Life on the Illinois River Part 1

Part 1

As we leave Chicago, we enter the Inland Rivers.  This is a system of rivers and canals which run over 1300 miles from Chicago to Mobile AL. The first one we encounter is the Illinois. The water depth is controlled at 12 feet and the current is only 1 mph. All the water is heading south to the Gulf of Mexico.   What a coincidence, so are we!

Actually, we begin in a channel that is called the Chicago Sanitary Ship Canal. 

Starting down the river system, our main concern has changed from weather and waves to bridges and barges. In the channel, there aren't waves like the Lakes, but there is a LOT of traffic. Some corners are sharp enough that you can't see what's coming around the corner or how big it is!
The barges have a tendency to blend in with the riverbanks, until you see the white tows, by then, it's real close!

We need to be a quick study, watching for tugs, tows, and groups of barges tied together. They can be as many as 3 wide and 5 long. There is not more than a couple of feet on either side of the canal.

We knew they had their own lingo, and meeting and passing were approached on either a 1 whistle or a 2 whistle. So now just to figure it all out! We also read that 5 short blasts meant immediate danger!

At Navy Pier, we have our very first lock to go through. It's only 15 minutes from our dock. We are the only boat there, and get through right away. No drama! We are hearing so much chatter about the locks we will encounter. Wait time, lineups, closures and repairs. We are expecting the worst.

 The locks are larger than we've ever seen before, as they need to accommodate tugs, toes and barges. 

They always have priority over those of us which are referred to as 'pleasure craft', 'pc's', or even sometimes rv's.

However, having been through the 45 locks on the Trent Severn a couple of years ago, we do feel like we have some experience.  We aren't too worried, maybe we're naive.

From Chicago to the junction of the Mississippi, it will be nearly 330 miles and 8 locks.

But first we deal with bridges, we have our mast down so we can be under the maximum 17 feet height requirement and we will go under 40 bridges in about 5 miles.

Our spectacular city tour begins.... I quit taking pictures at 37 bridges.

Who?

Does Brian look worried??

Not too worried

We were impressed by the diversity and sheer number of industries along this canal.

We realize the waterways are a hugely important part of the world's economies, and have been since the early settler days, but the businesses that choose to align themselves with the waterways for cost effective transportation and plentiful acreage surprised us. We saw massive staging yards, holding yards, the Amtrac railway system train yards and parking lots, plus rundown work share office spaces. There were unloading docks, cranes, conveyor systems and of course, much in demand fleeting zones for barges. 

This was very educational and interesting for us. 

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck?

Enough for fresh mulch!

Sand and gravel

A few of the other commodities we noticed were grain, corn, lime, coal, fuel, chemicals and even asphalt that needs to be continually kept hot with burners, no matter how far it travels.

Fuel pipeline over the river

Smells like barley:)

Aggregate transfer station

The real adventure begins with our first tug. It's really a tow since he is pushing a large configuration of barges upstream. Murphy's law says we will meet him on a corner, and of course that's what happened!

The tow was hugging the inside of the corner, but the end of the barge was on our side of the river. There was certainly no more space at the riverbank!

 He blew 2 blasts of his horn, and we are scrambling  to look for which book we read where it said what that meant. Since we weren't sure, Brian decided we better stop, and not go any closer. Then we should back up some to get out of the way! At that point, the tow blasted 5 blasts... We knew exactly what that meant!!!

By then we could clearly see we needed to be on the left side of the river, because he was all the way over on the right! Oh yeah! 2 means starboard, or meet him right side to right side.
We dashed across the river and out of his way.
O.K. Survived!
 At that point we remembered we could talk to the tows on VHF Channel 13. 

As we cleared our first situation, and thought we could get underway, the radio rambled, "PC, might wanna duck 'hind dos empties, cause ain't no room fo yo up hea!"

(Hear this with a deep Southern Louisiana accent)

O.K. Sure thing! We took a hard left and hid behind some barges. We didn't know if they were empty or not, but they weren't moving toward us, so we just assumed so.
We stayed tucked in there until the next tow wanted us to move up to the mouth of a barge T slip. He was Northbound, and needed to "nose it on inere" and basically park where we were sitting.


After about an hour and another Northbound tow, we were free to 'C'mon PC, bring it on down" .

