Meandering Magees: Getting The Hang of This

Day 3
290 miles to Ottawa, IL

I hope the title of this post isn't a little premature, but we are gaining confidence with every lock we go through and every barge we pass and every floating log we avoid.

We left Joliet at 8:30 am IL time. Although we are keeping our watches and bodies on MI time, we travel on central time and Joliet is the perfect example why. The drawbridge in Joliet will not open between 7:30 and 8:30 am, obviously because of morning rush hour traffic. Traveling on the local time zone saved us from idling in the river while waiting. All 6 boats that were on the wall with us there left at 7 to have the bridge go up before 7:30.

Our first lock on Friday was the Brandon Lock. The 3 sailboats that left at 7 were there, waiting to enter the lock. Sea Mist came along side us to say, when the lock opened, we should go in first because after the lock, we will go faster, and all 3 of them are traveling together (from Canada).
That was a nice courtesy as usually, for pleasure craft at a lock, it is first there, first in.

The Brandon Lock lowered us another 35 ft. When, at the bottom, and the walls of the lock loom that tall you feel like you are in the belly of a freighter. Then the doors open and the river spreads out before you. It is a unique experience. And so far, we have not grown tired of see the huge barges being pushed by the tows, each with a name honoring a person. As I used to look at license plates while traveling in the RV, I now look at the tow boats to see their home port. So far, Houston, New Orleans, other Louisiana cities and some Illinois cities. (We just passed a barge tied up at a dock being loaded with grain).

The silver lining to only being able to go 10 mph is that we are only going 10 miles per hour. True meandering. And why not? There are places on the river that we could speed it up (not another boat or sign of civilization in sight), but on the inland river portion of the Loop, there is no need for speed. Our goal is not to see how fast we can complete the Loop, it is the enjoy the process.

To give you a visual picture of how we meander down the river (we are still on the Illinois river), Greg is at the helm driving. There is a seating area right in front of that. Mike sits there with his chart book and iPad on a table. Greg has state-of-the-art navigation electronics on the dash in front of him, but Mike confirms everything with the paper charts and an app on his iPad that gives us valuable info on bridge heights, etc. I sit next to Mike, alternating between writing this blog and going below to prepare food. All 3 of us are on debris lookout duty.

Just like the tortoise and the hare, we did indeed go faster than the sailboats, but they caught up to us at the next lock, where we had been sitting waiting. We went down 22 ft. in the Dresden lock. We learned a good lesson observing the sailboats. They use their hook poles to push against the wall of the locks to keep the boat away. We do have bumpers for that, but found the pole helps keep us straight.

For further confirmation of the hurry up and wait life on the river (some people thought that was just the military, or doctor appointments), we caught up to the 3 powerboats that left the Joliet wall an hour and a half before us that morning at our last lock of the day - the Marseilles Lock. They had been waiting over an hour and we waited, in the pouring rain, for another half hour before entering the lock. Fortunately, the rain stopped before Mike and I had to go on the deck to do the ropes for lockage. We had a new experience at the Marseilles. The lock master asked if we would be OK with rafting off a 73 ft. Hatteras that had just arrived at the lock, instead of tying to the wall. We said, "Sure". The Kay Bird IV went into the right side of the lock first (the other boats our size went to the left wall) and that captain couldn't have been nicer. He stood on his side, instructing Greg exactly where to line up with him and told us to raise one of our bumpers for better protection. He grabbed my line and his first mate (wife?) grabbed Mike's line. We were obviously close enough to carry on a conversation during the 24 ft. lowering. He had to lower his entire flybridge, radar and satellite to get under the fixed RR bridge back on the Calumet. He also gave us a marina suggestion for when we get to Peoria.

Having learned our lesson of not having a specific destination in mind on that second day, we made a reservation at Heritage Harbor Marina in Ottawa, IL. It was only 2 miles past the Marseilles lock, and the Kay Bird was going there, too, so we followed her in. We got there at 5:45 local time.
We had yet to see any Asian carp in the river, but while entering the harbor for this marina, we saw several jumping out of the water. We never saw any more after getting tied up in our slip, which was OK with us as we had heard and read of them jumping into dinghies and even back of boats! The boat got another washing.

Josh got to spend some time under Greg's tutelage here. Josh lives about an hour away from Ottawa so he came to visit. Greg walked him through repairing a side running light while I played with his black lab Ara. Heritage Harbor is a very nice marina with an on-site restaurant so we had our first meal off the boat. The antennas that I lowered on Thursday got put back up here. I wasn't involved in this process as no one had to get up on top. Greg is tall enough to stand on a little freezer compartment and stick enough of his upper body out the hatch to grab the pole Mike was swinging up to him and clamp it in its pedestal. It was the Kay Bird captain (with his 20 + years of experience on the river) who told us we were safe from here on out to have the antennas back up.