OCR Text |
Show Low Water, Stormy Weather Hamper Otherwise Successful River Cruise Low water in the Green River and stormy weather conditions hampered boaters boat-ers in the annual Friendship Friend-ship Cruise from Green 'River to Moab held last weekend. Even though the open-pig open-pig of fishing season waa also held last weekend, the Cruise still drew some 507 registered boaters. The stormy weather caused 12 boats to drop from the 180 mile trip at Ruby Ranch, only a few miles down river ri-ver from Green River. -An additional 52 boats which experienced trouble wi.h sandbars, rocks, and again the bad weather, were taken ta-ken from the water at Mineral Min-eral Bottom, the first gas stop. Some problems with a new system of refueling were also encountered and several boats were bumped when traffic became too heavy to be handled by the fuel barge which was installed in-stalled this year. A special attraction of the Cruise was the presence pres-ence of the Dating Game coupLe who traveled with the caravan of boaters from Green River to Mineral Min-eral Canyon where they were picked up by pilot Dick Smith and taken into Canyonlands National park. Reports on the steak fry which was held at Anderson Ander-son Bottom on Saturday niilght indicated that this phase of the trip was the best ever as were commmv ications on the river. Because Be-cause of the large number of 'boats which experienced experienc-ed difficulties because of low water, rescue service was necessarily slow. Additional Ad-ditional problems were encountered en-countered in the trip up the Colorado River when lieavy winds caused many 'boats to use more gasoline gaso-line than was on boai d and many boaters ran out of fuel before reaching th3 Moab dock. At the end of the Cruise, boats were removed from the river without incident and the Friendship Cruir.e was considered a success. Monday's holiday kept a large number of participants partici-pants in Moab an extra day. |