Saturday, May 30, 2015

Long Day to Henry, IL

Sorry no good updates lately with pictures.  Internet connects have been non-existent.  We left Chicago yesterday morning at 5:30 and ran 129 miles to Henry, IL and are just northeast of Peoria.  In those 129 miles we did 5 locks.  We were very fortunate yesterday that one of the tows allowed us to jump ahead of him in line to get us through the 4th lock.  Otherwise, we would still be there waiting.  There were 5 barges coming through and they all needed to break down, lock through and reassemble on the other side.  It was a very time consuming process.  We only had to wait for one large tow and barge to go through and it took over 3 hours.  So you can imagine how long 5 of those would have taken.  We would have had to turn around and go back to a marina and try again in the morning.  All this happened around 3:00 in the afternoon.  So luck was on our side yesterday.

We hope to finish the Illinois River today and get down to Grafton or to Alton on the Mississippi.  If we get really lucky we could end up all the way down at Hoppie's below St Louis, but I seriously doubt that will happen.  I'll try and post some pictures tonight if I can.

By the way, we cleared the lowest railroad bridge on the Canal by about a foot.  David figured correctly that our actual height with the Satellite Antenna down and the anchor light down put us at 18'6".  We did not have to remove the radar or the stand for the light and Satellite Dome.

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