To lead or not lead? That was the question

Hello everyone and yes we are back on the boat. We have been for about 10 days. There has just been some very long days so hard to report.

Here we go and everything is chronicled by day so easy to take a break. Sorry, but days were going from 5:45 Am until 9:00 pm and we were in bed by 9:30. 🤦‍♀️😴

First things first- Our flotilla kept getting delayed due to weather, etc… Flotillas in front of us were not full and so Mike and I made the decision to give up being leaders of our Flotilla and jump up to another one, saving us 3 days time. We were sooo ready to move on and the delays were killing us. So, the answer to the question is- not to lead.

However, the Flotilla that we jumped into ended out combining with yet another flotilla that left a day later, due to yet more weather delays and our flotilla missing its date.

The combined flotilla group size went up to 16 boats. I am not going to lie when I say that part of waiting so long was to avoid the crowds. At the end of the day, we are in the thick of the crowds. We have over 60 looper boats hanging out right now all waiting to go further our way down the Mississippi .

Anchorages are few and far between as the water is so low. It is making for a very anxious time and I really can’t wait to get to Green Turtle Bay. What is Green Turtle Bay? It is a resort in Grand Rivers, Kentucky and is situated on Lake Barkley. It has a spa and restaurants and maybe even a golf course. We will spend a wonderful 4 days there.

This is all a little forward though- from where we are right now. Let me flashback to the beginning of this leg of the journey.

We arrived in Chicago a few days early, so we did do a little bit more sightseeing. We had a lovely dinner at a pretty cool jazz restaurant and the 2cnd night we went to a comedy show at the House of Blues. The show was good overall, even though Mike got teased a bit for forgetting how many years we have been married.

I might have gotten angry, but the thing is, I forgot myself over the summer and Vera had to remind me to look at when “ the boys “ were born and I could always get back to it. Bailey and Piotr were born the summer before our wedding- so it’s usually their age or at most, one behind it . Of course I knew this, but you just kind of forget sometimes… 🤣

The House of Blues was a huge building with many floors and stage areas. Once you left the main floor, there were no windows and usually the way in and out of the room was a cramped hallway. Both Mike and I walked out of there thinking it was a death trap in the event of a fire. If Mike is thinking that, then you know it’s pretty alarming.

1. View from our room in Chicago

2. In front of House of Blues

3. Jazz restaurant

After a few days, we were off to the boat and getting ready for our departure on Sunday the 22cnd. 14 of the boats in our locking flotilla were at Hammond or Chicago Marinas and we were at Marine Services with one other boat. We could have left on our designated day as we were already off the lake, but decided to stick with the crowd.

As it turns out, our new leader(s) (the two flotillas merged) were excellent and I was just as happy to let him do it. But they were very long days.

A reminder of why we had the delays- the first three locks on the Illinois river were closed all summer and the AGLCA organized flotillas to make traveling through them easier and less chaotic as there were a lot of boats waiting for the opening. I believe there are around 278 boats doing the loop this year and now we are figthing low waters and a key wall closure to boot. Fun Stuff—-

****A few things about the locks on the Illinois and inland rivers

1.Tows/Barges have priority over pleasure craft - period, end of story. If barges are coming, we must let them through the locks first and it can make for some long delays.

2. On the Illinois river, many barges are too big for the locks and must be broken up and put back together. A single tow can require multiple lockages while you just hang there and wait. Sometimes you can tie off, sometimes you can’t.

How they break them apart and put them back together is interesting though. They use cables to pull the barges into the lock and then reassemble everything on the other side.

Back to our journey—

Our organized flotilla was arranged for a 3 day transport together.

Day 1: Meet meet at the Joliet Wall in Joliet Illinois.

Day 2: Pass through the 3 locks that had been closed and end the day at Heritage Harbor in Ottawa Il.

Day 3: Pass through Lock 4 together and then people could do as they please from there.

How did all of this go?

Day 1:- we were up early with the one boat that was at Marine Services and took off at 7:00 am. We traversed down the Cal Seg and it was one of the most stressful days- at least for me. The river was narrow and the barge traffic was congested. We were having issues with our AIS and our binoculars weren’t working. Lesson learned on the binoculars- have multpile pairs for sure. Our buddy boat for the day ended out calling on the tows for passing instructions, etc, so it all worked out, but it was absolutely no fun!

