M/V ILLUSIONS                         CT TO TX CRUISE               

TRIP 4 LOGS Alton, IL to Houston, TX September 18-24, 1997 Alton, IL to Kaskaskia River, IL, Thursday, September 18, 1997      At 8:45 am, the crew of ILLUSIONS, along with our friend, Wally Moore, left Houston and flew to St Louis, MO and taxied to Alton, IL to resume our cruise from Mystic, CT to Houston, TX.  We got underway about 1pm, after loading the groceries and suitcases and helping Jeff with the cleaning.  (He had taken on the job of cleaning the boat, but had not finished yet).      Getting through the new Melvin Price Lock and Dam was no problem; the people were very nice.  They have a small lock chamber, which was just fine for us.  We called ahead on the radio, and it was ready when we got there.       Lock No 27 was another story.  We were delayed at this lock for two hours while they were getting two large towboat/barge loads (double loads) up and out.  The people were not nice, in the sense they would not tell us anything except to stand by for instructions.  We tied up to a barge and killed the engines, and then later the port engine wouldn't start!  We had had some problems with the port battery during the previous trip, and it was apparently time to replace it.  Anyway, we were told to go on through the lock, and we only had one engine running, and that's what we did.  A few miles down the river we figured out how to start it by using the starboard battery for the port engine--we didn't know that each battery was only connected to one engine. The battery selector switch needed to be turned to “both” until the port engine was started, and then the switch could be returned to select battery 1 or 2.      We had some other maintenance problems.  The electrical ones we solved by changing a light bulb and by remembering that the GFI in the salon electrical receptacle also controls the salon fluorescent lights.  Once we reset that GFI, we fixed the ice maker and receptacle on the aft deck, which are also connected to this GFI, which we didn't know.  But the starboard tachometer went out while the Glendining was engaged.  I thought the engine had shut down, but it had just reverted to idle speed.  The next guys who fixed it said it's all in the alignment, you have to know how to align it--that's what the last guys to fix it said, 6 running days ago.  (That was Glendining repair number one.)      We were so disappointed in our delays that we just kept going, even after dark.   The next day I realized we had been running in the dark on the Mississippi River and I wondered if we had beenimprudent, but we did all right.  In fact, we didn't go fast, which helped us to avoid hitting any drift.  We had quite a bit of traffic, which helped us to see the channel.  We had a couple of spotlights to use, but Wally didn't like to use spotlights, preferring natural lights instead.  The moon came out at 9pm, and we quit at 10:40pm, when we got to the Kaskaskia River Lock and Dam on the LDB.  The Quimby's Cruising Guide said we could tie up the floating lock wall there, about a mile or less off the Mississippi.      Sure enough, I called the lockmaster and he confirmed it.  He told us not to tie to the hand rails, but there were cleats there.  It was a good place to tie up.  The lock wall was floating, which is unusual but practical since the Mississippi River rises so much in flood stage.  It was surprising how few good anchorages there were on the river.      The charts we had were for the Upper Mississippi River--UMR, and they had no depths or elevations on them.  No buoys were shown, so we couldn't anticipate them in the dark.  Lights were shown at the bends of the river, but some of them were red and green, as we would expect, and some of them were amber, which we didn't expect.  Along the RDB there was a railroad track with, you guessed it, red and amber lights.  The symbols on the chart for lights and for day marks (no light) were almost the same.  Commercial docks along the RDB (and the Left Descending Bank, too, but there were no train tracks there) used, that's right, amber and white lights.  And our charts were 20 years old, so some lights were new and not on the charts and some of the charted lights were missing.  That was an interesting experience!      Since we wouldn't stop for food, Angela brought us bowls of her homemade soup, which was great.  We were too tired to eat the salad she offered us.  After we got tied up, we enjoyed a nice shower and retired for the night.      We covered 86.5 miles in 8.4 hours, after getting up early in Houston and flying two hours to St Louis. Kaskaskia River L&D, IL to Island No 14, KY, Friday, September 19, 1997      This anchorage was just off the Mississippi River at Mile 857.2 on the LMR (Lower Mississippi River).  