October 18, 2009 - Bath Chute, Illinois River

Before departing Peoria this morning, we saw two folks rowing for exercise on the Illinois River, just off our dock.

Though it is a beautiful sunny morning, the night had been cold, with a low of 37 degrees. So we weren’t surprised to see fog on the surface of the river. It closed in as we approached the now-working Peoria Lock and Dam.

After idling in the lock without lines for the quick eight-foot drop, we exited into pea soup! This green mark showed we were in the channel – but not much else. We sat here for 45 minutes waiting for the fog to lift. Our radar doesn’t work, as we had to lay the mast down on the upper deck in order to transit under the low fixed bridges! So, we radioed boats ahead and behind to let them know our intentions, and to find out conditions and river traffic.

Once underway again, the sun shone brightly, and we enjoyed the scenery. Along banks of the wide Illinois River, we noticed scores of barges parked in the mud and tied to trees with steel cables. They are waiting to load or to unload, or for pusher tugs to take them on their way.

And there’s always a surprise coming around the bend. This is the Ralph Plagge pushing a 3 X 5 load of barges – three wide and five long.

These grain barges are filled first at one end, and then the other, causing them to list severely fore and aft in mid-fill.

Around another corner, a pilot boat warned us to go slow for this dredging operation, at work in the river. We saw its homeport was Holland, Michigan.

This tug passed us upbound with barges filled with ammonium nitrate, used in fertilizers and quite explosive.

We found a nice anchorage in the Bath Chute, a remote area just off the main channel of the river. We were joined by the DeFever 46 pilothouse Gypsea, from Holland, Michigan, who we had met last week at the Chicago Yacht Club. They came by in the dinghy for a chat.

As the sun shone brightly off the water of the main channel, we saw the tug Martha Mac downbound with a load of barges. We have seen her hard at work on the river these last couple of days.

A beautiful sunset capped off our wonderful day of cruising.