Triumph in the Mississippi River

[R Prim]

My family has cruised many times and is very excited about sailing down the Mississippi! How long will we actually be in the river before we reach the gulf of Mexico and is it worth this much excitement?

[WLHyatt]

It's a bit beyond 7 hours. If you search you'll find a list of things you'll see on the river as you sail that I put together for a cruise back in 2013.

 

It is absolutely worth the excitement, only a handful of cruises are in a waterway that long before getting to the open ocean.

[xrayann06]

We've cruised from NOLA twice now. I believe it took us around 6-8 hours. It's dark when you reach the Gulf. The coolest thing is seeing the oil rigs at night all lit up!

 

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[VolzCruiser]

My family has cruised many times and is very excited about sailing down the Mississippi! How long will we actually be in the river before we reach the gulf of Mexico and is it worth this much excitement?

 

The trip takes about 8 hours going down. I think it is worth as much excitement at you want. I love and look forward to it everytime I sail down the Mississippi. I will try to find the post someone made that has all the things to look for while you are sailing down.

[Mutumbojimbo]

I enjoyed sailing past New Orleans and watching the river traffic when we cruised on the Elation in 2014. I'm hoping for an even better time, in October on the Triumph as we should have a little more daylight.

[VolzCruiser]

This is from WLHYATT and he posted this which is really helpful.

 

I took a couple of nights of free time to write this, excuse any grammatical, spelling, or historical errors. Information was pulled from a number of resources including my own memory, Parish goverment and state government websites and Wikipedia.

 

Before sailaway, the building from where we boarded the ship was built in 2005-2006 and opened in October 2006. It sits on the site of the 1984 World’s fair, and specifically where the Mississippi Aerial River Transit system terminated on the east bank of the Mississippi River. The MART was a ski-lift like passenger system that carried passengers across the river. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississ..._River_Transit

 

Just in front of the ship is the two bridges of the Crescent City Connection. Many people call them the twin bridges, but if you look carefully, they are not twins at all. The first bridge was built from 1954 to 1958 and was called the Greater New Orleans Bridge. It was the second bridge to span the Mississippi River south of Baton Rouge, the first being the Huey P. Long bridge. The second bridge, the one closer to the ship was built from 1981 to 1988. The two bridges were called the GNO bridge until they were renamed in 1989. The CCC is the official name, but it is still commonly referred to as the GNO. The trip from the westbank (Algiers, Gretna), to the eastbank(French Quarter, garden district, Metarie, and Kenner) was a toll span of $1.00 charged to each car. The tolls were removed earlier in 2013. The lights on the bridge are decorative. There are 4 strings of 64 lights totaling 256 lights to light the two bridges.

 

As the ship pulls away from the dock, and turns in the river you can get an excellent view of the bridges from the starboard side.

 

Shortly after turning in the river you will see the French Quarter on the port side. The French Quarter is full of history and is the main reason most people come to New Orleans to visit, and many wind up staying. It is bordered on the upriver side by Canal street, the down river side by Esplanade Ave, and by Rampart street on the inland side. There is much to see and do in the French Quarter, and you can get as many answers to the question “what can I do here?” as people you ask.

 

(12 minutes after departure)

Just as we pass Jackson Square we will start to make a corner in the river, that corner is Algiers point (starboard side). It is one of the deepest portions of the river, somewhere around 200 feet deep just off the point. Algiers point is 96.4 miles “AHP” or above head of passes on the Mississippi river. The passes refers to the point in the river just down from Pilottown where the river splits 3 ways.

 

(20 minutes after departure)

Shortly after Algiers Point we will pass two large navy ships that actually belong to the ready reserve fleet of Navy vessels. The ships are kept up and maintained by the Keystone Corporation to be activated with 5 days notice. The ships are named “Cape Kennedy” and “Cape Knox”.

 

The next think you’ll notice is Jackson Barracks. It is the current home of the Louisiana National guard. It is located in the lower 9th ward.

