Of course, we wanted to stay in Door County as long as possible before heading onto the River System. Unfortunately, the precipitous decline in the health of my 96 y/o mother Eileen necessitated an earlier move south than planned to be closer to her. She entered hospice care in September, fell and broke her hip in early October, and died peacefully in her sleep the morning of October 27th. We are forever indebted to the excellent care provided by Dr. Evan Dougherty at Hinsdale Orthopaedics/IBJI who treated her hip and worked with her family with grace and compassion helping us to navigate end-of-life treatment options. She had a “good run” as they say and lived a long and fulfilling life, you can’t really ask much more than that. https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/kanzler/eileen
While Nancy was in the Hampton’s, I took the boat south to Racine where I had her hauled out for a bottom wash and changed the anodes from magnesium (fresh water) to zinc (salt water) (basically anodes are necessary to prevent electrolysis from rotting the metal bits (prop, rudder, prop shaft, trim tabs) under your boat.)
The night before I left (“red at night, sailors delight”):
Sturgeon Bay lighthouse where in one year, God willing, we will “cross our wake.”
Haul out:
While in Racine we endured a two day gale out on Lake Michigan. Though we were docked “up the river,” the wind was out of the East which sent the waves to us and gave us two days of a good rocking. Of course, we were warned by this sunrise (“red in the morning, sailors take warning”):
Gale up the river:
I made the run down to Hammond, Indiana ("to the runway if you follow the plane analogy") while Nancy drove her car down. Had a very nice run with west winds (west winds generally mean calm seas on the west side of Lake Michigan) and even caught my own private airshow on the way:
Hammond isn’t necessarily the place you’d want to spend a long time living on a boat, but it had a Walmart Superstore and Starbucks close by and was convenient for the visits to my mother. We did walk through the casino there, but even a quick walkthrough necessitated washing the clothes to get the cigarette smoke odor out.
Hammond Harbor/Casino:
A fair amount of my time was spent coordinating with the AGLCA on getting through the Illinois River in an organized fashion. Since three of the Illinois River locks were closed from June through September, it meant that approximately 300 “looper” boats were in various ports on Lake Michigan waiting to get through those locks. Obviously, everyone rushing on October 1st to get through would have meant chaos, not even counting the commercial barges also waiting to get through. Kim Russo, of the AGLCA did an unbelievable job of working with the Army Corps of Engineers (“ACE”) and the commercial barge companies in getting them to allow at least one flotilla of sixteen boats per day to get through the locks notwithstanding that commercial traffic has have priority over “pleasure craft.” Kim then organized the boats into flotillas based on each boats preferred date to “lock thru.” Of course, on the first attempt, most everyone wanted October 1, which was not possible. On Attempt 2, a more reasonable spreading out schedule was achieved.
Murphy’s Law then played a hand
and due to issues with the Brandon Lock not quite being ready for “prime time”
on October 1st, the whole schedule had to be pushed back three days. Adding to Kim's Herculean Challenge was the usual
small percentage of boaters who just ignored the schedule and did their own
thing, or posted on FB that they had a “reserved spot through the locks at such
and such day and time” causing the barge operators and ACE much consternation. (Kim had made it clear that the sixteen per
day was never a reservation or a guarantee.
It was accommodation based on conditions, etc. And of course, given the nature of the
traffic, it is not possible to “reserve a time” through the locks weeks in
advance, and basically never for pleasure craft.) Each flotilla had a leader whose job was to
call the locks ahead of time (to prevent the lockmasters from getting sixteen
calls) to get the “lay of the land” as far as timing through the locks and
relay that back to the rest of the flotilla.
Dave got assigned at the last
minute to be the flotilla leader of their flotilla (seven boats plus one “do
their own thing boat” who just showed up).
As we’ll see later, after getting the flotilla through the first two
locks, Dave transferred the leader’s responsibility to Captain Dan Pease captain who is a
licensed 100-ton Master and former schooner and tugboat captain. His wealth of experience talking to
lockmasters (some who can be a bit prickly) was a great help.
We had picked the date of October
28th to enter the River System to coordinate with “boat buddies”
Matt and Kathy Murphy of the Ranger Tug 29 called “KatMat.” We met Matt and Kathy in 2018 during a
Ranger Tugs Great Lakes Rendezvous and hit it off well enough get together
again in 2020 on a cruise around Door County.
Matt and Kathy had various obligations that meant that they couldn’t
start the G/L trip until late October, and we were happy to wait until the
early October “rush” was over anyway.
On October 25th Nancy and I were able to spend the afternoon with Eileen and planned on
visiting again on the 27th after dropping off Nancy’s car to our daughter
Charlotte in Madison, WI. The hospice
nurse called me at 4:30 a.m on the 27th with the news of my mother's passing so Nancy drove
to Madison and Dave drove to meet his brother Mike and sister Caroline at the
assisted living center to grieve and give hugs. As healthcare power of attorney for my mother, I had a few things to coordinate with the funeral home for her cremation, and
contact all the places that need contacting in times like this. I was then able to drive up to Madison to
meet up with Nancy and have a late lunch with Charlotte. We then drove back our rental
car and finally got back to the boat via Uber at approx. 9:00 pm, physically and emotionally exhausted and
drained.
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