An Interlude:
Traveling The Rivers
Traveling The Rivers
I.
The decision, The preparation, We get Started, We get towed, We get started again, The trash heap, The engine fails, Repair at the barge, Held up at the locks, Joliet, A hard nights travel
Dear Friends and Family,
I know I promised an epilogue covering our time in South America… and it’s coming. But I thought that my current adventure – or misadventure – may be of interest. As you know we sold our home in Michigan and are now fulltime residents of Key West, Florida. We still have two storage units and a sailboat there, however. Bruce and Judy have been kind enough to not only clean the old house with Sharon, including the garage, but to drag the sailboat to there currently unused barnyard. That was nine months ago and it is time to relieve them of the burden. We looked at many options and got several estimates to haul it down by truck. On the way to Michigan we both arrived at the conclusion that I would take the boat down the river system to Key West. The money otherwise spent on hauling could be used to get her in shape (a necessary expense regardless) and defer costs of the trip.
Deciding was the easy part. The boat hasn’t been in the water for five years or so and it had some problems then. Between mice, mildew and broken parts it would be a daunting task to get her ready for the trip. For starters I took the broken tiller base to Ed who built me a new one from better aluminum stock than the original. Tradesmen are good friends to have. With my son Beau’s help it took two weeks of hard work to get her cleaned waxed and her bottom stripped of freshwater paint and a saltwater suitable paint applied. Meanwhile I had been discussing the trip with Mike at Pier 1000 Marina who had made the trip several times and did not discourage my effort. After building a cradle for the mast that would allow me head room and a convenient cross member for a sun and rain shelter, she was ready for the marina. With the help of another friend with a big diesel pickup truck the job was accomplished. I made arrangement to launch. Beau, our middle son, decided to take a week off of work and come with me the first week. I planned a Friday launch giving me Saturday to work out bugs and we would leave on Sunday.
Disregarding Tom’s advice on mechanics to work on the twenty year old 9.9 horsepower four stroke Yamaha outboard that would power our little vessel; I used the first guy I could find who could get it done in my time. He didn’t. I was put off and lied to for several days until he admitted he had a problem with getting it running properly. After having been stored unused for five years, the carburetor was thoroughly gummed. I canceled the Friday launch. The marina could not launch me on Saturday but agreed to do it Sunday. Finally late Saturday afternoon the motor was ready. I hung it on the back of the boat and checked the electronic ignition etc. Everything seemed fine. Sunday we lowered the boat into the water.
Among the repairs I made was to replace a through-hull fitting that was below the water line, in plastic and without a seacock (shut off). I installed one in bronze with a bronze seacock. As the boat hung I checked my work. There was a small but all too steady drip from the new fitting. We hoisted her back out. I completely re-did the fitting installation and, due to the lateness of the day and poor lake conditions, scheduled a launch for Monday morning.
The boat was lowered into the water again on Monday, the fitting remained bone dry. We quickly loaded the remaining provisions and worked our way out of the harbor for our first planned stop at Michigan City, Indiana. I pulled the rope that lowers my retractable rudder and we were off. Things seemed to be going well. We bumped over some bars in the shallow river upstream of the Main Street Bridge and I then noticed the rope holding the rudder had frayed to about half of its thickness. If it were to break I would lose steering. I would have to fix this problem in Michigan City.
We motored through the piers in Saint Joseph, pounding through the six foot swells that funnel through the solid structures since the Corp of Engineers work many years ago. Once on the Lake, the swells rolled in from the northwest at about two to four feet; manageable for our little ship. We were between Warren Dunes State Park and New Buffalo, Michigan when the engine cut back. Thinking it was out of gas we stopped to refill the tank from one of the gerry jugs I carry. After filling the tank, the engine would not restart. Clearly there were more problems than fuel. Having already purchased Boat US tow insurance I called the number. Soon I was in touch with a tow boat operator. He began looking for us, leaving from New Buffalo Harbor. I could not get my GPS to function properly so I guessed at my location. Just south of Warren Dunes and a mile out. We watched and could see very few boats. The Lake turned to glass and the sun pounded down. Rollers swayed us from side to side. I rigged the tarp over the mast and cooled us down by ten degrees. We waited, watched and talked on the phone. When the tow operator was near the Cook Nuclear Plant and a mile out he asked for a fix from us on the Cook Plant. I took a bearing on the facility on the distant shore and gave it to him. It was not long before we saw him steaming toward us. When the boat finally located us we learned we were in fact four miles out. We were towed into New Buffalo Harbor to the Municipal dock there. It was evening so we secured for the night.
