First, the frequent visitor. It was the M/V Transporter.
As the boat passed I wondered how big the pilot's blind spot was.
Shortly after the Transporter disappeared around the bend, I saw some barges headed my way. When the boat came into view, I thought it looked like a Crounse pilothouse but with a red roof, so it had to be a Marquette boat.
And it was. The M/V Blessed Sacrament, to be precise.
The next day, this big one came down the river pushing several barges of benzene. It was the M/V City of Vicksburg, which I had seen in the area earlier this summer but not in a spot where I could stop the car and get a picture.
As the boat approached, I was puzzled by something. It almost looked a Dravo Viking, but the proportions were wrong. When I studied the pilothouse, it was almost certainly a St. Louis Ship production. But in profile, it looked too much like something Jeffboat would build.
So when I got home, I looked it up. The City of Vicksburg was built by St. Louis Ship and launched in 1981, or about two years before the boatbuilding work there ended.
Too late, I saw this guy, who stopped hosing off the deck before I could aim my camera at him.
And that explains part of my thought process when a boat goes by.
