Catching up ....
All of those of us "Looping" this year were constrained by the work on three locks on the Illinois River south of Chicago. The locks were closed from June 1st to October 1st. So lots of Loopers gathered in the Chicago/Hammond , Indiana area to stage for transiting the locks. Lots of commercials stacked up as well.
There are about 300 Looper boats trying to get through the locks to head south. Commercial vessels have priority over pleasure vessels/pleasure craft...or PCs as the lockmasters refer to us. Locks only wanted to lock through one group of 12 to 16 PCs per day.
So we Loopers formed "Flotillas" of 16 boats each to expedite passage each day. We planned to assemble and travel as a group through the 3 recently opened locks as one flotilla each day. Complicated....but it worked out fairly well.....until mother nature turned Lake Michigan into a washing machine with 10 to 14 footers ! After several days delay the flotillas continued.
Cool Breeze was in Flotilla 4. By now my wife and I are comfortable with locking and all went well.
The process goes kinda like this.... about 1 or 2 miles out you contact the lockmaster via VHF radio and request lockage, stating you are a PC and request passage. Lockmaster will inform you of current lockage, traffic anticipated, general idea of time frame, which side you should plan to tie to and where to wait.
"TIE to" is not literal. A vessel should not "tie" in a lock. As water rises of falls based on your direction of travel in a lock, the boat will rise or fall relative to bollards on the lock walls. Tight attachment would result in at least a cleat being pulled out if not a hanging boat or a partial capsize. Lines are lead around a cleat once for friction to hold your position but must be tended and let loose or tightened as appropriate.
When the lockmastet hails you and opens lock, boats enter single file and find their assigned positions and secure themselves. In a flotilla grouping boats are rafted off one another to increase the number of boats that can fit in one lockage cycle. From opening the lock gates, entering, securing, closing gates filling or lowering, and then opening gates and leaving takes 45 to 90 minutes each time. It's time consuming.
Locks below Chicago range from about 4 feet to 40 feet change in water level. The locks are all about 110 feet wide and either 600 or 1200 feet long. So....some smart Aggie do the math on a typical 600 foot by 110 foot 30 foot drop lock. How much water or how much weight is that ?
There are eight locks on the Illinois before we reached the Mississippi at Grafton, Illinois. It took us 7 days to travel from Hammond on Lake Michigan to Grafton and the Mississippi River.
Interesting side note....the invasive Asian jumping big head carp are a menace to invade the Great Lakes. There is an electric barrier to prevent the carp migrating into the lakes by stunning or killing them . Boats pass over the live wires on the bottom of the canal. At least one boat with all "fly by wire" control systems was completely knocked out dead. No controls no instruments....had to go below and manually shut down engines. Resulted in several days repairs.
Illinois River is pretty wil once south of Chicago area with tons of bald eagles.
I will attach pics for that segment.
I will then do a segment from Grafton, down the Mississippi and then UP the Ohio River to Paducah Kentucky and beyond.
