eddies and having some sort of propulsion (even if just oars) would be critical.

And watch out for snakes...

 

[Ross]

Thanks for all the responses! I think we may have been a bit ? It's important to us to do build the ship in a traditional manner.

The traditional way involves chopping down trees and splitting the logs and then chopping away everything that doesn't look like a plank. You get two planks per tree. Then you fasten the planks with lashings and wooden pegs.

 

[JWH2050]

I have motor sailed across Arkansas, on the Arkansas River and down the Mississippi River as far as St Francisville La. We did this in a Macgregor 26X. You can get river charts at: http://www.mvd.usace.army.mil/gis/navbook/main.html

I printed them and made a booklet to take with us, I also used a I-Pad to track our trip. There is an app, Navionics, that was usefull. I would not do this without a motor, esp on the lower Miss. I can tell you that there ar not too many places you can just get to the river bank and be safe. They are not too many towns or cities that you can pull into either. The river traffic can be intimidating. the big barges, the largest we met was 49 barges together. They move at Incredible speed for their size. They also kick out a huge wake that can be felt far behind it. We made our trip when the river was in flood stage so we had plenty of water, but the currents can be extreme. I can tell you that I was one of the best trips I have been on and well worth it. You just need to do a lot of planning. You can e-mail me for more info if you want at jwh@uark.edu

 

[Deadline]

Mark Twain also wrote books about going down the Mississippi, several actually.

 

[okawbow]

The traditional way involves chopping down trees and splitting the logs and then chopping away everything that doesn't look like a plank. You get two planks per tree. Then you fasten the planks with lashings and wooden pegs.

I thought the oak log was split into quarters first, and then split into several planks from each quarter log. The Norse ship is a lapstrake type construction. The hulls are flexible. The planks were fastened with treenails and iron rivets.

 

[Rashido]

I thought the oak log was split into quarters first, and then split into several planks from each quarter log. The Norse ship is a lapstrake type construction. The hulls are flexible. The planks were fastened with treenails and iron rivets.

This is what I was thinking of. Unfortunately, we don't have the money for an abundance of oak, so we'll probably end up using pine. It's pretty abundant here.

To all others, thanks again for all the help. We will be drawing up plans for the ship this week (one of my friends is taking engineering classes) and I will try and post them. What did the Vikings use to caulk their ships and render them watertight? To the concerns about the current, traffic, etc., this style of ship is extremely light and fast and we would be able to bank anywhere due to the draft of a much larger ship than the one we're making being about 1.6 feet. Therefore, ours would likely be even shallower. Small crews of men would literally carry the ships onto beaches. Granted, we're no Vikings, but we also won't have a big warship laden down with heavy gear. Would finding a beach be very hard? I've never been to the Mississippi before, but I can't imagine large banks would be too hard to find? Also, are the fish that live in the Mississippi okay to eat? Or is the water too polluted? We plan on fishing for a good chunk of our food, but would that be out of the question?

 

[Ross]

Lapstrake does not need caulk because the planks are drawn up tight when dry and once in the water they swell to become even tighter.

 

[anchorclanker]

I have 40 acres of mature red oak (plus some real big pines), enough to build another Bounty. What to do, what to do. Burns pretty good in the wood stove though.

Viking ship? I don't think so.

 

[Ross]

I have 40 acres of mature red oak (plus some real big pines), enough to build another Bounty. What to do, what to do. Burns pretty good in the wood stove though.

Viking ship? I don't think so.

Sell the logs and burn the slash for heat.

 

[sailaway78]

I don't think

The lower Mississippi would be wise. Particularly without an engine. The barge traffic is intense below St. Louis, and ocean going ships run upstream as far as Baton Rouge. And these guys haul ass, and the current can be a real bear. I have been in the river once, going through New Orleans, and is an experience I hope I never need to repeat.

 

[anchorclanker]

Eat fish out of that river? There is over 1000 miles of river above St Louis. Both river banks pass through farm land with rain water runoff of pesticides, herbicides and manure. Thats over 2000 miles of shoreline. Each city it passes through is dumping industrial wastes, storm water and raw sewage into it, and probably other stuff no one knows about, plus the crap thats been on the bottom the last 200 years, filtering through it. Thats not considering all the rivers and tributaries that feed into it either, some of which are quite large and industrial in their own right. ISH!

What did the vikings use for caulk? Grass, hair, rope, anything they could find to plug a leak.

I got a bit too close behind a barge once, got into wake waves over 10 feet. Had I not had a large cabin cruiser I probably wouldnt be here. And that boat had flotation. You swamp a long boat in that river and its gone.