We left the L&D at Kaskaskia River at Mile 117.3 on the UMR (Upper Mississippi River), passed the zero point on the UMR at Cairo, IL, and began the LMR at Mile 953.8.  Mile zero on the LMR is the Head of Passes below New Orleans at the Gulf of Mexico outlet.  Our total mileage for the day was 225--that Wally really flies when he gets going!      It was a long day starting out with a 6:30 am departure from the lock and ending up at the anchorage at 6:30 in the evening. We stopped for fuel at Cape Girardeau, MO on the RDB at Mile 51.9on the UMR.  Mr. Charlie Brown pumped diesel to us from a truck he parked on the other side of the floodwall.  He had a small floating dock there on the river, which we tied up to about 10am.  He was a nice man, and we needed the fuel.  Fuel stops were infrequent, and marinas were non-existent.      The weather was hot (93 degrees at Cape Girardeau for the high) and windy-- 30mph gusts out of the South reported on the radio.  A cold front was expected at night, forecast to bring rain, thunder, N winds, and lower humidity and temperature.      One of my impressions from the day has to do with the river.  I expected a wide river, which is what we got, but the Corps of Engineers has constructed wing dams, weir dams, dikes, etc. on the shallow sides of the river to keep the current strong in the channel.  These dikes stick out at almost right angles to the direction of flow.  They are generally visible from the shoreline to the edge of the channel, and then some have underwater extensions which parallel the channel.  A buoy usually marks the end of these dikes.  Some have open spaces in between the shore and the ultimate end at the channel; and all are made of large rocks, placed there by barges with cranes which we saw working as we passed.  The height of these dikes was about 5-6 feet above the water at that time.      The river's not as deep as I would have thought, averaging 20-30 feet upstream of the Ohio River, which we intersected at Mile 0 UMR.  It's easy to see why the locks and dams are needed upstream of St Louis; there isn't enough depth for river traffic without them.  Depths increased to 30-40 feet after we merged with the Ohio River.  I could see that the river traffic needs 12-16 feet of water, so that's what they're trying to provide.      Also, the banks of the river have revetments of concrete or stone to protect the levees in those areas. There are channel markers: buoys, which are not shown on our charts, and which have no numbers as do the buoys on the Intracoastal Waterway.      I was surprised at the charts.  They had significant details about the streets of St Louis or Cape Girardeau, but almost no details on high, visible landmarks, such as towers, smoke stacks, etc.  Occasionally there was a mention of a power plant, which is distinctive because of all the power lines, etc; but the lack of information which might be useful to mariners is astonishing.  And these were navigation charts for mariners published by the federal government.  I'm sure we all paid a lot to have them made.  The LMR charts are drawings from aerial photographs, and include contour lines galore, but the names of towns are obscured by some notes.  State lines are not adequately identified.  One detail showed a "hole", which I wondered how this might help us, since it was on the other side of the levee and we could not possibly see it.  I just don't know how anyone would use all these contour lines to help navigate since the levee blocked the view.      On the other hand, if the buoys were shown on the chart, that would be helpful; and if there were numbered, we could compare the actual number to the chart and find out where we were.  That’s the system we were used to on the Intracoastal Waterway.  I came to understand later the buoys are moved in response to changing river conditions, and even the number of buoys changes throughout the year.      There were little white mileage signs at some of the day marks on the shore, but they were small and far away--too far and too small to read the number through our binoculars in most cases.  At least the pages in the charts were sequential and constantly descending in mileage, which were better than the UMR charts.      We stopped early enough for a good dinner, after which we retired.  Oh yes, Wally had complained about the brightness of the radar, so I got out the book to reduce the light.  Words like 'dim' or 'turn down the lights' don't work with Raytheon.  We had to "reduce the brilliance intensity", and by doing what I thought was required, I turned the brilliance intensity off.  The radar still worked, which we were glad to find out, but we couldn't see anything on the screen.  