After a stopover for a weekend, first in West Alton, Missouri, then in Alton, Illinois, we finally go through the last lock and enter the Lower Mississippi, the wildest and most unknown part of our journey.

Before that we’d completed a leg of navigation from Hamburg, Illinois, which was rather smooth, we even made a stop to meet a farmer who was going to provide us with corn from this state. He was the father of another farmer whom we’d had met earlier in Wisconsin, and who’d said that he preferred to settle over there rather than lower down the river where his father, was because for him that part of the river was too polluted. The father, however, was more interested in the corn production capacity of his land rather than environmental issues. A typical paradox, he presented himself as a man of the land, with a good farmer’s sense, who takes care of his farm so as not to harm nature and, incidentally, to guarantee consistent profitability. His solution was GMOs. A long debate on the pros and cons of this technology animated us for some time, without being able to reach a clear conclusion.

Still stirred by this discussion which shook our convictions, we see the West Alton marina on the shore of the Missouri. I’d called earlier in the week to see if we could stop there for two nights, and the captain told me there would be no problem if I paid in cash. He also said that on the evening of our arrival the port would organise a small party, it should have taken place earlier in the season but given the extraordinarily high water level it had to be postponed. We’ll be welcome if we pay in cash.

At sunset, with the boiler running out of steam, but with the help of our new heat engine, we entered the cove of the marina without any problems. We found a place in the middle of a dozen boats damaged by the rising waters, and we’d soon learn that these boats were not insured, that nobody knew if the owners would come to collect them, a sad sight.

We set foot on the ground and we head towards what seems to be the harbour master's office, but there’s no one there so we take a short tour of the house. A few minutes later our film crew join us, then a small group of people finally arrive and bustle around an empty pool to organise a small party. The captain comes to greet me, with recently dyed hair and beard, new pair of sneakers, you can tell he dressed his best for the evening. I escape the traditional questions, Where are you from? Where are you going?, and immediately mention that I want to sort out the rental of a place for the boat. After being relieved of 80 dollars, I ask where the toilets and shower are, because it was for this reason that we’d decided to stop here, as it was already several days since we’d had these comforts at our disposal.

Unfortunately, no, there’s neither. The flood damaged everything, all the plumbing is broken, hence the empty pool.

We’re thus a little annoyed, and very dirty, when we meet people coming to the party. We head towards a kiosk where a man offers us a beer which we accept with enthusiasm. We quickly forget our annoyances and get to know some of the occupants of the port, they tell us in turn what ties them to this special river. One of them tells us that there’s another marina, just on the opposite bank, which is entirely on a floating deck. It was not affected by the flood and we can find bathrooms there. Next morning we decide to check it out and then come back. I don’t know if it’s because of this plan or the beers but we spend a particularly pleasant evening listening and sharing anecdotes of freshwater sailors.

As agreed, we leave in the early morning for Alton, we’ve barely started to cross the river when we realise that it would be impossible to come back. The current is colossal, and despite the short distance to cover we’re already screwed. Too bad for our pre-paid place ... Our grief quickly subsided when we moored at Alton's main dock. Everything here is welcoming, there is a lawn, a small shop, toilets, showers, a washing machine and ... a jacuzzi. I’ll spend the next 24 hours in it, even if the temperature is well above 50 degrees, almost unbearable. Mark will spend his time at his desk: right next to my jacuzzi he sets up a plastic table and a chair, a parasol, an electrical outlet and Wi-Fi access. Absolute luxury. We savour these few hours because they allow us to forget the moments when we preferred to move away from the cities to isolate ourselves on small islands where we felt safe. In the previous weeks we were afraid of the social context at each of our stops, all these towns, these villages devastated by the flood and years of recessions had created a marginalised population, the left behind, drug addicts, homeless, and unemployed for whom the path of delinquency was difficult to avoid. A bitter observation that I made with my ass in hot water.

We even decide to stay one more day to fix some technical problems on our paddle wheel, which has been in heavy use in recent days. We’re also preparing to pass through St. Louis and see the arch, commonly considered the halfway mark of the river and therefore of our trip. It’s also the boundary between the Upper and Lower Mississippi, between the recreational part of the north and the more industrial part of the south, between the part regulated by the 27 locks and the part in the wild course, the boundary between the northern and southern states. It's a whole different river that we're about to navigate, and we want to be ready.

It was only after getting out of the last lock which had been blocked for several hours due to an electrical problem that we entered St. Louis under a blazing sun. We didn’t really have time to enjoy the passage in front of the tallest man-made monument in the country, because the swell tossed us violently and threatened our frail boat. The traffic is intense, as is this surreal "march" in the middle of the river that we descend in one go. The conditions are really dangerous, and we’re in a hurry to leave this place behind. A few hours later, completely exhausted, we reach Hoppie Marina, the penultimate marina before New Orleans, located more than 1,300 kilometres away.

As a kind of port, we only find a half-sunk platform barge, the rest has been washed away. Taking advantage of a powerful counter-current we manage, to our surprise, to moor with ease. Stunned by our tumultuous navigation, we approach a decrepit garage where two men are tinkering with the engine of an old pickup. Like something straight out of a movie.

One of them introduces himself as the owner's son-in-law. He tells us it's impossible to stop here, that the marina is full. Yet we’re the only ones, and we haven’t seen a single pleasure boat sailing for ten days. Faced with our perseverance, he ends up making a phone call to his father-in-law who’ll give the green light for one night. We won't even have to pay, even though we insist.

The atmosphere is finally warming up, we’re making small talk, he introduces us to his dog and even lends us some tools.

Night is falling faster and faster in the south. Exhausted we collapse on our wet bunks with our feet against the still hot boiler.

When we were preparing our project two years before, St. Louis was the first city where we visited our first rock concert with a psychedelic touch, the first city where strangers offered us a drink, our first glass of moonshine. When tasting this alcohol, Mark and I looked at each other from the corner of our eyes and said to each other "damn, how disgusting!", and now we were going to spend a long month drinking and learning as much as possible about this timeless, tasteless whiskey! Awesome.

Yet we had decided to produce this alcohol precisely because it was modest, it was the opposite of our previous project Hogshead 733, where Scottish single malt had aged in barrels made out of the wood from our 1941 sailboat. The result had been an extremely noble whiskey, and we wanted to do the opposite, a conceptual complement for our drift into the whiskey world.

Moonshine is also the Prohibition era alcohol produced from corn that was once mainly used to feed the young colonial nation. Today it is mainly used to produce ethanol, a synthetic substitute for petroleum.

When Prohibition hit the United States, many farmers were already producing ethanol from corn, not to run the country's internal combustion engines, but rather to quench the thirst of the people by distilling this abundant crop in the moonlight and thus produce moonshine.

The creation of this totally illegal drink led to the emergence of a parallel economy managed by the iron fist of the Mafia. Al Capone and his peers built empires and fortunes on the trafficking of this contraband alcohol. Crime got organised and the whole country followed the rhythm of rivalries between gangs and police raids.

To sell their merchandise, the mobsters created a network of underground clubs and supplied them with moonshine. To entertain and keep their customers, musicians were invited to play whatever they wanted. It was this forbidden context, soaked in booze, that accelerated the development of the blues in the south and jazz in the north. Later it would be rock’n’roll’s turn to take the central role. Three musical currents inseparable from American history, from which a good number of sub-currents still draw on directly today.