NM Today: 43
NM Total: 1614
Locks Today: 1
Locks Total: 76
When I woke in the morning, I thought our plan to continue our voyage downstream today may be delayed due to heavy fog covering the marina.
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| Fog at Heritage Harbor Marina Ottawa, Illinois (Our boat has the green kayak) |
Fortunately, with a breeze and bright sun, the fog cleared rapidly, and we were able to be on our way by 9:00 which was reasonably close to our original planned departure time. We coordinated our departure plans with Fryedaze the night before to lock through together. Just before we pulled out of our slips, however, Always Home also pulled out of the marina. The three boats locked through together at Starved Rock Lock.
We almost missed our opportunity to lock through with them though as Clark was busy station-keeping, i.e. making sure his boat didn't go too far up / downstream or out of the channel. He managed to balance the boat mid-stream such that the opposing forces of the wind and the current held the boat in one place. I heard the whistle blow to signal the lock ready, but we didn't start moving. I saw that the other two boats had moved on and were now much further downstream, so I pestered the captain of our boat about why we were sitting there. He proceeded to tell me about his clever station-keeping.
I repeated my, "But why are we still sitting here?" question twice more before he finally "woke up" and got my meaning. Then he got the boat in gear and zipped down and into the lock to tie up. When we got in there, Dave from Fryedaze said he thought we had broken down since we were sitting sideways in the river and not moving when the all clear sounded to load the lock. I told him, "the captain was asleep on the job".
In truth Clark thought the boat in the lock was exiting downstream and that we had to wait for a complete cycle for our turn. If I hadn't nagged at him, we would have had to wait that cycle and possibly more since we found a barge coming towards the lock from the other way on the river when we exited the lock. If large, the tows can take multiple cycles to complete a lock through.
Traveling downstream, we have moved on from the heavy industrialization we saw along the river up near Chicago. We still see various plants scattered along the way however. We passed one today that smelled so bad it made my eyes water and my nose run instantaneously. Later talking to the folks on Fryedaze I found out that it was a fertilizer plant. I cannot imagine who could work there or what their health may be like if they do. It was just awful, and I couldn't wait for the boat to get further along the river and out of smell range, so I could once again breathe freely.
I mentioned in my Chicago blog entry about the Asian Carp and their propensity to leap out of the water and occasionally land on passing boats. Well, we have now seen many jumping carp. Many varieties of invasive carp exist in the U.S., but the one that jumps is the Silver Carp. They can jump up to 10 feet in the air. I haven't seen any do that well, but I have now seen many jump several feet into the air (3 feet or so mostly).
I read on Wikipedia that catching carp by standard fishing / angling methods is nearly impossible due to their habits of digging down into the muddy bottom. However, clever sports enthusiasts have come up with other means of challenging themselves. Part of an official fishing tournament now is catching the most jumping carp in fishing nets - not the kind you drag through the water. I didn't read about it on Wikipedia, but I saw several men in a boat today using crossbows to shoot the fish as they jumped out of the water. They generate noise / vibration to aggravate the fish to make them jump and then shoot them with an arrow when they come up out of the water.
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| Bow and Arrow Shooting of Silver Carp |
We targeted Henry, Illinois as our destination for the night. As we came to Henry's Marina we slowed down to take a look. From reading email from our looper friends, we had heard that the wall was rough and not worth the marina fee to stay there. We have stayed on some rough walls but this one "took the cake"! We decided to pass on this wall opportunity!
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| Old Lock Wall at Henry's Marina Zoom in to see the uneven wall and rough edges! |
We continued on by Upper Henry Island anchorage as we noticed that it was not well protected from boat traffic wakes, and instead, opted to anchor behind Lower Henry Island. It turned out to be a lovely, peaceful little spot for the night. We had a little concern with the anchor line as proper "scope" on an anchor is 7:1 meaning for every one foot of depth of water, seven feet of line should be deployed. The water measured a depth of about 15 feet. 15 x 7 = 105'. The anchorage area behind Lower Henry precludes that kind of line length. If the boat swings around, as it normally does on an anchor due to winds and current, we could end up with the back of the boat sitting on land.