This makes the radar less effective, if you get my drift.      We needed a 16-year-old to manipulate the buttons and make it work, so I just acted like one, and we finally got it back on.  This is a consequence of (a) no training on the instrumentation, and (b) not having read the book on the instrumentation, and (c) not understanding the book when read.  It's actually a pretty technical book, as I'm sure you can imagine.  That radar has a computer in it. Island No 14, KY to Helena, AR, Saturday, September 20, 1997      We slept a little later in the morning and got off at 7am.  The current in the river, when we pulled out of our oxbow anchorage, turned the boat downstream, and down the river we went.  The current was impressive.  You could see the water level difference of 4-8 inches around a buoy.  We have heard estimates of 2-3 knots.  Charlie Brown said the current was about as low as it gets.  The water level was low, too.  Most of the logs were up on the banks.  At Memphis we were told thewater had been up in mid-June of the year 25-30 feet higher than now.  Also impressive were the eddy currents and whirlpools and obvious localized disturbances in the water caused by forces which are unknown.      The promised cold front did not occur during the night, but the wind did shift around to the North about 3-4 pm.  No rain accompanied the shift, and it was over 90 degrees in Memphis when it occurred.  (94 was the high in Tupelo, MS.)       We called ahead and one of the two choices we had for fuel answered and had diesel at $1.209.  The location was up in the Port of Memphis, which turned out to be really industrial and slow going for about 8 miles to the marina.  The name of the place was Riverside Park Marina, and the name Buttercup's preceded that on the signs there.      Mr. Buttercup was our host there, and a fine fellow he turned out to be.  Born and raised in Memphis, he had the old Southern way of speaking.  He tended to be formal in his speech, and he was friendly enough to take Angela and I to town to get some groceries.  We went to two grocery stores, neither of which was very nice, and got most of what we needed. Both stores were kind of pitiful, and I was again grateful for the stores where we live.  We have good selection and good service; these stores had neither.      Riverside Park Marina is an old place with floating docks that move up and down with the levels of the Mississippi River.  It could use some maintenance here and there, and some of the docks are not quite level.  There's grass growing in the edges and ends of some of the docks, and a lot of the steel used to make the dock has some rust on it--I hope this gives you an accurate picture.  There was at least one boat tied up there which had recently been sunk, and another boat undergoing major paint and redecoration efforts--what you'd call a working marina, I guess.  Lots of ducks everywhere, flies, dust from the loading operation across the way from the marina, etc.  We walked up steep stairs from the floating docks to the parking lot about 30 feet higher than the marina, and that was exercise for the legs!      Mr. Buttercup's diesel pump would get hot and shut down, so when we got back from the stores, Wally was still filling up the fuel tanks.  Having been burning up the waterways trying to make some time today, Wally was unhappy with the whole situation and ready to get out of there and back on our way.  So, after we were on our way back to the river, when the water hose from the hot water heater to the dishwasher disintegrated and water was leaking all over, Wally was disappointed to have to turn around and go back to Mr. Buttercup's.  I felt sure he could and would help us, and he did.      We had to plug the line from the hot water heater to the dishwasher (no more dishwashing that trip) until we could pull the dishwasher out and install a new hose.  It's a wonder this one held up as long as it did; it's not made for high temperature.  It's a sanitary fill line, the wrong hose for this hot application.  Thanks to Angela for determining that we had a problem, and that problem was a leak in the hot water system.  She could not get hot water at the sink and tracked it down to its source.      We got into Mr. Buttercup's place about 1:30pm.  Wally was dismayed at the slow trek in from the river and said we would lose 4 hours coming in there.  We pulled out at 5:30pm after fueling and fixing the hose--I think he's a prophet.      Since we were delayed, we ran longer, stopping at an anchorage marked on our borrowed charts.  That's the only way we would have found this anchorage, because it was only a cove and it was hard to see into from the river.  