roweboatadventures: HAMMOND IN to JOLIET IL / Tuesday, August 30 (Day 222)

Admiral's Log: 10:40 am, 8/30/16
Air Temp: 77 Water Temp: 69
Winds: 3 mph
Speed: 7.5 knots / 8.7 mph

Hard to believe we are starting the 2nd to last leg of this adventure! All we have left is the rivers and then the Gulf of Mexico. Depending on weather, flooding and the locks; we figure we could be home anywhere between the middle of November and the middle of December.

Speed in the rivers is now measured by miles per hour and distance is in statue miles, no more knots and nautical miles until we get back to the Gulf. I am going to miss the lighthouses since there are none on the rivers.

We had a pretty hazy/foggy start. We waited until Scott of Jet Stream returned his rental car and fueled up to leave, thus the late start. We had 52 bridges to traverse and 3 locks today! We went down the Calumet-Sag Channel because we are too tall to go through downtown Chicago. Luckily we have been to Chicago before and done the architectural tour through the city, so we did not miss much. After you get through downtown, the Chicago River is pretty nasty anyway.

These are just 4 of the 52 bridges we when under; both car and rail.

Flying our colors

The Cal-Sag is very industrial, but pretty interesting too. We were able to clear most of the bridges with our antennas down. We did have to lower our anchor light for one, but other than that it was smooth sailing.

These dozers threw this sheet metal around like toys.

Huge sulfur pile

This is a conveyor belt barge, we saw when we were in Manistee

Our first lock was the Thomas O'Brian lock, where we did not even have to tie off. It is only a 4 foot drop so we just floated. Our next lock was the Lockport Dam, where we descended 40 feet! It took us about 15 minutes. These locks are way bigger than the canal locks. They average 1000 feet long and 110 feet wide to accommodate barges and tugs.

Rowe Boat before our 40 foot drop.

And after...

Open sesame...

Next we entered a permanent electrical barrier designed to prevent Asian Carp from entering Lake Michigan. You can't see anything, but there are several signs warning you to stay out of the water!

You get the message?!

Three of us tied up at the last 3 spots (and free power) on the Joliet city wall around 6:45 that evening. There were 7 other Loopers already there. We had met Tim and Carol on Liquid Assets at the Rendezvous. The others were new to us. We had leftovers and went to bed early, it was a long day.