Mile 227.2 RBD — Cargo Carriers Port Allen Fleet West Bank Mooring
As you paddle past the Port Allen Lock watch for barge fleeting right bank descending (West Bank) between miles 228.4 and 226. Inspect your 2007 USACE Mississippi River Maps: you can see this fleeting area as a rectangle formed by dashed grey lines. The best line of travel is far from this fleeting area. But this is as good a time as any to learn about fleeting: the hazards it presents for paddlers, and how to best navigate. The Rivergator won’t detail each and every fleeting area downstream, there are so many of them. But it will describe those of particular concern -- as well as those that present special opportunities (such as hidden campsites and picnic sites). This fleeting area is separated from the main channel by the Lower Baton Rouge freighter anchorage area below 227.
What are Fleeted Barges?
As you are leaving the Baton Rouge Industrial reach be wary of the rows of fleeted barges tied up alongside either bank. As you continue downstream towards New Orleans these areas will become larger and more frequent. You will soon have to paddle past miles and miles of fleeted barges. But then below New Orleans they will gradually diminish in size and length, and then entirely disappear altogether below Venice.
What are fleeted barges? When any industrial or agricultural facility are filling or emptying barges, they tie them up along the bank of the river, sometimes one at a time, but more often in longer lines multiple barges deep. Sometimes they're only one barge deep, sometimes they'll tie more than one side-by-side. In chemical corridor down below Baton Rouge they'll sometimes tie as many as a hundred long with ten or twelve deep! Most barges measure 35 x 250 feet but petroleum barges are often longer. The top end of any fleeted barges is an extremely dangerous place. Called the “rake” end, its the slanted side, slanting upwards like the prow of a ship. But here there is no easy escape. The water does not offer any sideways assistance pushing you away from danger, like it does at the prow of a ship. The broad rake end concentrates everything into one point, the point of no return: the water, the air, and you and your canoe or kayak get forced downwards, and then you get trapped below the slant. In this precarious position there is probably nothing that will keep you from being flipped over and sucked under the barges.
This possibility is not mere conjecture. In the early 2000s a couple was paddling downstream into Chemical Corridor after having made it there from the top of the river. So they knew what they were doing. But they had little experience with fleeted barges, because you don’t see many of them above Baton Rouge, and all of those above usually have several alternative lines of travel. Below Baton Rouge everything gets so crowded that you often have no choices. And so you have to paddle very near fleeted barges on windy days because there are tows, tugs, workboats and freighters crowding the rest of the river, and a dredge is set up nearby. The wind picked up as this couple paddled into one such section, into endless fleeted barges and a crowded river. They made a crossing and ended up directly above the upstream rake end of a line of fleeted barges. And then they got trapped. The wind and the fast water forced them inwards below the rake end in a double vector so powerful that even their best stroking did no good. Maybe there were other factors. Maybe one of them broke a paddle. Or had a stroke, or some other medical condition. Maybe they had not slept the night before. There are so many possible factors that could have added weight to the final moment when they went past the point of no return and got sucked under like being pulled into a black hole. We don’t know the whole story because they did not survive this catastrophe.
Always avoid paddling anywhere near the upstream ends of the barges -- the rake end -- where the water is pushing in and underneath their top ends. It might look like you could simply hop aboard in case of emergency, but you won't be able to! This is a trick of perspective on the big river. They are much higher off the water than they look. You will see fleeted barges within the above area in the West Baton Rouge area, and then also West Bank as you enter Missouri Bend, and many, many other places downstream.