Stats for Saturday, September 29, 2018

Origin:  DuSable Harbor, Chicago, Illinois

Destination:  Joliet Free Wall

Distance:  41 miles

Speed:  6.9 mph

Time on the Move:  5 hours and 55 minutes

 

We woke up on Saturday with nervous anticipation knowing this trip straight through downtown Chicago is one of the highlights of many looper trips.  Not only would it start off right away with Lock #1 EVER for this INNTW crew, but we would also be passing under some pretty low bridges, dodging lots of tour boat traffic, and starting a part of our trip we have very little experience with.  Plus, we were going to attempt a do-it-yourself pump out.  Woah baby, what a day!!

At DuSable Harbor there is a pump out machine that boaters can use on their own to pump out their waste tanks.  This is usually something that a gas station attendant does for you while you watch and feel thankful you don’t have to do that dirty work.  However, today was Mike and Hayley’s day to learn something new.  We have 2 heads (boat word for bathrooms) that each have about 20-25 gallon holding tanks.  The only thing that goes in these tanks is whatever goes in the toilets.  In our experience, if we are pretty much exclusively using the toilets on our boat, we can go about a week before the tank levels get dangerously close to the “full” level and we need to pump out.  They weren’t near that full today, but we wanted to be as fresh and clean and ready for new adventures as possible, so why not pump out?!   For free!!  (Usually it costs us $10-$20 to pump out both tanks.  Free is good!)  From my perspective, the task looked pretty easy (my perspective was far away from the actual pumping out, for the record).  Mike opened the tank, attached the vaccuum pump, Hayley pushed the green button, and then after a while Hayley pushed the red button.  There was some fresh water rinsing and then more pumping.  In the end, our tanks were clean and empty and we were ready for the next challenge of the day.  No biggie.

We took lots of pictures leaving DuSable and got our life jackets on right away.  Everyone helping a boat lock through is supposed to wear life jackets.  This is not exciting for the kids because they wear life jackets all the time.  Mike and I haven’t worn our life jackets since we bought them back in May.  We also got out some work gloves and a few pocket knives.  These are apparently other necessary items to have on hand when you lock through.  Colin was excited to help with this new task and he knew about as much as we did about what was going to happen.  He was ready!

 

 

We called the lockmaster and were instructed to pull in and hold lines on the starboard side, so that’s just what we did.  Colin grabbed a line to hold onto from the cockpit.  I grabbed a line to hold onto from the bow.  Mike checked on us and made sure everything was going according to “plan.”  The other kids sat “quiet and still” as instructed in any new or potentially tense situation.  Then, it happened.  We slowly dropped down about 1 foot over the course of 3 whole minutes before the lockmaster opened the gates and blew his horn signaling we were good to go.  That was it.  Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

 

And there before us was the fabulous skyline of Chicago!

All the kids were up top ready to watch us head through the big city.  I had my Skipper Bob’s Guide and pencil ready and waiting to check off each bridge we passed by.  The captain was ready to travel the busy waterway with a smile.  We celebrated with more picture taking, starting a movie we hope to time-lapse down to a quick recap, and ducking down at each low bridge we passed under.  (I’m sure that sounds silly, but it was really necessary a few times–those bridges are awfully low!!)  The ride through the city was absolutely amazing.  It was pretty cool being that close to so many boats and people right through downtown.

 

The city raises the bridges on a schedule few days in the fall and spring to allow sailboats to leave and enter winter storage areas down the river.  Unbeknownst to us we ended up in one of those groups, so coming up to a big group of sailboats was a bit puzzling.  It required some jockying of boats, but we were able to pass them by and head under the bridge before it opened.  On down the river.

 

After the city skyscrapers started to fade, we went through a more industrial area which was equally entertaining.

Just when the big city buildings were ending and the train tracks were losing their appeal, we encountered some new excitement.  There were some markers floating in the river along with lots of rowers.  Apparently we  had come across a rowing regatta.  We had no idea how to proceed with so many boats in the water ahead of us and no one from the regatta came out to give us any direction.  So, Mike attempted to hold the boat in place for a while against the current, just waiting for an opening to appear.  Finally, after 5 minutes or so, someone came up to us in a little boat with a megaphone telling us that the river was closed and we needed to wait 3 hours to pass through.  Mike and I were in complete disbelief that they could just close the river with no warning, but they assured us it was an official coast guard closure and was being broadcast on the Coast Guard’s daily updates.  Of course, while we were having so much fun around Chicago, we didn’t happen to be tuning in to the Coast Guard updates, so apparently we had missed that info.  Another boat traveling with us was equally surprised by the closure and turned back up river to head for some lunch.  We weren’t quite up for that much excitement, so we headed back up river just a bit and tied up to an empty barge to wait for the closure to expire.  It was a complete surprise to us and didn’t give us a good feeling about what other surprises the rivers would have in store.  But, we had little choice, and we made the most of our couple hours by having lunch and playing ninjas.

2 hours later, the lady in the little boat with the megaphone came back to tell us we could proceed, and we were anxious to get underway.  Just another 30 miles or so on the schedule for the day before we would arrive at our destination.  We had plenty of barges to dodge along the river, but Mike did a great job calling them ahead of time and figuring out which side they wanted him to pass on.  While their size and weight was intimidating, the barges were very friendly and we had no problems moving in and out of the busy staging areas where barges are tied up along the banks of the river waiting to move to their next destination.