We wanted to look at anchoring in the mouth of the St Francis River, but we couldn't find it in the dark, so we went on to Helena.  I'm glad we did; that was a good anchorage.      We anchored and shut off the engines at 9pm having run 11.7 hours for the day, the same as the previous day.  We covered 194 miles, increasing our total for this trip to 505.  Finding fuel for the part of our trip from Greenville, MS to Morgan City, LA was strong on our minds.  This river didn't have pleasure boat facilities; it was mainly commercial. Helena, AR to Vicksburg, MS, Sunday, September 21, 1997      We ran 12 hours this day and covered 236.4 miles, plus the 4 or so up to the Greenville, MS Yacht Club for fuel.  We pulled up anchor at 7am and tied up to a barge belonging to the City of Vicksburg at 8pm.      The cold front provided us with a cool morning, mid 60s, but it got up to, or over, 90 by the time we arrived in Vicksburg.  Also, it was humid, and the mosquitoes were out to greet us.  We did not like the tie-up, but we decided to stay with it.  That was where the fuel truck would bring diesel to us the following morning.      The Yazoo River channel was narrow, and the tugs were not conscious of their wakes, or they didn't care, so we got extra fenders out to protect the boat from bumping the barge.  The river was low, this and several other barges were aground, and there was quite a walk uphill to the floodwall.  We were below the pavement which came down from the floodwall to the river, so a trek through the mud was necessary from the barge to the pavement.  Fortunately it was not too wet, but the towboat wakes made some of it wet.      Our plan for Sunday and Monday was to go to Greenville for fuel, then Vicksburg for fuel, then down the Mississippi River and through the Old River Lock to the Atchafalaya River and down to Morgan City, LA.  We had seen enough of the Atchafalaya Swamp to know it is a pretty place, and we welcomed this opportunity to see more of it.  But we had no charts and did not know the distance from the lock to Morgan City.  Almost no one else we asked knew either.  We could not find out about any fuel stops along the Atchafalaya River (I guess if you write it enough times you will learn to spell it), so we wanted to fill up in Vicksburg as our last known chance to get fuel.  Our best estimate by the time we left Vicksburg was the same as our first estimate, about 100 miles, but the Quimby's said 220 on page 15, probably a mistake, but worrisome at the time.  After making the trip, we now believe it to be 120 miles.      Sunday’s run was interesting but repetitive.  The Mississippi River got wider and deeper (40 feet and 50 feet at times, although we often ran along the edges at 16-20 feet), and the pattern of alternating left and right channel banks continued.  The deep side would have concrete revetments, with or without rocks, some with construction underway.  Usually there were trees on that bank, with logs on the side as evidence of the low water.  The shallow side had sand bars, very little to 6 feet above the water, and almost no vegetation.  (Any trees and bushes were back away from the water.)  It was not unusual to be 100 feet or less from a sand bar and read 50 feet on the depth indicator.  That side was where most of the dikes were, but they were on both sides if the channel was wide.  The levees on the shallow side of the river could be back from the river 1000 feet or more.      Buoys were used to keep the traffic away from the sandbars and dikes; usually there weren't any on the deep water side.  The note on the charts says the Corps will use buoys and will move buoys to match the conditions of the river, so this is a continuous process.  That's probably why they don't number them or show them on the charts.  Some of the lights and day marks were moved from their positions on the charts we had, so these also should be used only as a guide.      The currents in the river were unusual and unpredictable.  They moved the boat around when there were no wakes or winds to explain the movements.  One impression was that the river is huge, more like bays we've been in elsewhere rather than a river.  There were more anchorages in this stretch of the river--at least it looked like there were.  Many of the loops and side streams have been blocked or partially blocked by the channelization efforts.      About 9am we passed the paddle wheeler MISSISSIPPI QUEEN, upriver bound.  It was a great sight!  People on the boat came out to wave and photograph us, and we waved and photographed them!       At Vicksburg, there is a great, high bluff (200 ft above sea level) on the LDB, where the river makes a sharp right turn.  The Yazoo River has been diverted from its upstream location to enter the Mississippi at this point.  