 

The big factory on the port side is the Domino Sugar refinery, the domed structure on the property is one of the largest sugar storage facilities in the world. If you eat anything with sugar in it in or near New Orleans (probably including the ship) it passed through this facility. There is an old plantation that sits on the property too.

 

The next big thing is the monument at the Chalmette national battlefield. The battle was fought after the peace treaty had been signed, but was not ratified by the US congress until after the battle had occurred.

 

After the Battlefield, you will see the city of Chalmette and the Oil Refinery there. This is the first of the refineries you will see, and you will see many many oil support stations along the river and out into the Gulf, where you will see drilling rigs.

 

(1 hour, 28 minutes after departure)

After Chalmette, we will pass the communities of Meraux, Violet, and Poydras, before reaching English Turn.

 

After the point of English Turn, we will pass Belle Chasse on the starboard side, which is home to Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base New Orleans, a Naval Air Station for the U.S. Navy Reserve which was founded in 1941.

 

Between Belle Chasse and Point A La Hache you will see the Harlem Plantation house on the port side. It was built in 1840 and added to the national register of historic places in 1982. This plantation was a Louisiana Creole plantation house, similar to Plantation Laura.

 

(3 hours, 14 minutes after departure)

The next town of any size you will see is Point A La Hache. It is connected to West Point A La Hache by a river ferry operated by the Plaquemines Parish Government, which is the last regularly scheduled crossing of the Mississippi River. It started service in 1933 and its future is questionable. The Woodland Plantation is in West Point A La Hache and is known as the plantation on the bottle of Southern Comfort. It is on the national register of historic places. This area was devastated by hurricanes Katrina and Isaac. Isaac flooded most of West Point A La Hache and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill killed some fish in waterways up river from here. Point A La Hache’s population in 2010 was 187.

 

Downriver from Point A La Hache is Bohemia, which had a population of about 200 people prior to Hurricane Katrina, but the storm only left about 25 homes inhabitable. The town is only 7 feet above sea level. It also serves as the last town on the road that follows the eastbank of the Mississippi river.

 

The next town is Port Sulphur and was founded in the early 1930s around the Freeport Sulphur company which refined sulphur from nearby mines. In the early 2000’s Freeport sulphur shut down due to low prices on sulphur. The land was sold and what was left of the plant was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. The town sits 8 feet above sea level and was under 22 feet of water during the flooding. Most of the single family homes in the town were destroyed, and moved off their foundations by as much as 100 feet. Before Hurricane Katrina the population of the town was 3,115, and in the 2010 census it was down to 1,760.

 

(3 hours, 59 minutes after departure)

We pass the next navigation obstacle, the turn at Port Sulphur.

 

Just after the bend the next town is Empire, which when combined with Venice, a little further downriver, is the third largest seafood port in the United States by weight. Empire was also devastated by the storm and flooding as a result of Hurricane Katrina. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill also caused an immediate stop to all seafood landings here, and many did not return for a year or more.

 

Buras-Triumph is an area formed in the 1840’s. It was originally a farming community raising citrus, and a fishing community with oysters being the main product. In the 1930’s oil was discovered in Quarantine Bay east of Buras. This started the oil boom in the region and is now the largest product of this area. Katrina also took her toll here, as this was the part of Louisiana where the eye of the storm made landfall. The storm destroyed the town’s water tower which has been replaced.

 

(4 hours, 50 minutes after departure)

The next major landmark will be Fort Jackson(visible) and Fort St. Phillip(invisible). Fort Jackson is on the starboard side and is a decommissioned masonry fort around 40 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi river. It was constructed between 1822 and 1832 to protect the city of New Orleans and the Mississippi river. It was used as a fort and military training facility until after WWI. It was turned over to Plaqumines Parish in 1962. It was almost put into service during the 1960 as a prison for hippies and desegregation advocates who entered the county, but this never occurred. It was later used as a park and has been closed to the public since Hurricane Isaac last year. It was used as a bird cleaning station in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, but this station was moved to Hammond, La later to make it less vulnerable to hurricanes.

