Friday Oct. 3, 2014 Good bye Peoria

Just a quick note about posting new entries. Sometimes our internet sucks. Verizon in southern Illinois is very disappointing performance wise. We have even had bad phone service. So if I don't post for a couple of days just drop me a text to enquire whether we are still floating. LOL.

Sitting at the free dock in Peoria

We departed the Peoria free dock at 7:51. Beulah Belle, the boat we have been traveling with is staying thru the weekend because of relatives visiting them. We headed to Peoria Lock and surprise , surprise. No Tows and barges waiting. We locked thru immediately in the the company of 2 other power boats.

R&R from New York ( Roger and Rhonda on board) and Balderdash from Charlevoix, Mi. with Tom on board single handing it. In the lock at 8:30 out by 8:45. It was only a 6 ft drop put it was over cast and very windy ( 30 mph gusts).

So off we went. It was a long day from mile marker 162.5 to Beardstown , Il. Mile marker 88.4. I know that doesn’t sound like much in a car but we only do 9 mph. It was so windy that there were actually white caps on the waves in the river. I my trips south I have never seen that.

The AIS ( Automatic Identification System) worked great today as I had 2 tows with barge contact me to let me know how they wanted to be passed. This system combines radio and gps so you can see targets on your chartplotter and get info about them. Really neat and it saves a lot of the anxiety of coming around a sharp turn in the river only to be confronted by a tow pushing 15 barges.

As  I said it rained a lot yesterday and many of the creeks tthat  feed into the Illinois River dropped all kinds of logs and junk in the river that must be avoided lest you bend a prop or worse. There was a lot of zigging and sagging on the river today. Thankfully the other two boats are faster then us so they called back on the radio to let us know what to expect.

We arrived in Beardstown at 4:45 pm. Had trouble docking what with the wind and current. The other two boats both docked with the current. I prefer to dock into the current because you retain more control of the boat. We went back out into the river and Colletta did a great job of quickly moving all the fenders and docking lines to the other side of the boat. We got the boat tied up and we then had to walk across 5 moored barges, up about 50 steps to the tug office and pay $ 1.00 per foot for the pleasure of tying to their barges. It’s the only game in town.

The picture doesn't do the waves justice. But we had gusting 30 mph winds and 2 ft waves with whte caps on the beautiful Illinois River. Never saw this before.

 

Tomorrow  early start for Grafton, Illinois and the end of the Illinois River. Then on to the Mississippi River.