Traveling on the river

Well, we haven't made much progress in the past week.  Calypso and Captain Mark are at the Illinois Valley Yacht Club in Peoria, IL and I am at my mother's in Atlanta, GA for a short visit.  I return today and we will be continuing our voyage downstream.  We left Chicago bright and early one week ago yesterday after eating at two of Mark's favorite restaurants  - Mike Ditka's and Gibsons.  First we motored through beautiful downtown Chicago, and then into the dirty and smelly Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.  The first few hours were relatively non-eventful and then we encountered numerous tugs and barges, often having to dodge between parked barges, waiting for a tug to pass.  We ended the day by going through our first big commercial lock on the Illinois Waterway at Lockport and motored a few miles further to tie up overnight at the free town dock in Joliet.  We were up and ready for an early departure Tuesday AM when we discovered that the next lock (2 mi. away) was closed for repairs all day until 6 pm.  Since a 6 pm departure would not leave us with enough daylight to make the next safe harbor, we were forced to spend another night in Joliet.  Not wanting to risk missing the lock again, we were there before six the next morning, but had to wait over an hour for them to clear the commercial traffic. With two more locks to pass through that day, we were only able to travel about 45 miles in 7 hrs.  We stopped at a very nice marina, but quickly discovered that the water depth is probably somewhat less that what they tell you it will be.  We did not actually touch going in, but did see some pretty skinny water.

The next day we only had one lock to get through, but that took us about two hours to accomplish.  So far the tows we have seen usually consist of anywhere from 3 to 12 barges.  The larger ones cannot be locked through in their entirety, so have to broken into 2 "trains" - this can take hrs.  We were lucky at Starved Rock that they "dumped" us along with another "PC"(pleasure craft) between the first and second cuts of the tow - otherwise we might have been there for at least 3 hrs.  For a control freak like me, this is all very difficult to deal with.  Finally, we had the lock behind us and pushed on to the IVY Club - 70+ miles and one lock in 10 hrs.

The next week or two will probably be our most challenging to date as the water is indeed shallow.  Many of the marinas are so silted in that even with a 3.5 ft draft, we can't get in.  I am hoping that we can find anchorages that are deep enough, but out of the current and out of the way of the tows.  Mark is the eternal optimist and my glass is always half-empty, so reality probably lies somewhere in-between. 

The Wrigley Building