MKARN

[Plover]

Does anyone have experience with sailing/cruising the MKARN?
We are going to cruise from Sallisaw, Oklahoma to Little Rock, Arkansas in October in Caprice, our 25 ft. shallow draft yawl. We recently purchased the boat from Chuck Leinweber of Duckworks. It is featured in the current issue of Small Craft Advisor. We have really enjoyed the boat so far, taking it on the Texas200, followed by a weekend trip to Army Hole, and several other weekend cruises. We have unlimited time for this trip so we will be taking it real slow  :)

[CharlieJ]

Hi Kathy, and Chris. Sure glad you like the boat. Have fun .

[Plover]

Thanks Charlie --
Are you going to Sail Oklahoma?

[CharlieJ]

Travis is working hard on me to go. I'm thinking yes, unless something happens. Will take Traveler

[tomwatt]

The charts available are pretty old, so some features indicated as active are now just ghost facilities (commercial dockage, etc.), at least in the Little Rock area. However, the channel down in this area is still pretty good, and is an active waterway... usually all I see are fishing boats or ski boats out. When you get down this way, let me know,  I should be able to offer you some transportation support, etc. (depending on work schedule, etc.), but I'll be happy to make some time for you.
Looking forward to seeing "yawl" down here!

[mrb]

When you get to lake Dardanell be sure to stop at the Russelville marina and look up Darwin.  He is the live aboard at the quarter deck dock.  He ives on Traveler.  You can't miss him.  Any way he has good local knowledge of river, used to be a tug boat captain and has travel the river on another sail boat to New Orleans and back via Mobil.  Perhaps I will see you there as I spent time there.

[Plover]

Thanks! Will do! We will be posting our trip to sailfar so you will have a general idea of when we will be in your area.

We have Bruce and Joyce Johnson 's Arkansas River Cruise Guide which has a lot of good information in it. I also found an interesting account by a young man that did the trip we are doing and continued on to the Mississippi and to Key West. See www.sailingmatilda.blogspot.com . At the end of his blog he has a link to all of his trip photos which helped immensely. When it comes to explaining what it's like to go through a lock,  a picture really is worth a thousand words :)