OCR Text |
Show Record such a rush and sometimes fills a bar clear across the river. Sometimes we have to wait a day or so for better conditions, if it is possible and there is no hurry to make the trip. In normal 1168 conditions we make more miles per hour going down the stream with the current, but in case we get on a bar it is more difficult to get off going down stream than coming up stream, because going down stream the current keeps shoving you on the bar tighter. So far as the ease of navigation with the large boat going up and down stream I have observed ordinarily going up stream if we run on a bar we can back off of it and try again, but in 1169 numerous cases going up stream we have fund places not deep enough to permit the use of the rudder properly so as to hold the boat in place. We encountered sand bars occasionally during high water, because we can't see them; naturally we will cut across corners and then sometimes we will get stuck on a bar very tight, even when the water is at its highest. If we had no trouble going down from Moab to Shafer No. 1 well we would make the trip on an average of two and a half hours, a distance of 19 or 20 miles; returning up stream it would take an average of six and a half or seven hours. We would make the 1170 trip down stream in that time about twenty- five per cent of the time On one trip down stream to No. 2 well, 27 or 28 miles down the river in August, 1926, we got stuck about a mile and a half below Shafer well No. 1 for a day and half, I think, That is the 1171 longest time we were ever stuck, I guess. At other times we would be from an hour to four hours getting off of sand bars going down stream. The longest time we consumed in making the trip from Shafer No. 1 well to Moab landing was ten hours. With reference to 1172 the landing at Moab between mile 64 and miles 65 we always had a little trouble through there. They did not put the dock further down the river because the country is all sandy or each side and there is no read for hauling heavy material, so they put the dock |