Saturday morning, I passed 2 canoists on the Mississippi River.

They were 2 young men in 2 green hulled canoes, with their camping gear lashed down from the amidships to bow position, and they were using kayak paddles. They were paddling down the middle of the channel and were dodging to the side of the channel everytime a tow would appear. They were difficult to spot, at first glance during the early (after sunrise) morning hours. I noticed that neither one was wearing a life jacket.

Today I heard a USCG Pon Pon Broadcast (emergency) stating that a green hulled canoe, with camping equipment lashed to it was spotted adrift with no person onboard (POB).

Why is it that I suspect that these two fellows might have gone under the rakes of a large tow that they were too slow to dodge.
Old Man River is less forgiving than Mother Ocean, believe it or not!!

A little known fact for recreational boaters, River buoys are normally set in either 12 (rising) or 14 (falling) feet of water, depending on whether the river is rising or falling. Canoists and other boaters can safely transit outside the buoy line where loaded tows cannot reach them and empty tows may not be able to reach them. In canals, most have a project depth of 9 feet so the recreational boaters are still able to stay outside of the channel and have plenty of water, as well.

I always wanted to kayak the Mississippi with a couple of friends, camping our way down river. One does need to stay out of the shipping channels though. A canoe or kayak will not win in a collision with a much larger craft, and they can be hard to see in the water.s well with the canoeists.

I believe that you are referring to the "Universal Law of Gross Tonnage"!

not only should they stay outside the buoys but the current is usually not as strong closer to the edge outside the buoys.

When in high school my buddy and I used to canoe the Mississippi River north of Dubuque, Iowa out of a place called Findley's Landing. We'd paddle north along the Iowa shoreline, look VERY carefully for barge traffic and then if clear we'd paddle like hell across the river to the Wisconsin side where we'd paddle around the backwaters mostly.

One time we had a barge pass us while on the Iowa side. We headed our bow into the waves, but they were large enough that one wave come way over the bow and swamped us. Luckily we were close enough to the shore that we were able to paddle the swamped canoe to the shore and dump it out before heading off to the Wisconsin side.

Lots of fun!

One of my life-long dreams is to paddle the length of the River from Minnesota to the Gulf.

Yes I was!

Ya gotta pay attention to the lugnut rule, no matter what you might be driving/paddling