Our next lesson learned was avoiding the prop wash from 10, 500 horsepower as it can quickly turn you sideways. Ever hit a patch of black ice?

And yes, just around the next corner, was a tow taking up the whole space. Not sure what to do!

A few hours later we arrived at our next lock which was a 40 foot drop, but again, we drew on our Trent Severn locking experiences. By then, we were 5 PC's, and Brian was leading a convoy!

One thing different here, was floating bollards. Looks like a can, indented into the lock wall. You could just wrap your rope around and hold on. Sounds simple enough. It dropped with the water level, so was more secure than a rope or cable attached to the lock wall.
Janice realized very quickly that her lasso tossing skills were rusty, and wrapping the line around the bollard was not as easy as it looked.

 We were rushing to get through all the lift bridges before the bridge tenders went home at 5 pm.
The bridge tenders were very accommodating and we scooted on through.

We spent the night at the town wall in Joliet IL, with 8 other Looper boats. All very nice people!

 We met 1 other couple from Toronto we hadn't met before, on Here Today and 2 others we had met in New Buffalo MI. Kat in the Hatt and Gimme Time who were travelling with Sunny Days.

Today we saw our first red leaves. Is fall upon us??

What will be the adventures of Day 2?

Thursday September 10.    Happy birthday Jeff!   We love you! 

While casting off, Richard from Kat in the Hatt provided us with an update which he had gotten from the lock master on his morning bike ride. 

It was going to be a 2-3 hour wait at that next lock. They needed some time to do some repairs, and put through a couple of barges, so asked if all 5 of us would kindly wait at the wall and he would call us on Channel 13 when he was ready to take us into the lock.  The second barge decided he wasn't in a hurry so let the PC's go ahead of him.
The call came at about 11:00... "C'mon, soon as ya can be here."

Locking through was efficient, Richard from Kat in the Hatt got us all organized as per dock masters orders. Smallest at the front, that's us, 3 port side and 2 starboard. Smooth operation as we had 2 mid lines on the floating bollard.

Started out to be a beautiful smooth sail South..... For a while! 

Fools gold!

Beginning as only rain, by the time we reached the 2nd lock of the day, we had very large white icy cold rain drops! Was that hail?  We got drenched! We were shivering cold, and I even had water running out of my gloves!  That was one of the toughest locks, as we were so close to the back lock doors and the current was strong and hard to hold on, to keep our boat close to the wall.

At one point I asked Brian if we had closed the front windshield upstairs as we had closed all the cabin windows. Since he had not, I abandoned my post to save all the electronics and books we had laying on the dashboard!  When I returned we were drifting away from the lock wall, and the power of the current almost lifted me off the deck, trying to recover our position next to the wall. I put one leg on each side of the stanchions, my knees under the rail, and Brian helped me pull us back into position.  Everything was extremely wet, cold and slippery!

As we finally left the lock, without anyone else realizing our drama, we comforted ourselves in comparing this to a Harley trip.  On the motorcycle, we would have had to stay wet until we arrived at our destination.  This day, we could just go downstairs to get towels and dry clothes to change into.
So much better!!

As the daylight wained, and we headed to the nearest anchorage, we realized that some thoughtful person had called the closest marina, Heritage Harbour, Ottawa IL and saved a spot for all 5 boats for the night. 

We were very relieved about that as we had been smoking/ steaming from the exhaust pipe for most of the afternoon. We had slowed down to reduce the engine temperature, as the last time this happened, we needed to clean out the raw water impeller strainer.  We were really hoping that was the only problem going on.

Great to have this day done!  There was a superb restaurant, a great meal and hot showers waiting for us!
We have a double line of dripping laundry hanging out back to deal with another day.

Sunset at Heritage Harbour Marina, Ottawa, Illinois

Friday September 11

We remember the events of this date in recent history, and think of others today.

Brian had a long production meeting this morning via Skype, so by the time we got all the river salad out of the strainer, Brian had detected another small leak in the hose. After some troubleshooting and a simple repair of the pipe, it was too late for us to make the long run to the next anchorage.

Top notch mechanic removing salad and repairing a leak.

We borrowed the courtesy car from the marina and headed into town for some groceries.  We even managed to find a bike store that had my size tire tube. It was a well stocked store even if it was at the back of their house.  Thanks google maps!

It was a great rest day after our days of adventure on the river.
 We were feeling recovered and ready for the next......