The alarms went off at 7. It was raining again. Jenny and I got up and Karla slept in. I got us started and Jenny took over. We were low on gas so I started using my Garmin car GPS to look for gas stations near the river. I finally found one that was only a few blocks inland, and I programed it into the gps. When we were ten minutes out I went up top, and we docked at the Port Byron, Illinois, municipal docks. I trudged up the road from the landing still wrapped up like a mummy, and hunted down the gas station 3 blocks away. Then went back for gas cans and the girls. We where on our way back up the hill when I guy in a diesel pick up stopped in the middle of the street and jumped out of the cab. "You're not getting any gas here. No power from here clear to Rapids City. I can give you a ride back down south if you want." I wasn't sure what to say. I hadn't even said a word to the guy and he was already offering rides. That combined with the fact that we still had 6 gallons of gas left over, which, thanks to the recent increase in current, would now carry us nearly 50 more miles. I thanked the guy for his generousity but turned him down. One of the benefits of traveling in a sail boat, is that even when the gas runs out, your not dead in the water. We can almost always sail either north or south to safety eventually. I speculated that an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) had been detonated, and that we where oblivious to the news since we'd been cut off from the world by a half mile of water, and Ipods. We headed back down the hill but stopped when I noticed that the bank had lights. I guessed outloud that the bank had a generator because it's a bank, and that they probobly wouldn't let us us
e the bathroom. That's when Karla noticed the bar across from the bank had it's michelob sign illuminated. Well that would make sense. The towns two most important resources have a backup plan. That's when the same guy who'd offered up the ride came running out of the bar yelling and waving his arms at us. "It's good!" We waved back, and headed back up the hill yet again with our empty cans. When we got there I set to filling them, and the girls went inside. I tryed it three times, and three times the clerk looked blankly at me from behind the counter, but I never got a drop of fuel. Finally I went in to investigate. "The pumps don't work. The networks down." Evidentally her ability to make hand signals was down as well. Over the next half hour several cars pulled up to the pumps, and each time she ignored them until they gave up and left. A while later a young woman in an escort pulled up to a pump, tried it several times, and then backed up in preparation to try another pump. I stopped her and told her that nothing was working and she should move on. She seemed pretty happy that I'd saved her some time. And a second later she asked if we wanted a ride somewhere. This time, having wasted an hour on fuel I wasn't even sure we'd ever get, I accepted. There was a carseat in the back so Karla stayed with the boat and Jenny and I went to the next station about three miles away. We visited as we went and told the girls what we where trying to do, and she seemed to think that was pretty strange. When we got back to the boat and she saw that it was only 22 feet long and you had do sit outside to drive it, she said she thought we were weird and she wondered what she was thinking when she let us into her car. I think she was kidding. I think. So we got back underway at about noon and it was my shift. We'd been going for about an hour when we reached the quad cities. Davenport, Moline, Bettendorf, and rock island. In in the middle of all this was lock and dam number 15. This was a weird one. It was a double lock, the only one on the river aparently, so naturally we went in the wrong one. A lock worker pulled up on a motorized cart and set us strait
. So we transplanted ourselves, and faced our next challenge. Just after the lock was a double decker draw bridge. Trains on top, and cars on the bottom. I asked the same lock worker what we where supposed to do when he came to give us lines. If we left the lock after the gates opened, we'd only have maybe 100 feet between the lock and the bridge. So we'd be in there trying to negociate the current, and if we screwed up we'd get sucked under the bridge and lose our mast. The guy said he'd contact the bridge for us and that there was another bridge down the river called cresent, that used chanel 13. I thanked him for all that, and minutes later, both the lock and bridge opened pretty much simultaneously and we slipped through without any trouble. A little later we arrived at cresent bridge. He must have heard us coming because he was already open and again we just slipped though without incident. Everything had been going way too smoothly and I knew we had to do something different or we'd get bored. Luckily nothing stays easy for long, so a couple hours later as we aproached lock and dam 16, Jenny took over the tiller, and
I went down below. About ten minutes later we all felt a shudder and I looked out the door at Jenny. She looked a little worried. "What was that?" She yelled. "Weeds?" I hoped. As I meantioned before, sailboats really don't like weeds. I fews seconds later it happened again, and it became obvious that the rudder was hitting bottom. I rushed up top and wrestled the rudder into the boat. Then I threw the motor into reverse and retreated the way we'd come. I looked around, and was as baffled as Jenny. There was a red bouoy on the left, and a green way off in the distance to the right. Same as it always was. Why was it so shallow in the channel. When I'd backed up far enough I could see around the island that was separating us from the iowa shore, I saw the other red bouoy. We were on the wrong side of the island. Jenny had s