 

One major difference we noticed right away between the river and the lake is that the river is SO BUSY and there is always a tow to call or a bridge to pass under.  It isn’t quite “set your autopilot and just hang out” like so much of our lake travel was.  This type of travel required much more attention from the captain.  We were very thankful we installed AIS (Automatic Identification System) on the boat before leaving home.  It allows us to read the names of commercial vessels around us, see which direction they are traveling, at what speed, and even identifies how close our 2 boats will get.  All the other boats with AIS can also see all of that information about us, so the big tows and freighters know we are out there and can watch out for us.  It was great peace of mind in these busy areas.

 

There is an electronic fish barrier along the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, meant to keep Asian Carp from entering the Great Lakes.  We have read about this area of electrification and knew that there wasn’t much we had to do as we drove through it.  We all put life jackets on.  We brought the kids up to the flybridge so they were as far away from the water as possible.  We turned our chartplotter and other navigation electronics off as an extra safety precaution.  You don’t necessarily have to do this, but we had read some reports that people had malfunctioning equipment after driving through this area, so we figured better safe than sorry.

 

And that was about it.  We hoped we’d see some jumping fish or maybe even have fish jump into our boat, as we’ve heard can happen.  But nothing.  No luck.  Probably for the better because I hear they are bloody and slimy and gross and I really don’t like cleaning that much.

I tried to hang out on the flybridge as much as possible and be a second set of eyes for Mike, but he did a great job navigating and negotiating around the tows.  I also followed other boaters’ travels on the Nebo app which is used by a lot of loopers as a tracking/messaging tool.  (If you are a boater, check it out!!)  It was nice to see some other boats were traveling the rivers, as well, and were most likely headed to the Joliet wall that night.  Sure enough, when we pulled up to our 2nd lock (of the day AND ever) we were directed by the lockmaster to tie up along the wall and wait with 2 other boats that were already there.  The half hour wait or so gave us a chance to chat with some new looper friends, and we also receive word that a lock down the river (probably 2 travel days away) was closed until further notice for repairs.  We didn’t really know what that meant yet, but we took note to check into it more later.

When it was our turn to head into the lock, we realized it was freezing and also getting close to dusk.  We locked through with the 2 other boats we had been waiting with and also a tow that was pushing barges downriver.  In this part of the river system, the tows sometimes push so many barges that the whole vessel cannot fit into the lock at one time.  So this particular tow had pushed 6 barges into the lock while the tow stayed behind.  The barges locked down, and then I can only presume that the crew pulled the barges out of the lock and tied them up just downriver.  The lock then has to fill back up with water (possibly with other boats traveling up river or possibly empty), and then the tow moves into the lock to go down at which point it reattaches to the barges and moves along down the river.  The whole process can be quite a lengthy ordeal.  We were lucky enough that this tow captain didn’t mind pleasure craft locking down with him.

 

After we were done locking down, the tow captain was nice enough to let the 3 pleasure craft boats out of the chamber before him.  On the rivers, commercial vessels have priority over pleasure craft which quite often means that looper boats wait and wait and wait at locks while tows and barges get to go first.  It doesn’t seem fair to this elementary school teacher, but that is the way the system is set up based on the revenue that the tows and barges bring in.  But I digress.  So, ahead of us, the 2 other Loop boats both had big time trouble trying to get out of the lock and it was slightly terrifying to watch, this being our 2nd lock and all.  The first boat was a sailboat that got turned all around and ended up slamming into the lock wall, knocking his dinghy off the davits on one side so that the dinghy was getting dragged behind by just one end.  We couldn’t figure out how that had happened and we felt stunned and sorry for their damage, but we thought maybe they just didn’t know what they were doing (I mean…who did?!).  Then, as the trawler ahead of us went to pull out, he suddenly spun sideways with black smoke billowing out the back, and also hit the lock wall.  At that point I was still standing on the bow and so perplexed by what I was seeing.  I yelled up to Mike that the tow in the front of the lock must be pushing water out of the back and sending some kind of weird current towards that lock wall.  We were already in motion and the trawler was still pinned against the lock wall, struggling, so we didn’t really have much time to troubleshoot.  I sat down quickly and held on, not sure what to expect.  Mike made the decision to throttle up and put some power behind us to get out of there safely and not get pushed around by the tow’s wake.  We felt bad, thinking that we could have waked (rocked) the trawler that was struggling against the wall, but we didn’t want to end up getting pushed over in the same direction and slamming into him, either.  In the end, Mike made a good choice to just get out of there.  We only had 3 miles or so to get to our destination for the night and we talked about what in the world happened getting out of the lock the whole entire way to the Joliet wall.  And we ducked down 3 good times to make it under 3 bridges in a row at 17’1″.

We tied up easily in Joliet and were thankful to have that long day over with.  It was much anticipated, it was exciting, it was nerve wrecking, it was longer than we’d hoped, it was a little unsettling at times, it was exhausting.  In the end, we were glad to have a day of river experiences behind us.  We felt confidant in our abilities in most respects, but our experience with the river closure and the lock gave us a bad feeling about traveling in the rivers.  We weren’t planning on particularly liking traveling on the rivers and day #1 left us wondering what would come in the days ahead.

That being said, this is such a looooong post, I’m going to split it into 2 parts.  More to come about our time in Joliet soon. Thanks for reading about this exciting day and supporting our adventure.

Enjoy this awesome video of our trip down the river!