Running the Missouri is mostly a matter of staying inside one narrow piece of water and knowing who else wants it. A loaded tow needs the channel it is in, and giving way means leaving that channel. What ends a trip on this river sits above the boat more often than below it. The reach in Helm's pack carries 241 charted bridges, fifth among the fifteen US rivers Helm builds packs for, and a boat with any height on it plans this run upward before it plans it forward.
The pack holds those 241 bridges along with 46 charted overhead cables, 420 charted lights, 72 charted depth areas and 66 depth contours. On the hazard side it carries 43 charted wrecks, 13 charted obstructions and 124 underwater rocks. It downloads at 10 MB, and once it is on the phone the chart and the planning work with no signal.
Helm builds chart packs for fifteen US rivers. On the counts that describe what is in this water and what crosses over it, the Missouri sits near the top of the list.
The rock is the figure to stop on. Only six of the fifteen rivers have any underwater rock charted at all, and this one carries 124 of them, more than four of the other five. Rock does not move with the season and gives nothing back when you touch it, so a shaded area on this chart asks for a longer look than the same shape would ask for over a soft bottom.
Add the 43 charted wrecks and the 13 charted obstructions and the pack carries 180 charted things in the water to stay clear of, on a river where the useful water is a channel rather than a basin.
| In the chart pack | Count |
|---|---|
| Bridges | 241 |
| Overhead cables | 46 |
| Charted lights | 420 |
| Charted depth areas | 72 |
| Depth contours | 66 |
| Charted obstructions | 13 |
| Charted wrecks | 43 |
| Underwater rocks | 124 |
Counted from the Helm chart pack for the Missouri River, built from the official inland electronic navigational charts published for it. The pack downloads at about 10 MB. Lock features are counted as the chart draws them, with chambers, gates and dams as separate objects.
241 charted bridges puts the Missouri fifth of the fifteen. Add the 46 charted overhead cables and the reach carries 287 charted crossings. A low boat goes under all of them without thinking about it once. A flybridge or a mast turns each one into a question with a number attached, and 287 is a lot of times to ask it.
A bridge is visible from a long way off and you can read it as you come up on it. A cable is a line in the air that you may not pick out at all until you are close, and the only clearance figure you are going to get for it is the charted one. That is why the 46 count out of proportion to their number.
Set your air draft in Helm once and the charted vertical clearance on each of the 287 is checked against it. The chart figure is a charted figure, and the river decides what is left under it on the day, which is why people who run this water with height on the boat watch the stage the way a coastal skipper watches the tide.
A river passage comes in pieces, because the locks break it up. Distance is not what decides when you arrive. You run to the lock, you wait for a slot behind whatever commercial traffic is already working, and then you run again.
A tow going through holds the chamber for a long while, and a boat your size fits in around that. So the plan that survives the day is the one built around where you intend to stop, with the miles between the stops as the part you actually control. Helm plans the passage in legs and says what each leg is doing, which covers the running half of it.
The same arithmetic follows you off this chart. A run that continues past this reach picks up the Upper Mississippi or the Illinois, both of which Helm packs, and both of which get planned the same way.
420 charted lights, eighth of the fifteen, describe water that gets worked after dark. Marks get lit where the work does not stop at sunset, and a light you can find at three in the morning is worth more on a river than a daymark you cannot.
Meeting a tow means giving way, and on a river giving way means leaving the good water. The pack draws 72 charted depth areas and 66 depth contours over this reach, and those are the shapes you are reading during the minute you spend outside the channel line. Reading them then is worse than having read them the night before.
Helm reports the shallowest point on a planned route up front instead of leaving you to find it, which is the kind of thing worth settling in advance on water where the decision to move over gets made in a couple of minutes.
The Missouri pack is a 10 MB download. That is small enough that there is no argument for leaving it off the phone before a trip, and once it is down the chart and the route planning keep working without a signal.
Helm builds packs for fifteen US rivers. The two that adjoin this one are the Upper Mississippi and the Illinois, each with its own pack and its own set of counts, and a trip that runs off the end of this reach continues onto one of them.
These counts describe what the chart pack carries, not the state of the river today. Charted data ages, pools change with the dams, and a lock can be out of service. Keep a lookout, listen to the traffic, and verify locally.
Yes. The Missouri pack carries 241 charted bridges, fifth among the fifteen US rivers Helm builds packs for, and 46 charted overhead cables, so the reach holds 287 charted crossings. Set your air draft in Helm once and the charted vertical clearance on each of them is checked against that figure. The 46 cables are the ones to plan for first, because the only clearance number you will ever get for a cable is the charted one.
The chart says so. Helm's Missouri pack carries 124 charted underwater rocks, second among the six US rivers in Helm that have any rock charted at all. With them come 43 charted wrecks, fourth of the fifteen, and 13 charted obstructions. That is 180 charted things in the water on one river, which is the reason the shaded areas on this chart repay a look before you put the boat near them rather than after.
Yes. Helm builds chart packs for fifteen US rivers, and the two that carry on from this one are the Upper Mississippi and the Illinois, each in its own pack with its own counts. The Missouri pack itself is 10 MB and works with no signal once it is downloaded, so a long trip comes down to having the next pack on the phone before you reach the end of this one.
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