1. The Cal Seg did have some cool parks built around man made waterfalls.

2. You must pass through an electric fence in the water. In an earlier group, some electronics were wiped out and one boat was left inoperable. No one since then has had issues. The theory is that the boat that was left inoperable had a grounding issue. - The barrier is there to keep the Carp out of Lake Michigan as they are invasive. It is interesting driving over an electric fence in the water in your boat though..😅

3. Here comes the rest of our flotilla

4. Captains meeting outlining the next day.

Day 2: we were now a group of 16 boats. We departed Joliet at 6:45 and worked our way down the river. All but one other group got through all three locks reasonable well and hit Heritage Harbor before dark. We weren’t so lucky. Every lock was delayed and the last one by several hours. We arrived just after dark…

The Dresden (second lock )was clearly still having a lot of issues and they had a full staff of mechanics on board to deal with issues as they came up. Of course when we rolled through, there were gate issues.

Heritage Harbor was amazing though. The manager had all of our assignments ready for the group and talked to us on radio as we traversed that last two miles from the lock to the marina In the dark.

When we arrived at the marina, people with flashlights were guiding vessels and Harbor Master was on the top of a bucket truck so she could visibly see us and guided us all in and to our slips. I so wish I had gotten a picture of her in her bucket, but she came down just as I saw her…

After we were all settled, her husband gave us an extensive overview of how the rest of our journey between there and Paducah would go. This is when we learned many anchorages had no water. The river is down upwards of 20 feet. Her husband is also the Sea Tow Captain so he knows his stuff for sure!

Hats off to Heritage Harbour.

1. Early morning rise

2. Traveling along

3. Here we come

4. Rafting up

5. Sailboat that was our pace keeper. He was a cool guy though and planned on traveling all the way through to the Caribbean

6. Deer at the last lock where we waited so long.

7. Sunset is coming a bit too quickly.

8. Two other Beneteau‘s in our group

9. Briefing that night over a pretty darn good dinner

10. We arrived in the dark and left in the dark, but I loved Heritage harbors duck house. Quack Quack

Day 3 :we locked through uneventfully and made it to our destination in Peoria with no incidents and before dark.

1. Loved the roots

2. Hello Mr Barge

3. IVY yacht club

Day 4 Was a long day, but there was minimal barge traffic. We stayed the night tied to a barge that Logsdon Tug Service owns. Pretty cool business model for them. It’s their fuel barge that you tie up to. It is first come first serve and cash only. No amenities except they will let you use their crew restroom. You can get off the tug by climbing 25 steep open air steps up to land and then the town is right there. It was a cute town where we enjoyed a Mexican dinner with fellow loopers.

****Side note: We have become friends with 2 other boats and have been traveling with them through all of this. One is a Carver 450 and the other is a Swift 42, which happens to be very similar to our boat. The carver has some shaft issues which will be fixed further down the rivers, but we are keeping pace at a 10 knot pace due to that. However, we added some speed this day so that we were assured some wall space and then the 42 rafted off of us and the carver rafted off another looper.

Up until today, we have mostly been a pack of 3 traveling along, but the 42 jumped ahead of us today and we will see them again at GTB: end sidenote***

1. Tied up to Logsdon Tug Barge

2. Their tow that arrived at about 6:00 am

3. Goodbye Logsdon

Day 5: We made it to Grafton Il with a delay at the lock, but were there before dark, which is really the key thing. They had us tie off to a dock at a restaurant just up the river from the lock so the delay was easy.

We spent two nights in Grafton. It was a welcome relief after running hard on the rivers. Grafton happens to be at MM 0 for the Mississippi and they have a chairlift or Gondola that takes you up to the top of a mountain to a winery where you can enjoy lunch and see where the Illinois and the Mississippi join. It was a beautiful view.

We brought the dogs to that adventure and had to ride a gondola because of it. They claimed it was open air, but it was actually stifling hot and thank god I had water on me to cool the dogs.

