well there comes a friend this is uh Smurf who we met up in Muskogee so Chris is back
with us on this trip say hello Chris hello and look at this we're making us some chili
yeah okay we are off are we oh the Anchor's up we're gonna wash off the anchor by driving
through he's very excited I guess it'll get old at some point but it's not there yet uh you need
to watch that anchor make sure it didn't hit my boat and if it does tell him to cut back on
speed all right we need more current than that to wash it off don't we yeah we do all right
Turtle well then they come down and the clip comes down yeah wow this
is Darnell lock that's what holds back the river look at that beautiful sunrise
today so welcome to standing vessel Seeker we are heading from Lake dartnell all the way to
New Orleans in the next couple weeks that's David over there that's Matthew back there wait Matthew
and there's other crew I'll show you later but look at this this is a 54 foot drop the
largest drop of the M cars and McCullen Arkansas River navigational system and we are blessed to
have Smurf along with us today he's making a one day run down the river with us has 14
000 miles on the river so in that boat that was home built so if you want an adventure
follow Smurf he's a hell of an example
what the hell
yeah they got a cool side well anybody missing a car
Chris that's Robert there's David up close Matthew's on
the hill Mark is in the shore truck today
because yeah perfect
oh that was easy hey we're gonna fly by
what are you doing this is a River Road sign that 185.9 means you're 185.9 miles
from the Mississippi Thrifty foldage we have a little scale that's a fishing boat down there
it hurts
so nice
hey what's your help
Jesus Christ
we're going to experiment so we've added some spring lines to the Tinder here keep
it from moving back and forth this way actually we didn't Robert did we're
going to drop those off we're going to lower the tender inch of the water
at five and a half 5.6 knots that's about 6.4 miles per hour and see how she drives
as we're thinking about the ability to launch this boat while we're underway
all right
oh they didn't look good
that might be all right I don't think so yeah
all right not at 5.6 knots too much water off the side you know if we had a way of
releasing that line under pressure this one this side we could just it would just swing out
I don't think it'd flip it but I wouldn't want to do it with anybody in it going straight up
yeah all right Robert's got an idea here we put a line around that ring might be able to pop it
out let's try that when we're sitting at the dock going nowhere check this out there's us
and there's the barge coming up to us that's what AIS gives you the baby choke we passed me before
there you go
a little side by side comparison there the Smurf
Oakley you're big on this River when I was trying to get this boat launched I called them to see if
we could set it onto one of their barges and call it cargo they immediately said no we don't do that
I asked why they said well we just don't do that and then why it's like well it's just something
we don't do it's like how many times can you rephrase no and I'm not going to tell you why
got a local bars coming up you can pick up some sand yeah
it's hot oh there he comes yeah
man that smells great sorry you can't smell it
it's great having camera people on board you can just see what they're skimming and then
go send their stuff right and that how we work that's how it works right there is Toad Suck lock
right there Smurf escort service so here's a tip get your rope wet and then when you
come to lock it's heavier and easier to toss around the PIN
I built this in my front yard in Tulsa you did yeah with a bunch of help from these guys
you just gotta love a name like that
oh first time
uh the cops are coming they're coming to take me away
look at this we think it's a little full thing to drag the barges through
my ass will slide over foreign
well thank you very much sir so far you have a great day you do
outside Korea we're sending a hot tamale end to do some Scouting For Us
to make me turn to the boat ramp smart you may not be able to get in there it's only 18 feet deep
that's 18 feet right there where they're at oh
that's the one you're talking about yeah yeah I like that Sam
you're gonna nose up and do that sand that's the way I do and then V tie cool all right
now we don't need it but we're gonna practice bow thruster here
so you got to be perpendicular to it so you don't slide
there you go easy easy that's way too much Chris too much that's way too much oh sorry
does it come in here
yeah when we was in the lock that one cell it says uh you're gonna get hit by some heavy heavy
50 mile an hour winds gusts and hails what about radio
but you got to do it in reggae right
hey we're up early this morning because of that yes we ran away so uh Matthew did him were running
at night the Robert's got the weather for me and Chris is up and Dave is down below the toss Mark
out on the shore so he's driving the truck and uh we're gonna get into Little Rock pretty early
yeah year three alarms went off all right you're welcome and then eight minutes later
my anchor thing went off okay I gotta take a pause here I put anchors down onto that bottom
and we knew it was a shitty hold because we backed into it and we drug a little bit but
I figured it's about as good as we're gonna get then hindsight the better thing to do would be
what Smurf did and pull into that spot of sand you saw it in the video coming in that would
have been fine because later on that's what we do we find a piece of sand on the river we put
our nose into it and then we could throw the anchor over onto the sand find a rock and tie
onto something firm we would have pivoted still when the thunderstorm came along but that had
been better than what happened because we just drugged sideways both anchors going with us so
we pulled out early so yeah lesson learned the rain's not too bad now and Matthew's job is to uh
watch the chart mine is to uh find the buoy there's one you're looking good this is easy
to do so we got uh speed maneuvering room out here so we get hit by a thunderstorm it's no big deal
much better than just being on anchor problem is that Stern anchor has to be lifted up manually
and pulled up to the front and then pulled in so it's a that's where most of your time goes
um you know if it'd be if I was going to spend my life on a river I'd have a Stern anchor winch but
you know once we get on the ocean we just pivot around the anchor now you might also be interested
in knowing what the bottom was like there and we pulled up the anchor the next day it was just
clean which means it wasn't mud had no sand it had little chips of shale on it so it was a hard
bottom we were on and that's just asking a lot for a anchor to bite into a rock slab so it didn't
happen and this is a much more beautiful evening than that one was that was a lot of lightning
and rain and that was gorgeous in its own way too but we are concluding this video and that was the
first leg of our trip down the Arkansas hope you enjoyed that it is a gorgeous evening tonight the
Moon is half out and we are setting off here soon to continue our trip on to but I'm glad to have
gotten this video out to you get out your shop if you haven't done so if you have you probably made
something send us your photo of that project it's inspirational what'd you make today and
be good to each other life is short you want to live it well
foreign