This permits Vicksburg to have a downtown port on the Yazoo River.  They also had a casino there-Harrah's-where we had the dinner buffet.  It was not as good as the casino buffet at Hammond but better than the one at Alton.      The amazing thing to me is the number of people with bad attitudes, or no class, or something like that.  There were some friendly people there-our waiter comes to mind.  He talked our ears off and was pleasant.  The noise level in that restaurant was high due to the nursery being across the hall.  It was full of kids whose parents came to gamble and left them there. Also the cart for dirty laundry was pushed up and down the tile hallway repeatedly, and its wheels made an unusually loud noise.  The employees had a hard time breaking away from their chit-chat to help the customers, etc.      When we got back to the boat, the generator sounded dry, and sure enough very little or no water was coming out of the exhaust discharge.  There was a lot of debris in the Yazoo River, and quite a current, so we theorized an obstruction over the water intake.  We shut down the generator, the first time it had been shut down in days, and checked the bilge for problems, and waited for the situation to clear itself.  After 10 minutes we restarted the generator, and it ran fine after that. Vicksburg, MS to Berwick, LA, Monday, September 22, 1997      We began the day calling the Conoco distributor just after 6:30am, as we had been instructed to do.  We got the same person we spoke to on Saturday, who had the company phone forwarded to his home on the weekends.  Apparently his staff was late and had not changed the phone.  We talked to the staff (a lady) at 6:45am.  The drivers come in at 7am, she informed us.  The City of Vicksburg man who was in the area informed us we had to move about 100 yards to fill up, so we did that.  All in all, we put 165 gals of fuel in the boat and were on our way by 9am.      Leaving the Yazoo River, we observed one, or possibly two, additional casinos.  The one we were sure of was built like a boat, but was up above the river in a special dock/pond like Harrah's on the Yazoo.  The people of Vicksburg must have a lot of money to gamble at so many casinos.      When we passed Natchez, MS we observed another riverboat/casino tied up to the bank and a second dock which was empty of its casino at the time.  Natchez is also on a bluff about like Vicksburg.  On the charts we had, we could see the locations of several plantation houses, which would be interesting to see on a future trip.  These were generally on the RDB, which was usually in Louisiana, but sometimes it was Mississippi.  Apparently the state line followed the river, and then the river changed its location with no change being made to the state line.  Following the state line on the chart, you can see how it follows through the remnants of the old river channel.  We noticed this in Arkansas and Tennessee as well.      The river kept getting wider; it was amazing.  It looked like all the water in the world must be in the Mississippi River.  Some of these tows are 8 barges long and 6 wide, plus the towboat's length, which is about 200 feet.  The barges are 35 ft wide and 195 ft long, plus or minus, so the overall length of the full string could be one third of a mile long.  It seems clear that these boats can only function below St Louis, MO due to their size; they are specially designed for this river.  Wally said the crew size on a union towboat would be 16 people, and the tows run around the clock.      We passed a large towboat, the MISSISSIPPI, belonging to the US Army Corps of Engineers.  It was the largest towboat I had ever seen, and its wake was felt for a mile after we passed.  A very imaginative name, don't you think?      At one point on the RDB, we observed a Corps towboat with three huge barges in front of it, tied up to the bank.  Each barge appeared to be a dormitory, 3-4 stories high, with windows for the sleeping cabins.  This setup would permit round-the-clock work on a revetment or bank collapse, as was apparent at that site.      We made the Old River Control Structure, which is not navigable, and then the Old River Lock about 3-3:30pm.  The lockmaster said we would have a 1.5 - 2 hour wait while some repairs were being made, to nose over into the bank and wait, which we did.  Around 4pm he called us to go around the tow in front of us, and we locked through by ourselves.  We came out at 4:20pm after having dropped about 12 feet, and we followed a canal for 6 miles to the river.  As I understand it, this point is the end of the Red River and the Ouachita River and the beginning of the Atchafalaya River.      The Atchafalaya was a lot like the Mississippi-very wide and deep, deeper then the Mississippi initially.  