Interesting App

Marine Traffic is a fun little app when you're in an Automatic Identification System (AIS) marine navigable area.

About 50 miles north of Memphis, around Osceola, Arkansas, is the Bruce R. Birmingham. A tow boat, not a tug.

All things AIS that are near me:

Ole Joe is sitting just a couple of miles south of us in Ensley Bottoms, which is a pretty rough old port area that was used for years by the Corps of Engineers.
My Pop tied up there many times.

The Martha Ingram is slowly heading northbound around my hometown of Helena, Ark.
The river is high and the current's pretty strong... she's a top notch tow boat and only pushing 4 knots. In the top picture you can see the southbound Bruce R. Birmingham is doing 10 knots. The river is on the rise and the current will only get stronger. Don't envy any of these captains, no matter which direction they're headed.
Upstream's a very slow slog and downstream can quickly become uncontrollable.

Looking at St. Louis which has a lot more AIS traffic than Memphis, I see the Melinda Brent that was once owned by a friend of ours. Brent Towing, out of Greenville, MS, sold it to a company from Houston. All that information is in this app...

Kinda fun on a quiet night at home.

Cheers,

Istaboa