9/13/18 Thursday: Our instructions on our wake up call today from Second Wave, was to be to the lock by 9:30, and the lock would do their best to get us through. We were about 11 miles from the lock, so we all left the marina just before 8:00. There were seven of us in the marina. As we were talking on the VHF getting ready to depart, we heard another boat call into us. There were two that had just come through the lock. WHAT?! They just got up this morning and cruised right through?! No Fair! So our seven pulled out and followed them, that made nine. The other three that we locked through with yesterday had stayed on the town dock in Ottawa, and they were on the radio headed to the lock. That made 12 of us.
This is the website that we watch to see what is coming up and going down the river at the locks. It gives us some idea of how backed up the locks are, and how big the tows going through are, how long the average wait time is, and how long it takes the tows to lock through. Here is the back-up this morning. 😳
Here is a good shot of a tow that is made to go under bridges. The pilot house is on a hydraulic lift, so he can be up to see where he is going, then put it down to go under a bridge. We went by one of these going in the opposite direction a few days ago, and he advised our parade to get past him as soon as possible, because once he dropped his house, he wouldn’t be able to see!
When we got to the lock, there was another PC there, so now there was a lucky 13 of us! Or so we thought. The lock was bringing up a double load of barges, and it would be awhile. But the lock master wanted us all tucked in off the port side of the lock, so we all bunched up together. Another day of practicing treading water without hitting each other or the bottom or anything else.
Here are the buddies, Compass Rose and Corkscrew. They dropped anchor to wait.
The scenery was really pretty. There was a large rocky hill to one side of the dam. On the map, it showed a park area, and Lover’s Leap!
Sherry took a nice picture of us while we were treading water.
I was watching a little island full of a whole variety of birds. There were white pelicans, a brown colored eagle, Canadian geese, and an egret! All just hanging out together.
We finally got cleared to go into the lock. This was interesting, and I found out that I was wrong about how they do these big double tows. These barges were in the lock all by themselves, with no power – no tug to push them. The lock master advised we stay out of the way, as they would be coming out without power. HUH?! I think the largest tow we’ve seen was 15 barges…. 3 wide by 5 long. These large multiple barge tows need to be split to go through the Illinois locks.. The locks are only long enough to accommodate 3 barge lengths, so the barges are split and the front 3 are sent through, then the tow and two other barge lengths come through. This was the first three of the upbound load. They were actually hooked up to a cable system and pulled out of the lock! Then the 13 of us PC’s slipped in behind them to get into the lock. The lock master was letting us ride down in the lock reset, then they would bring up the tow and the other two barges to get hooked back up to the three. So we really had to sneak through a little opening.
We were piled in there. Some rafted three across, some two, some single.
Then at the bottom, we had to sneak around the end of the rest of the tow that was waiting to go up.
It really was a sneak around. Looking back, you can just see SeaJamm’s nose coming around.
Woohoo! That took a little longer than we planned, but it was nice of the lock master to squeeze us in the middle of that split load! We were finally on our way out of the lock at 11:45. The river snakes around and makes some S curves. SeaJamm was in the lead about a mile ahead of us. We were in about spot #10 in the pack. We could watch the tows on the AIS, which is SO helpful! There was a big one coming around a curve ahead which was apparently in a narrow spot, so SeaJamm turned around and came back, as did everyone else in front of us. And it was time to tread water again, and wait for this big guy to come around. We floated around for about 20 minutes. These tows only move about 3 mph going upstream.
Then we were on our way again!
At one point a helicopter buzzed us, coming down real low on the river. We wondered which one of us the FBI was looking for.
Several of us were planning to go to the Illinois Valley Yacht Club to stay tonight. That is 63 miles from the lock, and we got out of the lock at noon. Compass Rose decided he needed to put the hammer down. We stayed at our 10+mph, figuring we’d get to the marina right about sunset. Some of the flotilla were only going to travel about 35 miles from the lock, and planned to stop at Henry and tie up to an old lock wall. Some were going to anchor out near there. We just thought is was a beautiful day on the water, and there wasn’t much that we were missing in Henry – so we might as well just make a full day of it.
Uh OH! We’re in PERU!? Wow – we really miscalculated!
I guess the water can get high here, with a lot of debris! At one point in the river we were following Someday, and had this conversation with Clive, our Aussie friend with a strong Aussie accent:
Someday calls out on the radio – “Island Girl, there’s a log on your starboard side.”
Kenny replies – I thought you said, “Island Girl, you’re the love of my life.”
“Just between you and me”, he says. He is so fun!
This was an interesting looking old brick pillar with all kinds of garden growing on it.
We have seen so many barges of DIRT moving up and down this river, it is amazing! Dirt going up, Dirt going down. I guess there are lots of different kinds of dirt that people want where they don’t have it. Cranes loading and unloading are a very common sight.
Here is some evidence of the previous river level. The poor tree roots are just hanging out.
Here’s another one of those uppy-downy tows. When we approach a tow, we can call him by name because we have the AIS. It tells us the name of the boat and how fast it is moving. We can see them on the AIS way before we can visually see them because of all the curves in the river. And they can see Island Girl’s info as well. So we call the tow by name and ask how they would like us to proceed to pass. If they say “on the one”, or “one whistle” that means we need to go to go to the starboard side of the channel from our perspective, and pass them on the right.. If they say “on the two”, we go to the port side of the channel and pass them on the left. These are old terms, and refers to when boats would sound their whistle or horn to communicate. In this picture, we are on the two.
I had my turn at driving for awhile to give the Captain a break. So I had my chance to watch the AIS, call tow captains, request passing instructions and all that stuff. I think I did pretty good. Rumor has it that the tow captains like to hear a woman’s voice every once in a while. 👍
Ahh – finally, at about 6:30, we arrived at “IVY” – Illinois Valley Yacht Club. There were six of us that came here. It was a narrow entrance, but fortunately there were already four boats in, so we already heard the instructions about entering the harbor.
It was Taco Thursday in the club, so we all went up for that. The club members were all so nice and welcoming! They have a pool, but it was already closed for the end of the season. Darn. OK – we will probably just move on tomorrow then.
Compass Rose had his bow thruster go out before the lock this morning, so they and Corkscrew will be staying here tomorrow. Just four of us will be moving on in the morning. We are about 10 miles above the Peoria lock. SeaJamm said they’d call the lock for timing in the morning and give us a wake up VHF call. I like this ‘group travel’ through the locks. At least there’s enough of us to make the lock lift worthwhile for the lock master, and we are a little less of a gnat in the butt for him if we go as a fleet rather than a bunch of single PCs. 🐢