New Buffalo is not a large port and has only one marina with a hoist. They had no means of getting our boat to their marina for haul out, however, even though we needed to go only a few blocks. They put us in touch with a competent mechanic who diagnosed part of our engine problem. It seems that my mechanic took the lower unit off to replace a water pump and did not reinstall locking nuts on the shaft that controlled the shifter. The vibrations loosened the shaft and it parted, making shifting impossible. The boat would need to be hauled to get to that problem. We had no luck Tuesday getting someone to tow us. Wednesday the marina finally agreed to launch a boat to tow us to their lift. They charged me ninety dollars for that short tow so that I could pay them ten dollars per foot to haul out on their travel lift – three dollars more per foot than in Benton Harbor.
The motor mechanic fixed the shifter while Beau and I replaced he rudder rope. It took most of the day. By mid-afternoon we were launched again and headed back to the Municipal Marina. I now noticed that I had about half power. Once docked again, I called the local mechanic. He ran me through a few checks but could not get to me to assist more. Thursday the local mechanic was out of town. I called my original mechanic who asked a couple of questions and then suggested it might be the spark plugs. He promised he would come to New Buffalo on Friday and would call first. He, of course, did neither. I, in the mean time went to the local auto parts store and purchased two new spark plugs. I removed the old ones which were totally clogged with soot and carbon. That was my problem. After a quick test, I was confident I resolved the it.
On Friday I had a phone interview for a prospective job at ten in the morning. Before that I double checked my radio – a necessity on the rivers – only to discover that I have a bad connection at my antenna. Beau went to the local marine store for a new antenna cable while I interviewed. I jury rigged a new connection between my antenna and radio and by noon we were off for Chicago.
From New Buffalo, the route to Chicago is nearly due west. The two to four foot swells that day were coming straight down from the north. We rolled side to side for over five hours until we reached the Calumet River. We moved up the river, under the railroad bridges and several streets, under the Skyway Bridge and on to a marina we identified at Burnham, Illinois.
We arrived at around eight o’clock in the evening local time. The boat slips were along the canal and were all filled with pleasure boats. Several others were on cradles behind some metal marina type buildings. It was clearly a marina for pleasure craft but had a very industrial look to it. Everything was closed except for the bar; a low, long, brown, drinking looking establishment. We tied off to a vacant dock and went into the bar to find someone to assist us. With the help of one of the marina workers who was in the bar docked properly. We asked about dinner. The bar grill was closed but they had frozen pizza the bartender could make. We sat and had one dollar draft beers and pizza as we talked to the patrons. I notice out the window as I sat in the bar looking over the Cal-Sag canal, a huge solid waste land fill – a trash heap. It came right to the edge of the canal. I said; “My God there’s a trash heap right there!” A slight built fellow named Gene with a scraggly salt and pepper goatee, hair in similar condition dangling down his neck from under his cap and nearly all of his teeth responded by saying that the EPA had been there a year or two before with flyers warning of the dangers of the solid waste site and that he, Gene, had left a day or two earlier because he was physically bothered by some of the waste being disposed of that day. They said that they protested the site, but this was a little backwater spot with few people and none with clout. Seven miles inland from Lake Michigan and minutes from downtown Chicago.
Gene was a personable fellow and was initially intrigued by our little sailing ship. He had a sailboat himself; a twenty-five footer. He told us of how he had invented a mechanism for his boat to easily step the mast by himself. He said that he thought he might market it but after a quick check on the Internet he discovered that there were a hundred different such rigs for that purpose.