We positioned ourselves roughly in the middle of the waterway and used our eyeballs to guesstimate whether we could stand a swing of 360 degrees should winds shift, etc. The captain said it looked okay, so we watched for a while until we were comfortable and then deployed the dinghy to go exploring. Near to Henry's there is a wildlife preserve. I read online that fishing and hunting on the preserve are allowed if the water is deep enough to get a boat in there. We decided to go check it out.
First we stopped by to say hello to Dave and Betsy on Fryedaze. That hello turned into an almost two-hour travel plans chat with Betsy and Clark comparing their notes on where to go and what to see. We came away from that conversation satisfied that we had good plans as far as they went, but Betsy had planned well beyond Clark, so we took away good ideas for stops further downstream.
When we finally climbed back into our dinghy and looked back at our boat, I nearly panicked. Sea Moss had swung so far to one side that it looked like it was most likely sitting on the shore. We could see it was still on anchor. What we couldn't tell was what was behind Sea Moss - water or land! Clark zipped over in the dinghy to take a look. Sea Moss was floating! He said that, using the depth finder on his dinghy, the water depth behind the boat was four feet. No problem since we only need 3 and 1/2 feet of water, so we had a full 6 inches to spare.
Still I made Clark get out of the dinghy and check the anchor line as I wasn't comfortable that she would stay floating. The anchor line was somewhat slack and I was concerned that any further wind would push us all the way to the edge and the pile of trees sitting there. Clark shortened the anchor line to a scope of 5:1.
Having settled that, we piled back into the dinghy to go find our preserve. For some reason Clark thought it was upstream on the right. It wasn't. It was downstream on the left, but regardless of that we never got there. Upstream on the right we found the entrance to a lake. When we tried to get in there to look around, figuring it closely resembled a preserve, we saw that the depth finder showed zero feet of water. The depth finder sensor sits a couple of inches below the boat bottom, so we were still floating but we cannot use the outboard in 2 inches of water. We abandoned our exploration and headed back to Sea Moss.
As we motored around the area, we found that the silver carp did not particularly like our outboard, and several carp jumped out of the water on either side of the boat as we motored along making me jump and screech. Having read that people have suffered broken bones, concussion, and other injuries when hit by a flying carp, I was nervous being so low down in the water next to them jumping. Clark gave me the fin part of the dinghy paddle (not the whole paddle mind you) to wack one if it came too close to coming in the boat. I am sure the paddle fin would have done me no good whatsoever; however, armed and dangerous, I felt ready to take them on like a solid contender in a cricket match!
Normally I enjoy exploration in the dinghy, but between worry over the anchor for Sea Moss and combating flying fish, I suggested we call it quits, put the dinghy away, and make dinner before it got too dark to see the stove. I hate that it gets dark so early in this timezone!
When we sat down to eat, I finally had a chance to check my cell phone and see that my son, Chris, had called earlier while I was cooking. After dinner I called him back, and we chatted for a good long time as he drove to his temporary work location in Boston. As we talked I noticed that stars were popping out all over the sky, and I mentioned to him that I wished I knew what I was looking at. I used to know more, but my current knowledge of constellations is sadly lacking due to lack of use. Living in New Jersey close to NYC means stars are a scarcity.
Chris suggested I try a constellation app on my phone. I found StarTracker which is pretty darn cool. Using built in capabilities of the phone, it allows the user to aim the phone at the sky and the appropriate constellation appears based on location, direction, height, etc. Using the app I found Ursa Major (of course - I had that one without the app), Ursa Minor and the North Star, Cassiopeia, Hercules (which I did not know existed), Aquarius (for my birthday in January), and Capricorn (near Aquarius in the sky). I found others too that I had never heard of. I looked for Orion's Belt (the other constellation I remember), and either I did not look in the right place or it was not visible in this place at this time.
With no WiFi and very low cell service, I decided to take the night off from blogging and hit the bed early. We arranged with Fryedaze to be under way at 8:00 on Monday (I know that is sleeping in to most loopers - but not us). Getting some sleep sounded like a great plan.
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