1 week, the Illinois River complete...and not without some excitement!

This guy! He is MacGyver!

Ben, myself, Crocket and our friend Max began our journey down the Illinois River from Chicago. We opted for the Cal Sag instead of the Chicago River taking you through downtown Chicago. While I'm sure the Chicago route is quite an experience with spectacular views, we chose the Cal Sag so we didn't have to wait for all the bridges (we are 19 feet from the water line) or deal with the river boats and kayakers. Instead we traveled down a pretty industrial area with large barges along the banks and massive moving tows (actually they push barges so I'm not really sure why they call them tows) along the way. Our choice in our route added a few extra miles to the trip but it allowed us to keep our canvas top up. We only had to lower our hinged mast which is simple for us to put back up once we are in dock or at anchor. We traversed through 8 locks on the Illinois...this was stomach clenching for me. I'm a huge worrier (I swear I try to do everything not to worry) and I am really hard on myself if I am not perfect at things (I might be a bit competative, even with myself if that's possible)...SOOOOO not ever going through large locks and what to expect was causing me to have a nervous gut, was not interested in eating and just over thinking what it was going to be like. I certainly didn't want to mess up my responsibility of securing our boat My sweet husband, knowing me so well, arranged (I may have helped too) to have our buddy Max along this part of the trip to ease my worries and teach me a few pointers along the way. I would like to thank Samara, Max's lovely wife, for letting us borrow him for the week!

What did I learn???
It is always easier to learn things from someone other than your husband!

When passing a tow barge, you call them on the radio to find out where they want you to pass, on the 1 whistle or the 2 whistle. Looking at an analog clock and 1:00 being on the right and 11:00 on the left, that is how you pass/over take the tows. So, he says pass me on the 1, you pass him to the right...its as simple as that.

How to read the current and wind and how it relates to my communication with Ben when we are docking. I learned that this shouldn't be causing me stress, but I should be embracing every minute that I am blessed to be able to do this trip. Ben is way more than capable of getting the boat (and many more skills that came in handy this week...) where we need it and I really know what I'm doing...easy peasy chicken greasy!

We learned that we can live with Max on our boat and he isn't annoying or needy or anything...it was simply perfect.

I learned that boating and excitement go hand in hand, whether the excitement is planned or not. And we had BOTH!

Our first day on the Illinois (47 miles, 4.5 hours) we went through our first lock (The Thomas S. O'Brian Lock, drops 2') with a State Patrol boat who sped away from us once we were clear of the lock. When we reached the I-94 Bridge, the Patrol boat had turned around and at first we thought we were being pulled over until we noticed the police lights and the huge traffic back up on the bridge. One of us may have stated they were diving for a dead person, ewww! Note to self: look up what was happening there when we get to Joliet. Once we arrived in Joliet on a wall covered in loose gravel and uneven rocks, Ben fell in the river, setting off his automatic life jacket, and we had another boat use our bow pulpit as a fender coming onto the wall, thankfully...Ben was ok (another guy also fell in that night too, he was ok) and our boat didn't get hurt. But we did find out we were correct in our guess about what the State Patrol boat was doing. A lady was pulled from the river shortly after we passed them. Eerie!

Our second lock of the day 

It rained most of the day...didn't damper our moods!

I had the hardest time understanding what a floating bollard would look like and how I needed to tie off...here it is, make a loop and cinch it off on our boat...I got this! 

The bollard moves down the wall as the water is drained to lock us through. You can see by the water line how much we've dropped. WAY COOL!!!

We made the best of our first night, with Ben feeling kind of icky, we decided a round of Moscow Mules would help and a meal of Halibut and asparagus with rice would make us all feel better. Tomorrow had to be a much better day!!!

Tied up to a wall in Joliet

Halibut

We traveled south another 46 miles (Took us 7.5 hours, we had a 3hr wait at the Dresden Lock and Dam) and 3 locks to a marina in Ottawa, IL. Heritage Harbor Marina was top notch in my book. The staff handled 7 boats arriving at once and did it with a smile. We were more than taken care of, they checked on us, delivered ice, helped to locate a new cartridge for Ben's life jacket, they spent time recommending the best spots to hit while in town, supplied a vehicle, and the facility was very clean so we decided after our previous day we all agreed to stay 2 nights and check out the town. Of course we ate our way around, enjoyed dinner with our fellow loopers and Crocket got to enjoy the huge open field chasing after his toy, tail wagging and smiles. He's showing us all that at 10 years old, he still has it!

Happy Boy!

Our gorgeous view for a couple nights...ahhh!

Dinner at Heritage Harbor with some fellow loopers 

Didough's Pretzel in Ottawa, IL...if pretzels can be wonderfully crispy with a soft warm inside, salted just right...this place gets it!

