"How much time do we need?" she asked.

This aspect of the trip is going to drive my copilot crazy.  She likes to plan things down to the minute and that’s just not going to be possible on this trip. For a few weeks her planner book will be worthless and the ability to react will be king. The trip will be the perfect experience to ad lib life.

 My observation is that most activities we normally partake in don’t require us to account for time, equipment, weather, and geography all at the same time, all day long, when, without notice, any of them could pitch a curve ball.  People would normally get paid to handle these situations but from time to time it can make for challenging fun too. All this anti-planning is part of the attraction for me while offering Mary an exercise in restraint. But, to be honest, we'll be in this pseudo chaotic mode for a few weeks and we could both become weary of the daily stress. Right now I’d like to think it adds to the challenge and sounds like great fun as long as it doesn't turn dangerous.  Nevertheless, it’s still a necessary exercise to block out a schedule since we don’t have an infinite amount of time to complete our journey. The answer to the most basic question, “how long will the trip take and when will we set out?,  would only be left unanswered by a fool.

Foremost, I want to avoid the chance of flooding conditions and the more unsettled weather of early summer. This would make the trip a lot less fun and only serve to increase the stress level. Thunderstorms in the early summer are more of a nuisance and can occasionally become a hazard. Wind and lightning on the water is a bad combination. Then there's the concern of the possibility of a tropical storm or hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico later in the late summer. That would definitely but an early end to the trip. Neither of these things can be predicted very far in advance so any kind of long range or seasonal forecast is worthless.  It seems then that the suggestion of Mother Nature might be the best, and she says the best average conditions are in mid-summer. The forth of July has always been a favorite holiday so, without giving it anymore thought, I’m setting this as my start date. (approximately)  I’ll probably round off to the nearest weekend.

The amount of time I’m planning to allow for the trip is between 3 and 4 weeks. We are constrained by that nagging old problem, which is, we’re both still working so we need to make the plans fit the time.  It will however be the longest vacation Mary and I will have taken, ever.

I don't have an exact timeline for our travels but it roughs out like this:
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6   days from Minneapolis to St Louis               Segment #1
2   days from St Louis to Kentucky Lake            Segment #2
8   days from Kentucky Lake to Mobile             Segment #3
5   days through the Intercoastal Gulf Area      Segment #4
3   days slack time
2   days to get home

This list looks good on paper but I’ll bet it doesn't work out this way.  The first six days on the upper Mississippi will be plagued by widely varying lock through times at the 27 dams we’ll encounter. I've had experience with this before and the range of waiting times at the dams is from zero to 3 hours. By zero I mean the lock gates are open and the lockmaster is signaling you to come into the chamber as you arrive. Since the lock through times I expect to experience at these dams is such a big part of this trip let me divert here and explain a few things.

How do I plan for the time needed to lock through the many dams?

 If it were not for commercial barge traffic using the locks then it would be easy to predict the time at each lock.  It’s takes about 20-40 minutes for a pleasure boat to get through a set of locks so the planning would be simple. Worst case, 27 locks x 40 minutes, so I’d add what comes out to be 18 hours to the trip time.  But here's the catch. A towboat pushing barges has priority over pleasure craft so they get to go first and they typically take 1-2 hours for a lock through. This is according to the US Army Corps of Engineers rules. So now the possible waiting time is; if I add the 40 minutes of time to transit the lock to, say, 2 hours for the towboat to lock through, I could be waiting almost 3 hours. If I were a person with really bad luck and had to wait 3 hours at each of the 27 dams between Minneapolis and St Louis it would total 81 hours of waiting.  This is very unlikely but I'm certain I'll experience a long wait approaching 3 hours at least a few times.  

Now another question. What happens if there are two tow barges waiting at a dam? Will I have to wait for both of them? I don't believe it's widely known that the regulations say a pleasure boat should be allowed through after 3 other lockages of commercial traffic. I wouldn't however be quoting these rules to a lockmaster if he or she decided to not strictly follow them.  They are the cop, the judge and the jury over what goes on at their dam and it's best to let them do what they want.  In my experience though, I've always been allowed passage once the commercial tow ahead of me had completed their lock through even if another tow was waiting. I have also been put into the lock chamber with smaller commercial craft and that would speed things up too. You see then that the time needed to pass through all the locks is not an insurmountable problem but neither does it lend itself to being planned with any precision.  So what does one do?  I’m going to just throw the rough figures up in the air, use my gut instincts, and pick 1 hour as the average wait time at each lock.  That’s an easy number to remember too.  One last point is the locks are spaced at varying distances on the upper Mississippi and an average figure might be 25 miles between dams.

Tow boat in locks on the Mississippi

How far must I travel each day in order to finish the trip on time?

The second aspect of the trip that also lends itself to a bit of calculation is the speed of our travels.  The Blue Fin cruises along nicely at 20-25MPH so again, it’s simple to figure, for example, that an 8-hour day would get us 160-200 miles.  The real question is however, how fast do I really need to go to make the full 1700 miles in the 21 days of travel?  (I picked 21 days from my list above.)  The quick answer is 81 miles per day and that works out to slightly more than 3 hours of cruising time. This is a figure I like because it will make for a very comfortable travel day and allows for quite a bit of free time to do other things; and other things are exactly what I want to do.  

So a day on our trip should go like this, 3-4 hours of cruising, 3-4 lock passages at 1 hour each, and 5-6 hours of other fun things. And even the day with the longest cruise time, the most lock passages with long waits, and the most fun time only adds up to 14 hours.  Just right!  And remember, it’ll be July with nice long days.  In parts of the trip where there are fewer locks then more time can be allotted to either covering a greater distance or enjoying more fun time. That will depend on where we are and what’s around us.

Thunderstorm Approaching on the Water
Time to take cover!

 Some allowance for weather conditions should be included in our plans too. There will be rainy days that will slow our start or cause us to get off the water early.  We’ll need to occasionally stop and seek shelter from heavy storms.  I don’t expect this to be significant in causing changes to our plans but I do have safety concerns about wind and lightning. We’ll try to be prepared to sit out heavy thunderstorms that we’ll surely experience.  In over 1700 miles, 21 days, and in the heat of summer, it’s certain we’ll have to run for cover more than once.