St Croix River

[slode]

Spent Labor Day weekend on the St Croix between Prescot, WI and Stillwater, MN.  What a beautiful stretch of water to motor and sail.  There are some narrows you can't sail through but plenty of wider areas where there is plenty of room.  Even with the wind straight out of the south on Monday, tacking downriver back to Prescot was enjoyable.  Plenty of spots to drop the hook for the night, as long as you don't mind dealing with a bit of motorboat traffic on a busy weekend like it was.  Sunday afternoon two cigar boats came flying around us, one on each side, racing each other going full throttle about 70 mph.  At least the wake off them was less than all the gigantic yachts barely on plane.

[Renae]

Minnesota greetings!  The weather sure has been pleasant.

[crazycarl]

Sounds like you had a great time.  Pretty view from your cockpit.

[slode]

That's the new hwy 36 Stillwater bridge in the background, pretty cool piece of engineering.  We were on the same stretch with our motorboat when they were building it and watched them barging cement trucks across the river to pour the footings.  They had a line of 3-4 trucks on the bank and took them across the water one at a time on a small barge. 

I have to admit is was pretty cool sailing under a bridge.  It was a first for me, we had sails up under that one and the 94 bridge in Hudson.

This was also the first trip I took close measure of how far we motored.  The wind on Saturday and Sunday morning was light so we put on a fair distance totaling 28 miles with about the same up river as down, mostly just above idle speed.  I toped of the tank yesterday to see what our mpg was. We burned 0.74 gallons of gas!