Saturday, September 5, 2009

After Gale took Lucy to shore in the dinghy, he brought her back and left again to visit the folks on Absolutely Livin’ Large who were on the cruiser anchored near us last night. Jeff and Shirley live in the area and were very helpful in providing information on anchorages and marinas nearby, as well as notes on the locks and which parts of the river are prettier and where we might find some nice beaches or sandbars. We left our anchorage at 11 am with a plan to travel about 20 miles to Ottawa where there was a free town wall to tie up to for the night. At 1 pm we were approaching the Marseilles Lock in the wake of a very large barge, Olmstead. Because the channel was so narrow, we were unable to get around the tow. We called the lock master who indicated that as soon as the tow was secured above the lock, he would be letting the pleasure craft lock through. Either there was some miscommunication or circumstances changed but by the time we did get to the lock, we were told we would be locked through after the barge and that would happen in about 2 hours.

We headed back up the channel a short distance where we had seen several power boaters and jet skiers anchored outside the channel and swimming and relaxing. If you have followed us on our blog for any length of time, you will know that Gale never wastes any good daytime hours to work on the boat. We took Blue Heron out of the channel into about 3 feet of water, put out a bow anchor and a stern anchor, and Gale got into the warm river to wash the hull while Maureen did some tidying up inside.

At about 3 pm, a couple was coming downstream in a large cruiser and hollered out to us. We were surprised to see Jack and Pia, m/v Still Busy, who we last saw in Waterford, NY, as we went up the Erie Canal and they headed up to Lake Champlain! They were currently traveling with Meander, a large trawler. After listening to their conversation with the lock master, it sounded like we were going to be able to lock through very soon. We pulled up our anchors, Gale jumped on the boat and we rafted up with the other boats waiting for the lock. As it turned out, we could have stayed where we were cleaning the boat for another couple of hours! Finally, at 6 pm, we went through the lock, traveled a few miles downstream and took a slip at Heritage Harbor Marina in Ottawa, Illinois. This is a beautiful new marina with great facilities and lots of friendly people. Since we couldn’t grill on the boat in the marina, we took our showers and stopped in the restaurant/bar afterwards to have a beer and a burger. The place was getting pretty crazy with a WII Bowling tournament and many people enjoying their holiday! We didn’t stay to see which team won as we were both pretty tired and ready to call it a night.