After clearing the canal, where a few grain elevators and towboats were, the river itself was pretty much deserted until Morgan City, 120 miles away.  There were a few bridges and a couple of docks for loading barges, but this was generally real wilderness, the Atchafalaya Swamp.  The channel had some initial hard turns to the right and to the left, but most of it was straight as an arrow.  There were no navigational lights or day marks, but buoys were put out to keep us away from shallow spots, which occurred more frequently at the lower end.  Depths were 50, 60, even 80 feet deep at the upper end, but only 12-20 feet just upstream of Morgan City.  There were no fuel stops or marinas that we could see.      We ran at planning speed as long as we could see; then we ran at slower speeds, 9-10 knots.  There were not too many logs or other debris (the river was really pretty clear), but we did not want to run over a log.  At a slow speed we were more likely to push a log out of the way rather than go over it.  We did not want to be disabled out there.  So, it took us until 11:30pm to get to the Morgan City/Berwick area, where we filled up with diesel at 65 cents a gallon.      We had thought we might anchor in the river, but there were no attractive places visible to us as we ran the river.  What was visible was bugs, millions of them-they looked like snow in front of a light.  These bugs (I don't know their proper name) were light brown in color with fine wings that moved fast.  They didn't bite, but there were so many of them it was hard to see anything with a spotlight.  Anyway, we tied up at the Town Dock at Berwick, between the highway bridges and the railroad bridge, and ran the generator yet another night.      It was hot and humid; Lafayette, LA had a high of 92.  Lake Charles, LA reportedly had 1.62 inches of rain.  Parts of the Houston area where we lived reportedly had 12-16 inches of rain over a three-day period beginning Sunday.      We covered 253 miles, allowing 120 for the Atchafalaya River, and including the 6-mile canal in with the 120.  This was our highest number of miles per day, but we started accumulating engine hours at 8:30 am.  We ran 15.3 hours for the day.  Sleep at 1am was welcome. Berwick, LA to Ellender, LA, Tuesday, September 23, 1997      Since we went to sleep late, I slept late this morning and got up at 7am.  I think Wally was already up and drinking coffee.  It was humid, and the boat was covered with bugs, mayflies, we found out later.  These were dark brown or black, and they held on to the vertical surfaces of windows and fiberglass, even in the wind after we were moving.  Eventually we got rid of most of them by popping the isinglass (plastic) windows or wiping them away with paper towels.  In Louisiana the bugs are large enough to remove one at a time.      We checked in with Berwick Traffic Control and left the dock, the railroad bridge being up and ready for us.  We decided to fill up again at Intracoastal City; the fuel was cheap and might get us all the way home.  I liked the people at Shell Morgan.  They were efficient and friendly, and they have a really strong Cajun accent, which was interesting and attractive to me.  I can think of some drawbacks to all of the other fuel stops between there and Clear Lake.      About an hour after leaving Intracoastal City, we came to a lock and locked through to the Gulf of Mexico!  Instead of making the right turn to the GIWW (Gulf Intracoastal Waterway), Wally had gone straight into Freshwater Bayou.  We had to turn around and go back through the lock (I was surprised to have been lowered about 3 feet to the Gulf ) and back to Intracoastal City about 20 miles away.  We counted this in our mileage count as 40 miles of "sightseeing".      The Leland Bowman Lock was about 2-3 miles away from our intersection with the ICW, and we had to wait for a chemical tow, a delay of about one hour.  We nosed into the bank, turned off the engines, and waited.  We locked through by ourselves without tying up to the wall.      The weather was overcast and rainy all day.  We did not get hard rain except for a few minutes a couple of times.  The weather forecast was bad, and all the shrimp boats were coming in rather than working, so we expected the worst.  We called Houston and heard it had rained hard on Sunday and Monday and was still raining on Tuesday.  It was so humid the charts we bought at Shell Morgan absorbed water like a paper towel.      We ran in the dark again on our way to the Calcasieu Lock, but Wally claimed he could see in the dark if we would just leave the spotlight off.  It was true, the spotlight did more harm than good, and we could see pretty well on the surface of the water.  