The rivers have not been the ‘easy’ experience I was expecting. I am not exactly sure what I had been basing that assumption on but it was definitely not accurate. Since Chicago, we have now travelled about 200 nautical miles in only 7 days. We feel we have earned a couple lay days which we are happily taking here anchored just beside the small, sleepy town of Havana, Illinois. This time will also help to allow for some of our friends with kids on board to catch up to us!

I was also incorrect in my desire for us to be just the three of us again as that is not how the ‘river game’ is played, we now know. You absolutely want to be travelling with others…and that is what we have been doing the whole time, either with a buddy boat or two or as part of a bigger flotilla. This allows for more heads to come together to strategize lock arrivals and trouble shoot navigation (especially when oncoming barges appear, which happen frequently). Another obvious, huge advantage to travelling as a group is the opportunity to meet more amazing, likeminded people on our journey! The radio chatter between us all as we travel can get pretty hilarious too! At some points we all get bored and each tell jokes…most of which get well deserved radio silence after delivery.

Our plan for the entire three year trip is to anchor as much as possible to keep docking fees manageable but there will be times we will need to take a dock to allow for provisioning, showering, pump out and filling up on water. Our first marina on the rivers was Heritage Harbour near Ottawa, Illinois. We have never seen such a well-run marina…and all at the decent rate of $47 per night. As part of a flotilla of a whopping sixteen boats, we all paraded in to the marina one by one as we were expertly greeted over the radio by a cheery director. Perched up high in a bucket lift, she had a bird’s eye view as she communicated to each Captain as to where their assigned slip was in the marina. Once in, the staff quickly provided any services needed including a pump out hose that is brought directly to your boat. We have never seen that before and it is quite the ‘lush’ convivence for this lifestyle. Once settled, we were all advised of a meeting we were to attend up at the Red Dog Grill restaurant. There, the Harbour Master, Jeremy, led us all through a 1.5 hour information session on what we can expect to encounter as we all continue down the river system. It was an overwhelming amount of information to take in as we all did our best to take notes. Despite being thankful to walk away with a ton of vital information, I returned to Starship feeling pretty anxious that night. This undertaking is not for the faint of heart. There will be many barges we will be communicating with and needing to stay clear of, anchorages and marinas that no longer have enough depth for Starship…to name a few challenges. So far, the locks have been fairly easy. Go in slowly, hold a rope, go out slowly…but still, you just don’t want anything to go wrong during that process. I am always thankful that a good night’s sleep allows me to push the ‘reset button’ and wake feeling calmer and more optimistic about what’s ahead. That next morning, we did a very productive school day followed by laundry, provisioning and route planning. Since then, we have had an issue with bad fuel, run aground three times, successfully gone through another two locks and have navigated safely past many barges. Through it all, Starship and her crew have thankfully always felt safe and happy. We are figuring things out!

I have to back up a bit as I need to tell you about the Asian Carp. So back in Heritage Harbour, on our second day there, we were helping the staff welcome in the next huge flotilla of boats when Dylan told me he was just hit in the stomach by a big fish. What??? There was no way I was going to believe that. He was standing on a dock ready to assist with docking and was hit with a fish? How is that possible? Just then I saw an Asian Carp fly three feet into the air in front of me! Yup, I get it…I now believe him! As we travel along, numerous times we now literally have seen these crazy creatures launch high in the air or, legit, run for a few feet across the water! Friends actually had one launch itself out of the water and land in their boat!

We left Heritage Harbour with the flotilla on October 11^th at about 6:30 am. We got out on the water as the sun rose revealing a gentle layer of fog on the water. We will be careful to not travel in thick fog but today it was thin enough to not affect our visibility. It was just pretty. What wasn’t pretty was the look on Jason’s face when a half hour later Starship suddenly lost propulsion. I was thankful for the warm, no wind day as we steered ourselves out of the channel and easily dropped anchor. We were quick to diagnose our problem. So, backing up a bit, our diesel furnace also all of a sudden was not working for us. It now makes sense. We picked up bad fuel in Chicago. As expected, when Jas took off the fuel filter it was absolutely clogged with debris that looked like coffee grounds. With the filter switched out it then took awhile for us to clear the air out of the fuel line. On about the tenth time trying to start Starship up, she finally started to purr again. Yay! It was a tough lesson to learn but our mistake was that we filled up from the fuel dock directly into our tank. We have several jerry cans for diesel up on deck that we will now use for filling our tank. That fuel is double filtered for this exact reason. Our tank was half full so we filled it up with clean diesel in hopes it would be enough to dilute the bad fuel. Since then, we have had three long travel days without issue so keep your fingers crossed all is now well.  

That same day we finally had our Thanksgiving turkey dinner. In Chicago, we had picked up the biggest roast turkey that would fit in our little freezer and we were all excited for our feast! Jason manned the helm as Dylan and I went below. Dylan was my sous chef as I had him peel the potatoes, make the stuffing and, assemble the green bean casserole. That afternoon as we travelled, we all wrote on the whiteboard what we are thankful for this year.

