Joliet to Ottawa, IL

October 15-17, 2022: A short stay on the free wall, new friends, and the next leg of our journey south.

(continued from Chicago to Joliet, IL)

We wound up spending two nights along the free dock wall in Joliet, IL, and so did most of the other boats there.

Making New Friends

Although the Joliet wall can be quite full in September when most Loopers are making their way south, I think there were only six of us there in mid October. We made a few new friends:

• Kim and Ted in the Ranger Tug named Pony. We’d met them in Chicago and had pretty much followed them all the way to Joliet.
• Kenny and Rhonda in the Kadey Krogen Nine Lives. We’d waited at the drawbridge with them (and so many others) on the way down from Chicago but had left them behind along the way. They caught up and tied up at the end of the wall.
• Connie and Michael in the Grand Banks La Principessa arrived much later. They knew Kim and Ted from earlier in the Loop.
• There were also folks in de-masted sailboats Whisper and Black Majik. We met along the wall and chatted a few times but didn’t cruise with them.

We were all relatively late loopers, enjoying the fact that marinas and other facilities were a lot less crowded but not really enjoying the cool weather that was settling in around us. And although we chatted alongside the wall, we didn’t socialize much more than that.

Keeping Busy in Joliet

The unfortunate part about the wall in Joliet is that it isn’t close to anything except the waterfront park. There were a few convenience stores on our side of the river — Janet explored them on her own one day in search of the coolers she likes to drink — and a casino with a restaurant on the other side of the river not far from the town’s municipal center with its courts, lawyers, and bail bondsmen. The visitor center office at the edge of the park was either closed for the weekend or for the season; it was deserted. And, of course, there were no restrooms or other facilities. I considered us lucky to have access to garbage pails.

The park was a great place to walk my pups and let them run around on the grass. I went out a few times a day with them. Otherwise, I settled myself in to do some blogging. I had planned to blog each day of the trip as soon after completing it as I could and I got off to a good start in Joliet, writing up blog posts about moving the boat from Olympia to Chicago and getting the boat on the Loop. Sadly, that good start was not to last as circumstances intervened along the way. (I’m writing about this more than two months after it happened, so forgive me if my memory of details is hazy.)

We made meals on the boat — we had plenty of provisions. Although I would have liked to spend more time off the boat — I had high hopes of doing a good daily walk — there was no place interesting to go and it was too cold anyway. If it were 20° warmer, I would have been out and about, looking for someplace interesting to go. Not for the first time, I wished I’d started the trip earlier in the season.

I did send my drone up early one morning to get photos of Do It Now (and Pony) with the brilliant red autumn colors behind them. I’ve already shared one of them in the previous post. Here’s another:

I I shot this photo on Sunday with my drone. It became the basis of my new boat cards.

As for the wall as a place to dock? It was fine. Yes, the barge traffic did come very close to us, but they were operating at slow, no-wake speeds so they didn’t rock us much.

This should give you an idea of how close the barges passed to us. We were tied up along the wall when I shot this.

We did have a big power boat tie up in front of us on Sunday afternoon. The guy driving it complained about hitting a log and dinging the prop enough to set up a vibration in the drive system, but he didn’t seem to care much. He was waiting for a guy to come with fuel. Sure enough, a while later a guy came with a car full of five-gallon gasoline cans and handed them down to the boat. They drained the cans into the boat, waited for another load, and did it again. Then the boat took off downriver into the fading, late afternoon light. We didn’t see him again.

The Cruise

The cruising guides we all had recommended calling the next lock before leaving the wall, and one of us did so. I think it was Kenny in Nine Lives. When the lockmaster told us to come, most of us left together, eager to avoid a wait like we’d had the night before.

I was prepared. I’d taken down the Bimini top and secured it inside its cover. No more “sailing” inside locks for us.

I don’t know why, but the lockmasters on this part of the trip liked to raft us together on one side of the lock. They’d pick the side and tell us who to raft to. The first lock (Brandon Road), we went through rafted to Nine Lives and La Principessa rafted to Pony. In both cases, the size differential was nuts; Nine Lives and La Principessa are a very large boats. But Kenny and Rhonda know what they’re doing and they made it easy for us.

Here’s a wide angle view of Do It Now rafted to Nine Lives in the Brandon Road Lock.

Behind us, La Principessa was rafted to Pony.

We had no wait at the first lock and only a short wait at the other two. I don’t recall the rafting arrangement but I know we went through alone on at least one. Even without much of a wait, locking takes time and three locks in one day made for a long day.

The cruise itself was uneventful. The Illinois River was mostly a narrow channel, dredged and marked for the tows. Although we went through a few towns and under more than a few bridges, the landscape on both sides of the boat were mostly wooded areas. Janet was definitely disappointed. I don’t know what she was expecting, but she kept comparing it to the mountains of her summer home in Colorado. It’s a simple fact of geography that Illinois is mostly flat and, when the sun wasn’t out, even the autumn foliage along the river looked dreary.

I have vague memories of passing a few tows along the way, including one that was maneuvering alongside the river and wouldn’t answer the radio. When he did, it was with a nasty, “I’m busy now,” followed a minute later with, “If you can pass behind me, do it.” It was around then that I learned that tows are on Channel 13 in that river and that I’m in a “pleasure boat” instead of a “motor vessel.” (Thank you, Kenny, for those important tips.)

Arriving at Heritage Harbor

After the last lock, I pulled ahead, tired of the slow cruising speed we were keeping and eager to finish for the day. (This is before I learned the value of slow speed as a way of minimizing fuel costs. Duh.) I was the first to arrive at our destination for the evening: Heritage Harbor Marina in Ottawa, IL. It was about 3:30 PM. My engine had logged 7.5 hours.

Pony and Nine Lives pulled in behind us a short while later. I’d already lost track of La Principessa and the others.

Here’s the Nebo log for October 17, 2022. Download a PDF of the log with more info. Track Do It Now on Nebo.

(Continued in Ottawa to Henry, IL.)