There were several people needing assistance on and off the chairlifts and gondolas . It was a hotspot for seniors in walkers. I actually think it’s cool ( no pun intended) that everyone can get to the top, but when it added 15 minutes to a trip that was already upsetting, it didn’t make me happy in the moment. It was like we were all locked in a very hot car with no air flow. Puts the whole thing into perspective…. They claimed there gondolas were open air and there was air, if they were moving and not stopping every two minutes. It was a pretty stressful trip up.

After that, things started to improve. we had a lovely afternoon and even went on a mountain coaster. Well, I did. I had planned on walking the dogs down, but the weather dropped as the afternoon went on, so I decided to wait for a gondola to come around. Then all of sudden, it was looking like serious rain…. Mike hopped on a chair and I started walking.

Halfway down the hill, Mike was passing me by telling me if I take the road to the right, I will go directly to marina. ( Thanks Mike) so, I did. The skies opened up and I got back before Mike and our friends did. Whoops. Everyone got wet, including me, but it was a great afternoon.

1. Hanging out waiting for the lock to open

2. Frankenstein- Happy Halloween

3. This river can rise!

4. -7Grafton Marina is quite colorful. It is covered and I guess its a bit of a party marina. People have full kitchens and living areas outside under cover. Or, take a dip in the hot tub. Pretty crazy. It was cold and quiet for our two night stay. But you felt the vibe for sure.

8. Big Houseboat

9-11 The town is also quite colorful.

12-16 Up at the winery. Beautiful pics of the rivers below

17-18 Rainbow after the storm

19. Cold dogs

20. I really don’t remember where this was taken, but somewhere in or around Grafton. 🤦‍♀️🤣It was a great pic so…..

Day 7: We moved to Alton. Just 16 miles down the river. And yes, we are on the Mississippi. This stop has turned out to be a 3 day Stop. There has been a fair amount of rain and we have used the time to re-provision, bathe the dogs and clean the boat.

Today, we went the Mel Price Dam and museum and checked it out. The Museum was pretty neat. It explained all about the Mississippi origins through today. It talked about the locks on the northern Mississippi and then took us on a tour of the lock. At least as much as security would allow. A barge was in the lock and watched it lock through.

1. Alton has a true floating pool.

2. Full moon this am

3. Looking down on a barge locking through the Mel Price dam. This will be our first of two locks tomorrow.

4. The width of the dam. Pretty darn big. These locks are built big enough for barges that are 3 wide and 5 long without breaking them apart.

Tomorrow, we will continue our trek down the Mississippi river and work our way to Green Turtle Bay Resort. That will be a real celebration. We will be at the 550 mile mark of the 1300 miles of the inland river system and we will be through the Illinois, the Mississippi and the Ohio.

If all goes well, tomorrow we will be at yet another barge for the night. I am not sure how comforting it is knowing you are tied up to a barge of fuel, but hey….. The next day we will anchor out at the little diversion canal and then we will either anchor at at the Olmsted lock on the Ohio, or if we are lucky, make it to Paducah.

From there it is a short hop and one lock to GTB. Everyone is sooo ready for it and I probably won’t post again until we get there. Back to the 5:45- 9:00 grind.

Commentary:****We were not happy about the large flotilla. I was even in a horrible funk and not a great mood the day that we moved to the Joliet Wall through all that heavy barge traffic. At that point, we were only with one other vessel, but I was dreading moving up to 16!

But here’s the thing. We have met some great people and everyone stayed calm and professional All of these people who didn’t necessarily know each other, worked together to get down the river and through the locks. Our slowest boat was a sailboat at 7sh knots. That set our pace for the 4 days. We all just ran with it and no one complained. True teamwork and it restored my faith a little bit in humanity.

Captain Mike has done a great job. We aren’t through it all yet, but we are getting closer….🛥️

The only other thing to report is that it is freaking cold. Docks had ice on them this am and we are in the middle of this serious cold snap. Of course the coldest day will be our anchoring out day🥶— oh well. We‘ve certainly done it up north.

This marina is actually turning all water off for the season tomorrow and we are just ready to get off of these rivers and get onto the Tennessee. We hear that it will be calmer. No idea, but here is hoping. Regardless, in 3 or 4 days, we will have 4 days at a marina with a spa- Heaven. ❤️