He asked where we were headed. I told him Key West. I said we were going down the Illinois to the Mississippi, to the Ohio to the Cumberland and into Kentucky Lake. He stopped me. Kentucky Lake is a place that he has wanted to go for some years. We talked about what we each knew of the area, neither actually having been there. He said several times that he and his brother were going to go and had talked about going in the Fall. He wanted to buy property and get a boat there. After we finished our pizza, we bid our new friends adieu. Gene wished us luck. My departing words to him were, “Gene, make that trip.” “I will for sure,” he responded. I like to think that he will, especially after having talked with us.
In the morning we showered, had breakfast and left. The Cal-Sag canal was created for barge travel and sewage disposal, similar to the Chicago Sanitary and Ship canal, the other route. The signs posted along the canal were a reminder of all that we have done over the years to move ourselves forward while moving Nature back. The signs every quarter of a mile or so warned that swimming, skiing, jet skiing, wading or anything that would put one’s skin in contact with the water was prohibited. And the disposal sites, factories, refineries and all manner of heavy industrial use along the canal was clear evidence why the warning signs were posted. These are places that few people see and even fewer desire to see.
A few miles before the Cal-Sag canal joins the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal and moves into the Illinois River, my engine dropped to half speed again. We had no place to tie off so we proceeded at half speed for over an hour until around four thirty in the afternoon when we came to a loaded barge parked along the canal. Because it was loaded it was low enough in the water for us to use as a platform to reach my outboard hanging off my stern. The barge’s cargo appeared to be some sort of aggregate and not particularly dangerous. It was Saturday and no one was working at the site. Carefully I pulled over and tied off to the barge. With Beau’s help I quickly removed the spark plugs, cleaned them with sand paper I had on board and replaced them. Within an hour we were off again. That seemed to have worked.
Just past the junction of the Cal-Sag Canal and the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal is the first real lock we were to go through. We had locked through the Thomas O’Brien Lock the day before but it’s two foot lift was negligible. The Lockport lock would drop us forty-two feet. It was 6:30 P.M. Eastern time when we arrived. A tow was ahead of us and we didn’t lock through until 8:30 P.M. Eastern time. Beau was scheduled to go home on Sunday morning and Kim was picking him up at our marina stop at the Harborside Marina in Wilmington, Illinois, south of Joliet. The Lockport lock is at river mile 290, the Brandon Lock in Joliet is at river mile 286. The Marina is at river mile 273.7. We were about three hours from the marina if all went well. That would leave us enough light to make it.
We arrived at the Brandon Lock just on the south side of the I-80 bridge at 10:15 Eastern Time.. A barge was ahead of us again. We motored around for several hours as the barge locked through. At 1:30 A. M. Eastern time, we finally locked through. It was no longer daylight and Kim was nearly at the marina already. As we left the lighted lock, my eyes tried to focus on the night. I could make out the buoys but little else. As we proceeded we passed an electrical generating plant with a string of lights on its cooling towers that lined the river. I could not determine if we were in the channel or not. It appeared to me that we were heading into a bay of some sort. Beau’s night vision is better than mine and he assured me we were in the channel. We motored along slowly until I could again distinguish the channel. We powered ahead full throttle which moves us at about seven miles an hour.
It wasn’t long before I was getting confused again in the darkness. We passed a buoy on the wrong side at Cedar Creek and I ran hard aground. At about that time, Beau had wisely decided that we should be using my spot light. I was able to back off the bar with little trouble and we began to use the light. The buoys all have reflectors and could easily be seen with the light. We motored slowly picking our way along the channel. Beau shined the buoys and I checked my chart with a flashlight. We passed two tows on the way down and finally at approximately 5:00 A.M. Eastern time we arrived at the fuel dock of the marina. I tied off for the night. Beau packed his things, called Kim who was waiting outside the gate. No one was around so Beau scaled the fence and left for home. My next week would be alone. It was Sunday and I would use the day to rest. I vowed that there would be no more nighttime travel on this trip. Exhausted, I climbed into the vee-berth. Secured to the dock I slept well.
Until nest connection,
Dan