Across the river is Fort St. Phillip, which was a masonry fort on the East bank of the Mississippi. It was originally established as San Felipe, during the 1700’s when Spain had control of Louisiana. The fort was used to hold back the British during the war of 1812. It was also a part of the 12 day siege against it and Fort Jackson during the civil war. In the 1930’s it was used as a tanning factory. From 1978 to 1989 it served as the headquarters of the non-sectarian spiritual community Velaashby. The name was formed by combining the surnames of the land owners prior to this community being established. There were as many as 16 members of this community and were known as the Christos family. They resided in three of the two story officer’s quarters and the officer’s club that remained after the refortification during the Spanish-American war of 1898. The fort was badly damaged during Katrina and Rita, and only a few of the masonry structures still exist. It is only reachable via boat or aircraft as it remains flooded much of the year and there are no roads.

 

(5 hours, 19 minutes after departure)

The next town is the last town on the road. Venice Louisiana. It is considered “the end of the road” and it is. Any town after this one is reached by boat or aircraft. Venice is the home base to many seafood and oil operations. It is the last place that a vehicle can reach before goods have to be transferred by boat. The population before Katrina was 460, after Katrina it is 202. It was also greatly impacted by the oil spill.

 

(5 hours, 54 minutes after departure)

Next we will slow down quite a bit as we near Pilottown. At Pilottown there is usually a pilot boat that will catch up to us and meet us to exchange pilots. The pilot who joined us in New Orleans will sign off, and the pilot that will navigate us through southwest pass will get in place. Pilottown was built as a replacement for LaBalize which was south of here. The town is built on piers and raised above ground level, which is prone to flooding. While the town has a zip code, the post office in the town was closed after the postal service could not find a postmaster willing to live in the village. The one room school was closed in the 1970s.

 

(6 hours, 1 minute after departure)

The village is just a few miles upriver from the Head of Passes. This is the point from which all mile markers along the Mississippi river are counting. The passes split 3 ways and are considered the “mouth” of the Mississippi. We will take the western most pass, called Southwest Pass. All large ship traffic takes southwest pass as it is the only one cleared enough for deep draft vessels.

 

As we enter Southwest pass, you can notice that we start seeing more navigational beacons. The safe path is between the red and green lights. They are spaced evenly throughout southwest pass and into the gulf.

 

We will pass a few tank farms and a couple of seaplane bases before entering the gulf.

 

After 7 hours and 16 minutes of travel, we will enter the Gulf of Mexico, on our way to Roatan Honduras, two and a half days later.

 

We will pause shortly after entering the Gulf to disembark our southwest pass pilot, and then the captain will put the pedal to the metal, and we will be making 24 knots by the time you wake up. If you wait just a few more minutes, the ocean waves will rock you to sleep.

Just for reference, if we leave port at 4:30 pm, it will be 11:45 roughly when we get to the gulf of mexico.

[seventhwardhustler]

i was born and raised in new orleans so i was sooooo excited about this. it takes a while and, for me, it went through the night but i was outside on my balcony every step of the way.

 

1. man, it's humid. i forgot because i live in atlanta now. you will be drenched. get a drink and wear light clothes. as it becomes night it is the most peaceful, silent ride as the waves just lap (unbelievable how shallow the river is compared to the huge ship), the frogs are croaking, and you are passing by all the oil businesses, ships, and whatever else is up and down the mississippi.

 

2. i can't remember if i was port or starboard but i happened to be on the side where the river captain jumps into the ship and takes over the helm. they literally drive him along side the ship, he jumps on in, and they go back to shore. wish i had a camera. i screamed hello and i think somebody waved.

 

3. you will get closer to the gulf and you'll know it because more oil rigs will come into view. start watching the water because, if you catch it, the water will actually be blue on one side and brown on the other, right before your eyes. they don't seem to mix.

 

4. then you're in the gulf, you have the noisy blue waves, and it's time to go and enjoy the rest of your night.

