Rivers, Rain, Coal & Cold

We hurried out of Chicago to beat forecast 40-50 knot winds and 18 foot (!) waves. Reached the safety of Calumet River Sunday morning and pulled into Crowley's Boat Yard to have our radar arch lowered so we would clear a couple of 17 foot bridges ahead. With the help of a few strong men and women a support was made and the arch lowered. It's heavy.

We spent the night there and woke up to find the boat covered in coal dust. The Calumet is very industrial and the high winds blew dust from nearby piles of coal all over our bateau. A good hosing down cleaned her up, and we headed down river under sunny but very windy conditions. This part of the trip was NOT scenic but interesting. We had to play dog'em with some rather large tows (actually barges being pushed by tugs but called tows.) One tow was pushing 3 barges which in total were 105 feet wide, and he got them into and out of a lock that was 110 feet wide!

We have AIS (automated identification system) on board which is a great invention. It sends our boat name, size, speed and direction to anyone else with the system (most all large vessels have it) and we receive same from them. So, when a tow is a mile or so away we know and can call them to see which side they want us to pass on. To port is called "on the one whistle" to starboard "on the 2 ." Some tows are huge. One appeared to be carrying the rewards of plundering a good size village (see picture.)

Docking that evening required driving between two docks, turning the boat 180 degrees with the bow a couple of feet from one boat and the stern a few feet from the dock, and backing into the slip while the wind blew 30-40 knots. The martini came as soon as my heartbeat returned to normal!

The Calumet runs into the Chicago Sanitary & Ship Canal which was built to reverse the flow of water that used to send Chicago's sewage into Lake Michigan. So now it flows to St Louis and New Orleans. Clever, these Chicago folks. We trust the sewage is treated these days although that was not the case initially. In any event, we are running downhill for the next 1000 miles or so with or without sewage.

The Canal runs into the Illinois River where we are now. What a change! The Illinois is very rural, primarily because the land is only a few feet higher than the river and the river, of course, floods. So what we see are trees and thousands of birds. Swallows flit around the boat all day; herons and egrets line the shores, eagles soar above us and pelicans skim across the water on each side of us. I never knew pelicans came this far north, though these are not the brown ones we see in FL but are white with black wing tips. Quite handsome.



The weather has turned wet and cold and the river shallow so these will not be our favorite days. We are having a hard time finding marinas with enough water for us to even get to their pump out stations-talk about a crisis! Three pees to a flush until we hit the Mississippi in 160 miles, probably 3 days. Tonight we're at the town dock in Peoria, headquarters of Cat Tractor but the first huge industrial plant we saw was not theirs but Komatsu's! Talk about taking to the enemy.

We went for a walk around town but it was cold and wet so we came back to the boat to blog and get warm. The next few days are to be very cold with temps into the 20s at night. Hopefully our generator and heat pumps will prove adequate as there are no marinas for the next 160 miles.

We're heading out for a pizza tonight to build up our fat cells and will be off early tomorrow for a long day.