With an accent born in England and bred in New Zealand, Mark Scott will never be confused with Tom Sawyer. His pals, Bob Scheurman and Dave Jahn won't be mistaken for Huck Finn.

But this intrepid threesome set out on the kind of epic journey that all boys (and most men) only dream about: heading south down the Mississippi River to warmer climates. The three all keep their Sea Ray Sundancers at B&E Marine, in Michigan City, storing them for the winter and enjoying them in the summer. But, as Scott says, "For years, I'd talked about taking my boat south to use it through the winter months, but I was a little afraid of the project. After all, I'm a lake boater. My wife got sick of hearing me talk about it and finally said, "Just do it!"

Scott polled people who?Ĵd done it, and the consensus was "get a captain". Through B&E Marine in Michigan City, he found a good one but, at the last minute, that captain had a family crisis and couldn?Ĵt go. "I talked to Bob and Dave, and we decided, "Hey, we're big boys.We can figure this out."

To prep the boat, Scott called Laura at Marine Navigation in Chicago, who provided not only the charts and guides necessary, but a wealth of information on locks and river traffic. As a prelude, Scott moved the boat to B&E's Hammond location because bad weather was coming and they were afraid they'd be stuck in Michigan City.

The trio set out, not on a raft, but on Scott's Sea Ray 460 Sundancer, Bangarang, (named after the Lost Boys' war cry against the pirates in the movie, "Hook"), on October 16th. "Bad timing," says Scott tersely, admitting that the weather was foul. "We ended up on the Cal-Sag Waterway because it was too rough to venture onto the lake."

The first day was disheartening, covering only 50 miles, but they got through the first lock with no problem. "Before this, the only lock I?Ĵd ever been through was in Chicago and you only drop about 18 inches!" Scott said.

Learning as they went, they soon settled into a routine on the Illinois River, leaving before dawn and running until dusk. Dave and Mark shared the steering duties, while Bob handled the navigation and cooking chores. "It's really important to have someone keep track of each mile marker, because that's the way you tell tugs where you are," says Scott.

By the end of day two, they were only one lock short of their planned itinerary and, recalls Scott,"We hadn't hit anything, either!" They did get a short course in the sound signals needed to communicate with the many tugs and barges but, at first, they had the passing signals right but the overtaking signals backwards, earning them a few odd looks from the tug skippers. "The tug guys were really helpful, though," says Mark, "and, if we called ahead on the cell phones, the lockmasters were nice, sometimes holding a lock for us." Getting through a lock is important because yachts are "low man on the totem pole" on the river, and often end up waiting while commercial vessels pass through.

By the end of the third night, they'd reached Alton and moved from the Illinois River to the Big Muddy itself. "The debris isn?Ĵt bad, but the Mississippi is like a wild animal with currents and eddies and lots of traffic. The river changed from mile to mile which was a surprise to us, because we?Ĵre lake boaters used to all the same conditions."

The fourth day brought their scariest moment, when they wound up rafted as the outside boat on a fuel barge for the night. "At midnight, we could hear the engines of tows going past. Looking out the window, it was like "War of the Worlds" with spotlights searching back and forth from the tugs.You realize how small you are when one turned wide and we rode his six-foot wake!" By the fifth day, they'd turned up the Ohio River and, at day's end, they got caught in a lock at dusk, exiting onto the river in blackness and trying to grope their way into Green Turtle Bay for the night. "Even with all our navigation gear and help on the radio from the Green Turtle marina, there were some white knuckles that night."

The last day, with the crew more experienced and relaxed, was a 200-miler down the Tennessee River to Aqua Yacht Harbor in Iuka, MS, just below the Tennessee border and 100 miles from Memphis. Scott had found this marina when they had a booth at the Michigan City Boatshow and, "Every year, I'd go back to talk to them and promise myself I'd head south."

Settled into a slip, Scott and his crew looked back over their journey. By the yacht log, they'd covered 820 miles in six days; transiting uncounted locks in the process, including some that dropped them as much as 50 feet at a time. "After five years with Bangarang, it's obvious I like the boat. But after this trip, I really gained a lot of respect for her because we hounded her from dawn to dusk, idling, on plane, off plane, really running hard."

Just as Tom and Huck learned from their adventures so, too, did Scott on his. "Run just as hard and fast as you can as much as you can, because you're going to spend a lot of time creeping past barges and marinas and boat ramps. You?Ĵre responsible for your wake, so you can't just leave the throttle down. I can't stress enough that you have to go slowly around barges, because their towlines are really fragile." Other advice for those thinking about the trip? "If you come up on a lock at the end of the day, always go through it. Otherwise, you may wait hours the next morning." Scott advises taking plenty of wet weather gear and gloves for handling the lines in locks.

"Having two fixed VHF radios was helpful, because we could monitor both the locks and the barge traffic at the same time," he notes."We carried fuel filters and needed them when we got some bad diesel, so we didn?Ĵt lose an engine."

Since leaving the boat, Scott and his family have returned to enjoy a short cruise between Christmas and New Year?Ĵs. "It's about an eight hour drive from Indianapolis," he says, adding that cruising on the Tennessee was gorgeous. "Eagles fly here from the north, and we saw no fewer than 13 bald eagles on the river!"

Would he do it again? "Absolutely!" says Tom Sawyer, er, Mark Scott