AquaFennatic Great Loop Blog: Joliet IL to Bar Island IL

Sep 13^th – It was a warm sunny day. We got up early and traveled from Joliet IL to Ottawa City IL which was about a 47 mile run however it took us 12 hours to do it with the major reason being that we had to wait for over 4 hours for one of the 3 locks that we had to go through because the Tows have priority over pleasure craft. When we got to the Ottawa City dock there wasn’t enough room for all the boats thus we rafted up to other Loopers. I researched my options to replace my Inverter / Charger and the supplier recommended by Dave from Manana was not available and they had no other options for us thus we decided to purchase the equipment from West Marine and have it delivered to Grafton Harbor. We expect that it should be there before the weekend thus I should have my inverter issue fixed by next week.

Sep 14^th – It was a rainy morning however it cleared as the day progressed. We were moving a bit slowly this morning since we had a very long run yesterday however we decided to go further today and traveled 75 miles from Ottawa City to Peoria IL and stayed at East Port Marina. I was made aware of this marina by Jim and Cindy from “The Journey” and I would have passed on this marina based on the information contained in Active Captain, however it’s a great marina with a great Seafood restaurant close by (Jonahis). The Active Captain reviews focus on the lack of depth, however there’s lots of depth this year due to the high water level. My suggestion would be to call the marina and verify that the depths are OK and if so then stay a night or two. The harbor master is a great and helpful guy and the price is right - $1 per foot. We finally met fellow Canadians Bill & Carole from “PDQ Tiger” today. We’ve seen their boat in multiple ports and went to introduce ourselves however we never found any people on board. We went out to dinner with them as well as Jim & Cindy and had a great time and lots of laughs.

Sep 15^th – It was a hot and sunny day and winds don’t seem to matter anymore now that we are on the rivers. We got up early today to travel from Peoria IL to Bar Island IL which was about an 80 mile run. We went through 1 lock today, however the water was so high that they had the wickets open which basically means that we went over the waterfall instead of going through the lock. The water is 5 feet higher than normal thus we’ve been seeing lots of debris which means you need to keep on your toes so you don’t hit any logs. The other lock differences are that you can leave your boat running, you only tie to the centre of your boat at a floating bollard and the locks are extremely large. At the end of our long day we had docktails on “Folly” with our Canadian sailing friends. Guess what, there’s a monkey on Folly as well thus our monkey found a girl friend!