Our next stop to Peoria, IL was 75 miles away (7.75 hours) with 1 lock. We stayed at the Illinois Valley Yacht Club (Ivy Club) which was another stellar marina. Staff was very friendly and the people in the harbor treated us like we were members. We were invited to the coffee clutch crew! We really had a fun time here, so we stayed 2 nights. Max's friend George picked us up for lunch and he liked us so much he took us to breakfast the next day. We arrived on a Sunday and it happened to be the clubs BBQ rib cook-off. We ended up enjoying the entrants ribs (and at no charge!) and cheese cake for dinner that night! Thanks to the Ivy Club!
The morning we were to leave we got word that the lock 8 miles down river had an 8-hour back-up, some other loopers had left already to chance it and we decided we would too...UNTIL...dun dun dun dun, we must have needed some excitement!! As we were leaving a very skinny and shallow channel out of the harbor, that also has a covered boat dock to our starboard and rock wall to our port, Ben yells that something isn't right. The starboard motor was stuck in reverse...SCARY!!! He yells to me to shut down the motor and proceeds with just port to turn a 180 in the channel and make our way to the nearest dock. Thankfully (boat angels at work), one other boat was still in the harbor, heard our distress and came to our aid grabbing lines and helping us in. Problem now is that we are semi-blocking the channel being on this dock. Ben was doing some assessing (have I mentioned that Ben is a walking genius when it comes to mechanics?) and realized that our transmission shifter cable snapped leaving the motor in reverse. It gets even more exciting now since we have to move back to our slip and this needs to be done with Max in the engine room operating forward and reverse by hand while Ben does throttle and yells down to Max what direction to go! We got back into our slip unscathed and literally within 15min National Marine was at our boat getting the part number and the next day installed by 10:30am. We left at 11:00. Thank goodness Ben knew how to handle the boat and was in control during a freak out moment. Thank goodness it happened where it did, things could have been worse.

We are not on a boat anymore! Thanks George for taking us shopping too!

Cocktails at the Ivy Club

This is the skinny channel where the excitement occurred 

The owner of The No Wake Zone, Peoria Heights, IL...adding us to the wall of loopers!

Next stop, Havana, IL to a marina called Tall Timbers. We got word that another boat, with a draw of 5ft ran aground coming into the harbor the day before. Lucky for us, we only draw 4.1ft and the water came up 3inches so not a problem for us to come in, we actually saw 2.9ft below us coming in. We arrived after a 5 hour run (47miles and one lock) watching lots of bald eagles and their young. We had to pass a dredge who was taking up the entire river, that was interesting! Arriving at Tall Timbers we were greeted by the owner with free beer! What a treat! This was a cute little marina with the nicest smelling outhouses I've ever seen, smelled and tested! We had dinner in the cute town and hit the hay early for another day on the water.

Our view for the evening

The clean potty's

This was the dredge, we had to pass him on our port with only 10ft of room to our starboard!

Cool river boats along the way

We were able to float through this lock, meaning we didn't have to tie up to any bollards

One of many barges we have seen along the way...they are massive

hard to see but eagles were all around us

Look close this one is coming in for some dinner...amazing to see them this close and this plentiful! So majestic!

Our next run was only 32 miles, taking us less than 3 hours with the current. This stop landed us in Beardstown, IL tied up to a barge at Logsdon Tug Service. We were chatting about how cool it would be to get inside one of these large tows...no sooner did we get ourselves tied up did the tow captain invite us on board! I think we all ran as fast as we could! So very cool! The tow stands 28 feet above water with cummins diesels (1300hp, thats 650 a side!!). The town was very cute, we found a great little taqueria and liked it so much went for Mexican that evening!
I almost forgot to mention we had some more excitement on this short trip...our tachometer cable stopped working. Not a major issue, this cable is what synchs our motors, so Ben turned it off and synched them by sound. While at Logsdon Tug Service, he was able to make some repairs to the cable until we have a new one mailed to us at our destination in Grafton, IL. Of course Ben knew exactly what to do! The owner of the tug service was mighty impressed with Ben...his words were "You're the first yachter that I've seen come through here that knows how to work on his stuff!" Way to go MacGyver!!

Tow Captain, Jeff

You could throw a party in this engine room!

Owner of Logsdon Tow Service, Kim Logsdon, assisting Ben on the repair

Our engine room...not a lot of parties in here!

Our final stop on the Illinois River took us 88 miles to Grafton, IL. We stayed at Grafton Harbor Marina and again a superb marina. We took on 108 gallons of diesel (last diesel stop was 167 miles at the Ivy Club and we took on 100 gallons) and did our pump out. We stayed here for 4 nights. We had a great time! We were sad since Max went home, we can't keep him forever! Ben and I met a wonderful couple on C dock. Greg and Lisa took us to breakfast for our anniversary and treated, we will never forget their generosity. The C dock was filled with lovely people, I even met a Jane Marie! This town was hopping, lots of live music, tons of tourists and little shops. The views were spectacular especially up 2000 feet zip lining!! We are traveling with a couple other boats and we talked another couple, Bob and Liz aboard p/c Knot sew easy, to join us! We had a great time! We spent our time eating out, hanging at the pool and relaxing. This is the end of the Illinois...from here we will be traveling 218 miles on the Mississippi!! I will post pictures from Grafton once I get them downloaded!

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