004: Take Off!

October 28th finally arrived.   The “classic” G/L trip takes you through downtown Chicago and that was our original plan.   As the map shows, it would have added approximately eleven miles versus entering the River System via Calumet Harbor.    In thirty-five years of on and off boating in the Chicago area I can’t count the number of times that we have been up and down the Chicago River, so we had "seen and done that."  Frankly, with the eighteen hour day we had the day before and the emotions of my mother’s passing, we just didn’t have the energy for that extra eleven miles, so we opted to enter via Calumet Harbor.   We left the dock at 7:00 a.m. and officially entered the River System approximately thirty minutes later.  We were off!

Heading Up:

The Calumet River and Cal Sag Channel take you through a very industrial area of Chicago and we could fill up this blog with lots of interesting pictures but I’ll just show a sampling:

We cleared our first lock, the Thomas O’Brien, without incident, it being only a few feet of drop.   Our next milestone was meeting Matt and Kathy Murphy on KatMat a Howie's Landing where they had put their boat in that morning:

We travelled with KatMat down the Cal Sag Channel and then over the Asian Carp Fish Electric Barrier which keeps that invasive species out of the Great Lakes. (If they ever get into the Great Lakes, it would be a huge environmental catastrophe.)   The Facebook Group intelligentsia (insert sarcasm) had warned us to shut down our electronics or risk frying them, but we passed over it without incident.

At the Lockport Lock and Dam, we met up with Sol Maria, a Foutaine Pajot ’46, that we met in Hammond.   Owned by Gavin and Lica Morris, they are New Zealanders who left there in 2009 and have essentially sailed halfway around the world via the South Pacific, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, the Caribbean and who have done about two thirds of the Great Loop.  Recently Gavin’s Welsh cousin Peter and his wife Sandra have joined as crew. (In 2013 the “Kanzler family” chartered a Foutaine Pajot ’36 in the Virgin Islands and they are just great boats.)  More on Sol Maria later but this is a quick read: https://www.nzedge.com/news/adventurous-sailing-couple-stops-wisconsin/

Sol Maria in the lock:

The Lockport Lock has big drop, approximately 40ft and was the first time that we had encountered “floating bollards” vs. drop lines.   With a floating bollard you wrap your boat line around the bollard and it floats up or down with the boat.   The locks truly are an amazing system and some date back over one hundred years.

How floating bollards work:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/i8qzv8x5xgw

And ProTip:  you never tie off a line in a lock.  In a subsequent lock we had the line double wrapped around the bollard, also a "no-no" and the bollard hung up a bit.  As the water level  dropped we started to tilt a bit.  The line took longer to loosen than it should have (double wrap 😟) and our boat started to heel over, but then the bollard came unstuck.  Lesson learned!

At approximately 5:00 pm we made it to Joliet and tied up to the “Joliet Wall” next to Bicentennial Park.  There we were met by Kim and Bill Jensen, friends of mine from the Illinois Sport Association Triumph Car Club.   Kim and Bill were gracious enough to drive us and the crew Matt and Kathy to a restaurant.  Best of all, Kim knitted me a hat, which was to come in very handy in the cold days to follow.

Hygge tied up to the Joliet Wall:

Kim, Dave, Nancy and Bill:

After dinner I did my flotilla leader duties and called the Brandon Road lockmaster to arrange a time to go through the lock, which was 7:30 a.m.   I dutifully informed the seven of us in the "we coordinated with the AGLCA" boats and the one "I'm just doing what I want to do" boat of the need to be off the dock by 7:00 a.m. for the lock through.  Then it was off to bed!                                                  

Dave