een a red buoy warning of a shallow spot and thought it was a channel marker. This makes me wonder why all the red buoys are the same. Or why they aren't just another color altogether. No matter! We survived that one. A few seconds later I radioed lock and dam 16 to let them know we were 15 minutes out. No reply. I tryed again. No answer. Each lock and dam has a cord you can pull that has a bell that rings at the top of it in case you don't have a radio. We planned to pull the cord when we arived and everything would work out fine. When we arived we learned why noone had replied. Their hands were full! They were in the middle of bringing what had to be a thousand foot barge, through the lock one piece at a time. The rope was blocked by them so I tried the radio again. The voice on the other end sounded irritated and said he'd let us through when he was done with the barge - whenever that might be. So we floated there, motoring out whenever the wind and current pushed us too close to shore, which seemed like every ten minutes or so. Finally I got tired of drifting and dropped anchor. Minutes later the grumpy lock worker warned that we couldn't be that close and needed to back off. So I pulled up anchor, motored back a good quarter mile and ducked into a hole in the shoreline that I knew would be safe. Again he radioed. "No I didn't mean back of backward, I meant back off toward the middle of the river. Go toward Iowa!" I was getting irritated now. We'd been drifing and anchoring for over an hour and the barge didn't look like it had any intention of moving in the near future. Why cant we tie up somewhere so we don't have to waste gas? So my last ditch plan was to motor the the end of a pier th
at sat beside the dam, come in sideways, and grab the ladder. It sounded easy, but I'd never landed sideways to anything down current before. I came in very controlled, I thought, but Jenny disagreed. She was sure we'd be sucked into the dam. I assured her that there wasn't that much suction, and pointed out that fishing boats anchor there to fish all the time. As I told her this I realized that even with the reduced current we were going to fast, and I watched helplessly as we drifted sideways into the pier. The boat made a little cracking noise. I didn't hear it, but Karla in the cabin did. And I felt all around stupid for failing to land smoothy, and endangering the boat. For the first time in the 7 days of the trip, I was sick of it and angry. I kind of took it out on Jenny, and I was wrong to do so. I apologized later and as soon as the sun came out and it stoped raining we were all be back to normal. About twenty minutes later the barge finally moved, and a lock worker invited us in. I brought us in, fighting the barges curents as we went, and landed against the wall where Karla grabbed a rope. We had a short conversation with the man, but I was in no mood to talk, and a little while later (and none too soon) lock 16 spat us out the other side. It was around six oclock by then, and we like to be camped out by 6:30 because the light is totally gone by 6:45. We decided that it would be nice to stay at a state park with facilitys of some sort. I searched my Garmin but found nothing so we motored past Muscantine, and began searching for islands to hide behind. I noticed on a map that there was a small harbor in Muscantine. It was Friday and the girls are Catholic, which meant Tuna helper. I really wasn't in a tuna helper mood. "How would you two feel about staying in a harbor and getting a cheese pizza? The vote was unanimous. We motored into the harbor just as the highway 92 bridge lit up neon over the river. I picked a dock, and tryed to figure out what and who we owed money to. A nearby fisherman assured me that no one really cared what we did. So we locked up the boat and headed into town for cheeze pizza at the Salvatore Pizzaria. afterward we wandered back to the boat and watched a really cheezy movie called bulletproof Monk. Day 7. survived it!
e the bathroom. That's when Karla noticed the bar across from the bank had it's michelob sign illuminated. Well that would make sense. The towns two most important resources have a backup plan. That's when the same guy who'd offered up the ride came running out of the bar yelling and waving his arms at us. "It's good!" We waved back, and headed back up the hill yet again with our empty cans. When we got there I set to filling them, and the girls went inside. I tryed it three times, and three times the clerk looked blankly at me from behind the counter, but I never got a drop of fuel. Finally I went in to investigate. "The pumps don't work. The networks down." Evidentally her ability to make hand signals was down as well. Over the next half hour several cars pulled up to the pumps, and each time she ignored them until they gave up and left. A while later a young woman in an escort pulled up to a pump, tried it several times, and then backed up in preparation to try another pump. I stopped her and told her that nothing was working and she should move on. She seemed pretty happy that I'd saved her some time. And a second later she asked if we wanted a ride somewhere. This time, having wasted an hour on fuel I wasn't even sure we'd ever get, I accepted. There was a carseat in the back so Karla stayed with the boat and Jenny and I went to the next station about three miles away. We visited as we went and told the girls what we where trying to do, and she seemed to think that was pretty strange. When we got back to the boat and she saw that it was only 22 feet long and you had do sit outside to drive it, she said she thought we were weird and she wondered what she was thinking when she let us into her car. I think she was kidding. I think. So we got back underway at about noon and it was my shift. We'd been going for about an hour when we reached the quad cities. Davenport, Moline, Bettendorf, and rock island. In in the middle of all this was lock and dam number 15. This was a weird one. It was a double lock, the only one on the river aparently, so naturally we went in the wrong one. A lock worker pulled up on a motorized cart and set us strait
