Wind

It was really windy on the river yesterday. It blew steadily from the east southeast all day at what seemed like 30 miles per hour, with gusts higher than that. I know that I am nervous when the wind blows, even now. I remember it always seems to make everything harder to do on the water when the wind blows. The boat doesn’t stay where you want it. You can’t predict which way something is going to go because you have both wind and the current to contend with. The wind pushes you upcurrent and the line gets snagged on logs on the bottom that were not a problem before (I guess that’s hard to visualize). When it’s cold, the wind makes it seem ten times colder – especially if you have to have wet hands all day and they are numb and you can’t hold the hooks very well and they hook you. Boats don’t fit on trailers when the wind blows at a landing, or it seems like they just don’t want to climb the trailer right. You get wet when the wind blows and you have to run an open bateau in the waves, and the hard, cold spray takes your breath away when it hits you in the face. When I used to smoke (37 years ago), and I would run my boat with the wind, the smoke from the cigarette would follow along without moving – at 30 mph. Looked unnatural.

These mornings I see cat prints in the frost, and Napoleon still gets his fish most days.

The river is at 10.8 on the Butte La Rose gauge, and starting to fall slowly. It will fall two feet more in the next few days. Still nothing much on the Mississippi and Ohio.

Rise and shine, Jim