Wilmington,IL

19 September 2014

Important to have boat karma on the Illinois River.

We are ready to tackle the hardest part of the great loop, the 1900 miles from Chicago. We thought that we would leave early and see how it was going to go our first day.

We pulled out of Hammonds Marina in Hammond IN, smiles in our faces, song of the ocean and rivers in our hearts.

The first four miles from Hammonds Marian were a little rollypolly with the south wind supplying the waves. But we were in to our first bridge (already open) and one that had just closed and broke. Since we are 19’6” we slid under and we had “boat karma” working with us.

There was a freighter with two tugs so we sailed along behind them going through the bridges with them. Once we cleared the last, we got the wave around and we headed downbound. We went past a ton of tows that were being assembled and set up, but mostly the water was empty of large tows moving around.

We checked in with the first lock, the “Thomas O’Brien”. We were able to lock through without any other traffic. It was weird, the first time they said, just hang out in the middle.

We got to the “electro shock fish barrier” about 12:10 which was closed for maintenance with “intermittent openings”. We pulled over and tied to a wall with the assistance of a very nice fireman to wait out the expected 4 hours til opening. But wait, our karma came though and at 12:15 they pulled a diver out for lunch and we had a chance to motor through. We were past by 12:30. More karma.

We dodged a few tugboats (tows) setting up their tows and we ducked around them pretty well. At the next lock, the Lockport lock, we waited 10 minutes for it to finish it’s lift cycle and we were in and down. The lock master was very nice to us and told us about things to see.

We were able to follow a tow through Joliet, IL (think Blues Brothers) and were soon at the free town dock. Elapsed time 7 hours!! Yay us.

Except that we tied off on the rough wall and the combination of the wind, waves / wakes from the tows and the rough wall made it an non starter with the boat constantly trying to bang into the wall at an angle. So we caught up with our bridge buddies and headed for the Brandon Road lock.

There were two long tows and us to go through. The first tow shoved their first two rows of barges (6 of them) into the lock and sent them down. Refilled the lock with the tow and the next 6 barges. There was another boat that needed to do the same thing so we were looking at a 4 hour wait.

First Karma came when a tow said we could tie off on their barges for awhile. Not allowed but they could see us doing loops out there. So we waited on “the wall” for 2 hours.

Second Karma came when the first tow made room for us on their way down.. So our wait went from 4 hours to 2.5 hours. Yay.

We got put in the back corner, away from the tow and very close to the sill in the lock. We made it down in one chunk. We waited until the tow collected the first six barges and then moved out of the lock and into the river. We followed and were on our way. Four locks and a ton of bridges, Karma is on our side.

We had about 1 hour to go 11 miles to the marina. So I cranked up the Quo Vadimus and we flew. But I had forgotten the cardinal rule “Don’t Wake the Tow’s” I waked one and he was quick to (rightly) snap back at me. I apologized and for the rest of the trip I slowed for the tows. Sorry, and there went my Karma.

We found “Harbor Side Marina” in the dark and got tied up to the fuel dock for the evening.

Tired and out of boat Karma we racked up 56.2 nm, slightly under the Lake Ontario Crossing, and a crushing 12.5 hour day. Burned 26.2 gallons of fuel for a record 2.14 MPG. And a lowly 4.4 average miles per day. Happy about the gas burn, sad about the 12 hours.

Not sure I’m up for another 1900 miles of this….

One thought on “Wilmington,IL

  1. We get great SPAM comments, but this one came in on this post…

    “It was powerful. It was rough. It was bitter. It was caustic. It was, at the same time, really urgent about a need for love.”

    Alrighty then, not sure it captured the urgent need for love, but it was bitter…

    *delete*

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