Edited April 20, 2016 by seventhwardhustler

[WLHyatt]

As you exit southwest pass you'll see the water change from muddy, heavy, and brown to clearer, lighter, and blue-ish. The water will be different, after sailing in the river and seeing the wake just being ripples on the water you'll actually have foam on the top of the water.

 

There must be something different about salt water that makes it act different than the water in the river, but that's one of my favorite parts of sailing from New Orleans.

 

Also stay up late to watch and listen for the beacon at the end of southwest pass. It's an audible beacon with a light to go with it and something most people don't think about.

 

While in southwest pass stay on the starboard side until you can find the old lighthouse that is there. It won't be lit, as it was abandoned years ago, but you can usually make it out against the sky.

[loxley]

It is no big deal. I do like the swaying as you go around corners, and I do like to see the oil derricks lit up, but you have to stay up pretty late to see those.

[maldenmusic]

9 cruises down the Mississippi and we never get tired of it. At various times, we have had armed Coast Guard boats escorting us (probably on high security alert), seen fireworks being shot off on the levee, had people wave and cheer for us from the levee and seen all kinds of ships coming and going down the river. The coolest part is when you get near the Gulf and the pilot of the cruise ship steps off into the pilot boat that will pull up right along side the ship. I've managed to get pictures of it a couple of times and will add here if I find them. We didn't realize that only a certified river boat pilot can navigate the cruise ship down the river until we saw this occur on our first cruise.

[R Prim]

WOW, thank you so much for all the information! Can't wait to share it with the rest of our family going on this cruise (which has grown since I posted this question)! I always know I can count on my cruisecritic buddies to have all the answers. Happy Sailing!

[Ready 2 Go]

WE HYATT that was an excellent and thorough post. Now I want to cruise down the Mississippi.

 

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[WLHyatt]

WE HYATT that was an excellent and thorough post. Now I want to cruise down the Mississippi.

 

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Well thank you!

(I at least assume you're talking about me, since I wrote that above)

[Viesczy]

Volz and WLH,

awesome replies!

 

We're on the Dream outta NOLA in October, now it can't get here soon enough!

 

THANKYA both for great replies!

 

About the gulf, we just sailed out of Houston on Princess & going through/by the oil fields at night there was very interesting. Can't wait to see NOLA's version now!

[LMaxwell]

Very cool information. I did not realize the trip along the river was that long. Kudos to the writeup of things to see.

[Baatman]

Very cool information. I did not realize the trip along the river was that long. Kudos to the writeup of things to see.

 

I didn't think it was that long either. Sounds like an awesome experience.

[Naomi John]

Is having two ships pass each other. Usually occurs on the weekends. A Saturday departure will pass a Sunday return. A Sunday departure will pass a Monday return.

 

This usually occurs around Midnightish.

 

Watching a small Fantasy class cross a Dream class is really cool. Just the size difference.

[WLHyatt]

In the winter you'll often have two ships pass in the river on a Saturday or Monday arrival of the Elation/Triumph. The dream and a Norwegian ship (I don't know which one).

We have been on the Elation when it was held outside of southwest pass to wait for the Dream and the other ship to exit the pass before we could enter.

On that occasion we were a little late getting back to port, got in around 7 and off the ship after 9.

[zoofer1957]

WLHyatt, thank you very much for taking the time to post that amazingly detailed guide to the lower Mississippi River. As a long time New Orleans resident (now living in Iowa) I never went much further down river from New Orleans than Belle Chasse. My family will be on the Carnival Triumph next Monday cruising down the river, and you can bet I'll have a copy of your notes with me! I can't wait!

[WLHyatt]

If you get a chance, drive down highway 23 to at least Fort Jackson. That's a great place to watch the river go by. It's a couple hours down the road, so don't do it the morning of the cruise :)

[Raxter54]

On our cruise on the Dream last February, we passed the Elation as we were heading down the river. Here's a great picture of the Elation coming out of the fog, posted by Indytraveler83. It was quite a sight, people were on deck on both ships, yelling and waving at each other...