Our previous experience, Hogshead 733, had been painful. We had entrusted the restoration work on our boat, Soutien de Famille ‒ Family Support, to a carpenter who turned out, to put it politely, not to be the person we needed.

This time we decided to do the arrangements and some necessary work for the smooth running of our project ourselves. Beyond the logistical challenge of organizing a project in the USA from Europe, the real issue was to correctly anticipate the technical difficulties that we were going to encounter.

With each trip I carried more tools, which I then left behind, meters in metric systems to be able to make conversions into the imperial American units.

Every day was presupposed, every task anticipated.

For the works on the steam machinery that we could not do ourselves I wanted to hire the Amish, whose community is widely represented in this corner of Michigan and whose "traditional" know-how is unquestionable.

But soon, after a quick on-site investigation, the only Amish we encountered had Bluetooth headsets to discuss business with potential customers.

Our first disillusionment with the image of an American community.

So, it was a very ordinary plumber and his son who travelled from Chicago to complete the connections and check the steam engine.

At Three Rivers we received some nice surprises, particularly at Pub 60 Grille a few hundred meters from our site which we visited every evening. We found the same heads leaning on the Formica counter. In this decrepit bar made up of two prefabricated buildings, many men and a few women were doing the same as we were, they were “ending” their day with a big sip of beer.

The regulars had known us for a while, two Europeans in overalls, coming every season to this corner of America in the middle of nowhere to work on a steamboat.

This project intrigued the pub's customers. Lots of questions about the why, the how. Mississippi attracts fantasies, many have a story to tell, an uncle who caught a man-sized catfish, a cousin who drowned, etc.

Over time certain faces, Kyle or Dwayne, asked what we were doing, we felt they wanted to help us. When we were looking for something in particular, we would ask the bar patrons. This is how we made a stop at a lot where boats, tow trucks and pick-up trucks shared this wasteland. XXX, the owner, sold us one after the other a caravan window, a piece of sheet metal, a ladder. Because we were always stripping the same old motorhome, a Chevrolet Southwind, we decided to name our boat as well as our project after him. The south wind always brings bad weather.

We went there several times before he really opened his workshop for us. It was Ali Baba’s cave for a petrolhead, a heap of tools as precise as they were unique, all organised around a car lift where XXX was building a dragster piece by piece around an airplane engine.

Everything is possible in America. We regret not having met this man earlier in order to devote a little more time to him, to understand his history his passion.

XXX knew his region perfectly, and his passion for mechanics had enabled him to find at a lower cost THE part which could not be found ... Thanks to his good advice we bought much of the equipment that we were going to need later and, most importantly, we met Mark Bidelman, based on Bidelman Road near Pleasant Lake. With his ex-wife and another employee, he made protective tarps for the local recreational boats. Without hesitating for a second, he offered to make us tarps and mattresses for our bunks for free, a considerable increase in comfort for our spartan boat.

Maxime Berthou