Wally and Angela watched for surface problems, and I ran the autopilot and radar and depth indicator.  We made a good team.        We got to the Calcasieu Lock at about 9:40pm and went right through.  I have been delayed for hours at this lock, so we wanted to get through it at night and not have the potential delay in the morning.      The Waterways Guide said Choupique (pronounced Shoe-pick) Bayou was a good anchorage, so that was our goal.  On the chart it's the only bayou on the inland bank between the Calcasieu River and the bridge at Ellender.  We couldn't find it!  Well, we eventually did find it, but its banks were marsh grass, which is like having no banks at all-hard to see in the night.  Also, a tow and barge staging area was across the GIWW, and the lights from the tows there made it hard to see.  It was really shallow on both sides, but we tried to follow the crab pots in and eventually got anchored in 9 feet of water.      We ate Angela's excellent dinner at 11:30pm and got to bed.  We logged 183 miles, including the sightseeing, in 13.6 running hours over a 15-hour period of time for the day. Ellender, LA to Houston, TX, Wednesday, September 24, 1997      We got up early and pulled up the anchor at 7:30am this morning, ready to get home after a long but very interesting voyage.  Something seemed to be attached to our port shaft or the shaft strut, but it only made a noise when we were going slow.  We knew how to fix that--don't go slow!  We reversed a few times to try and get it off, but it was stubborn, so we ran on and let it work itself off.  It was probably a crab trap picked up in the bayou.  Later we found out it had ruined the “spur” on the shaft, and that loose spur ruined the shaft itself.      The northern end of the Texas coast and the GIWW was familiar to us, and it is often described as boring or monotonous, with no anchorages or pretty scenery.  It does have its interesting points, and people who have never been here will be interested to know some of them.  I like Port Arthur with its rock walls along the in river/ship channel.  Janis Joplin was born there, and there's a museum there that I want to see sometime.  The oil well, SPINDLETOP, spewed oil high in the air near here in January, 1910, signaling the beginning of the oil industry  we know today.  Several major oil companies were based there in their formative years.  Other than that, the Intracoastal waterway is a straight landcut, with few trees or scenic attractions, boring and monotonous.        Because it is close to home, we have done some cruising here.  We came to Port Arthur on Labor Day weekend in 1994 with my son, Daniel.  Before that, we had a pleasant evening at the anchorage behind Shell Island in 1992, and I am fond of that place to this day.  We went to Lake Charles, LA with friends on separate boats in 1995 for Contraband Days.  But on that day in 1997 it was humid, overcast, too close to home, and too much the same to be very interesting.      Newcomers to the area would be surprised at the low elevations of the banks of the GIWW, the oil wells pumping away, and the occasional cattle or goats grazing near the waterway.  Also, there are more than occasionally birds of several types and colors to watch as the landscape slowly slips by.  Alligators are seen in this area as well.  High Island, a salt dome used as a landmark by cruisers due to its water tank and two radio antennas, breaks up the scenery due to the curve of the GIWW here and the high bridge over the canal.      Angela was getting excited about getting home, so she cleaned the boat.  It looked good, and all we needed to do next was get the outside clean, really clean, plus repair the fiberglass where the pier in Cleveland damaged it, make some other repairs, change the oil and filters, etc.  We all needed some rest, too, since we had been putting in some long days trying to get home on a schedule.  The statistics for the trip were: Trip 4 Running hours 80.8 Miles 1317 Fuel 1737.6 gallons of diesel 1.32 gals per mile 16.3 mph CT TO TX CRUISE Trips 1, 2, 3, & 4 Running hours 249 Miles 3451 Fuel 4680 gallons of diesel 1.36 gals per mile 13.86 mph      The cruise started in Mystic, CT on July 4 and ended in Houston, TX on September 24, 1997. There were 30 actual running days, so we averaged 115 miles per running day and 8.3 running hours per running day.  Usually, the running day included 2 additional hours on the water with the engines off, for refueling or for delays such as locks, etc.      It was a wonderful adventure.  I am so grateful to have been able to experience this cruise, and I am sure that Angela, Wally, Chuck, and Daniel all feel the same.  I know it has changed my life for the better, and I will never forget it.