. So we transplanted ourselves, and faced our next challenge. Just after the lock was a double decker draw bridge. Trains on top, and cars on the bottom. I asked the same lock worker what we where supposed to do when he came to give us lines. If we left the lock after the gates opened, we'd only have maybe 100 feet between the lock and the bridge. So we'd be in there trying to negociate the current, and if we screwed up we'd get sucked under the bridge and lose our mast. The guy said he'd contact the bridge for us and that there was another bridge down the river called cresent, that used chanel 13. I thanked him for all that, and minutes later, both the lock and bridge opened pretty much simultaneously and we slipped through without any trouble. A little later we arrived at cresent bridge. He must have heard us coming because he was already open and again we just slipped though without incident. Everything had been going way too smoothly and I knew we had to do something different or we'd get bored. Luckily nothing stays easy for long, so a couple hours later as we aproached lock and dam 16, Jenny took over the tiller, and
I went down below. About ten minutes later we all felt a shudder and I looked out the door at Jenny. She looked a little worried. "What was that?" She yelled. "Weeds?" I hoped. As I meantioned before, sailboats really don't like weeds. I fews seconds later it happened again, and it became obvious that the rudder was hitting bottom. I rushed up top and wrestled the rudder into the boat. Then I threw the motor into reverse and retreated the way we'd come. I looked around, and was as baffled as Jenny. There was a red bouoy on the left, and a green way off in the distance to the right. Same as it always was. Why was it so shallow in the channel. When I'd backed up far enough I could see around the island that was separating us from the iowa shore, I saw the other red bouoy. We were on the wrong side of the island. Jenny had s
een a red buoy warning of a shallow spot and thought it was a channel marker. This makes me wonder why all the red buoys are the same. Or why they aren't just another color altogether. No matter! We survived that one. A few seconds later I radioed lock and dam 16 to let them know we were 15 minutes out. No reply. I tryed again. No answer. Each lock and dam has a cord you can pull that has a bell that rings at the top of it in case you don't have a radio. We planned to pull the cord when we arived and everything would work out fine. When we arived we learned why noone had replied. Their hands were full! They were in the middle of bringing what had to be a thousand foot barge, through the lock one piece at a time. The rope was blocked by them so I tried the radio again. The voice on the other end sounded irritated and said he'd let us through when he was done with the barge - whenever that might be. So we floated there, motoring out whenever the wind and current pushed us too close to shore, which seemed like every ten minutes or so. Finally I got tired of drifting and dropped anchor. Minutes later the grumpy lock worker warned that we couldn't be that close and needed to back off. So I pulled up anchor, motored back a good quarter mile and ducked into a hole in the shoreline that I knew would be safe. Again he radioed. "No I didn't mean back of backward, I meant back off toward the middle of the river. Go toward Iowa!" I was getting irritated now. We'd been drifing and anchoring for over an hour and the barge didn't look like it had any intention of moving in the near future. Why cant we tie up somewhere so we don't have to waste gas? So my last ditch plan was to motor the the end of a pier th
at sat beside the dam, come in sideways, and grab the ladder. It sounded easy, but I'd never landed sideways to anything down current before. I came in very controlled, I thought, but Jenny disagreed. She was sure we'd be sucked into the dam. I assured her that there wasn't that much suction, and pointed out that fishing boats anchor there to fish all the time. As I told her this I realized that even with the reduced current we were going to fast, and I watched helplessly as we drifted sideways into the pier. The boat made a little cracking noise. I didn't hear it, but Karla in the cabin did. And I felt all around stupid for failing to land smoothy, and endangering the boat. For the first time in the 7 days of the trip, I was sick of it and angry. I kind of took it out on Jenny, and I was wrong to do so. I apologized later and as soon as the sun came out and it stoped raining we were all be back to normal. About twenty minutes later the barge finally moved, and a lock worker invited us in. I brought us in, fighting the barges curents as we went, and landed against the wall where Karla grabbed a rope. We had a short conversation with the man, but I was in no mood to talk, and a little while later (and none too soon) lock 16 spat us out the other side. It was around six oclock by then, and we like to be camped out by 6:30 because the light is totally gone by 6:45. We decided that it would be nice to stay at a state park with facilitys of some sort. I searched my Garmin but found nothing so we motored past Muscantine, and began searching for islands to hide behind. I noticed on a map that there was a small harbor in Muscantine. It was Friday and the girls are Catholic, which meant Tuna helper. I really wasn't in a tuna helper mood. "How would you two feel about staying in a harbor and getting a cheese pizza? The vote was unanimous. We motored into the harbor just as the highway 92 bridge lit up neon over the river. I picked a dock, and tryed to figure out what and who we owed money to. A nearby fisherman assured me that no one really cared what we did. So we locked up the boat and headed into town for cheeze pizza at the Salvatore Pizzaria. afterward we wandered back to the boat and watched a really cheezy movie called bulletproof Monk. Day 7. survived it!
Wade,
ReplyDeleteI hope I got this right; all signed in and ready to have the students start following you on your adventure down the mighty Miss!
The students from MIGHTY ! MIGHTY ! LONGVILLE say hi
Brett. I read you loud and clear. We're struggling to catch the blog up. We've had some power issues but we stayed at a marina last night and we are charged and showered up. Should be all caught up on the blog by tomorrow. If there's anything you'd like us to add to our posts just let us know. Hello to the students of MIGHTY MIGHTY LONGVILLE! We hope you enjoy following our progress and look forward to your questions!
ReplyDeleteWade