anyone thought of rafting the ohio? | Squat the Planet

anyone thought of rafting the ohio?

tyler harmon

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Eager

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I don't wanna ruin your plans... do whatever you want...

...but have you ever traversed the Ohio in a small motorized vessel?

I have, and that shit is hard enough, even going really short distances downstream during non-flood/drought periods.

If you don't have (small) motorized boating experience the Ohio or Mississippi or a similar sized river with strong currents; you should definitely get some before attempting to captain a tiny makeshift single person raft on them. If you don't know what you're doing, the river currents will capsize it and eat that shit up.

Travelling long distances on the Ohio on a tiny makeshift vessel is nothing like experienced boaters racing across the tiny Connecticut River.

Try finding a lake or some other stagnant body of water and spending a day on a styrofoam boat on that; and imagine how well your crappy vessel is going to hold up to 60mph winds and waves and floating debris and tree growth and river barges and the shifting currents from dams and tributaries.

I'm not saying its not possible. Travelling across the Mississippi/Ohio on trash-made vessels is definitely really trendy and romanticized right now; but as someone who grew up along the Mississippi, and who comes from a long line of barge folk; if you don't know what you're doing you're going to get killed. Even success stories like the Miss Rockaway Armada pulled it off after numerous trial and error attempts. And they had a large vessel and some experienced crew.
 

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