The next day we jumped into a new flotilla coming up the river and crossed Peoria Lake. It was a nice change of scenery but looks can be deceiving. Here we were in the middle of this good-sized body of water yet we didn’t dare veer out of our channel. Steering ourselves just a few feet on the wrong side of a channel marker could put us into about two feet of water. We could see on our apps that the next lock we needed to go through had a barge locking though ahead of us. This meant we had some time to kill.  Depending on the size of a barge, the process could take up to four hours. No problem! We all aimed our bows to the restaurant, ‘Kuchie’s on the Water’ to tie up to their dock for lunch. While we were there enjoying their amazing drinks and food, we were invited to stay tied up on their dock overnight for free.  At this point, our flotilla had broken up with many boats heading off to a marina. We were now only a group of four boats who all quickly agreed that Kuchie’s dock was to be our home for the night.

Leaving Kuchie’s we had already decided it was time for Starship to slow down a bit. Doing schoolwork underway was tough with our loud engine running. Lay days are now a requirement for us to make sure we can keep on top of Dylan’s homeschooling. The plan was to anchor just after the lock, down from the wicket gates. Wicket gates are adjustable dams used to raise and lower water as needed. Several boats had happily anchored there in the past but what we didn’t realize was that spot would not give us  the depth we needed. We found that out the hard way. Up to this point we had run aground a couple times but had easily been able to get ourselves moving again without much trouble. Not this time. After trying hard to motor off without success, we attempted to load up the starboard deck with the weight of fuel jugs, anchor chain and our bodies in an attempt to swing the keel enough for the ground to let go of us, but it refused to. There was one more thing we could try to get ourselves going on our own. We could drop the dingy down off the davits and use it to hopefully pull us off.  Just then we saw a barge approaching and we determined time was now an integral part of our situation!  We were clear of the channel but still did not want to be sitting there when that barge went by.  Reluctantly we radioed up to the flotilla requesting assistance. The vessel Endless Summer answered our distress call and quickly turned around to come back to us. We tossed them a bow line and were very thankful to have them yank Starship into deeper water. Like the musician Eric Stone says….’if you ain’t been aground, you ain’t been around’. Yep, running aground sucks but it’s going to happen.

That was the beginning of a long, rainy and cold travel day. We really wanted to anchor early in the day to get on some school work but we had no choice but to continue until we got to another anchorage with enough depth for us. That took all day. When we finally dropped the hook beside the town of Havana I was chilled to the bone. I didn’t fasten the arms of my foul weather jacket correctly so water had gotten in. I need to be more careful. After settling in, warming up and enjoying our turkey leftovers for dinner, we were invited over to the boat we were sharing our anchorage with. Dan and Sue are travelling on their boat Carpe Diem and we had a great evening with them. I loved that, stepping onto their boat, Sue ignored my offer of an introductory handshake and gave me a big warm hug instead!  They were lovely to talk with and did a great job of making sure Dylan was always included in the conversation. They taught us how to play the domino game Mexican Train. After such a trying day on the water, it was the perfect way to end our Friday!

Back on the boat, we were just settling into bed at around 9:30 (remember that’s a sailor’s midnight!) when we heard wolves or coyotes or something howling very loudly. We are in a narrow anchorage and they were on both shores loudly crying and howling at each other! We shone the flashlight on the shores and saw eyes reflecting back to us. Our guess was there was maybe 10 on one shore and about 30 on the other. It was both amazing and unsettling to hear. As quickly as they started, they immediately stopped and I was so curious as to why they quietened down so suddenly. I did remember though that as we were dinghying over to Carpe Diem earlier that evening, we had seen two young deer on the shore and we were now hoping they did not become dinner for whatever we had just heard.

We are very happy with our decision to take a few much-needed lay days and blast though a bunch of school work with Dylan. With school I am happy to now see we are making our way nicely to where I want to be in each subject by the middle of December. At that time, I want to give him about a three-week Christmas Break so we can all enjoy our time in Key West, Florida and not have to do school work when Alex is with us. We are so excited for our up coming time with Alex! Over Thanksgiving weekend, Jason’s parents went out to Nova Scotia to see him. We love that he had family with him for Thanksgiving!

So are the rivers the easy process I had hoped they would be? Nope, but we are doing it, still having fun and continuing to learn as we go. Another boat currently in our anchorage, Pickette’s Pub, told us that a boat in their fleet hit something so hard today that they now have to be pulled out for repairs! Yikes! Navigating the rivers is serious stuff and as another boater said over the radio a few days ago ‘if this was easy, everyone would do it’. An advantage to us being a sailboat could be that any debris would first hit our solid lead keel before damaging our rudder or prop so that’s a bit of a comfort. This is not easy stuff and our focus remains on carefully continuing in a way that keeps Starship and her crew safe.

My guys just made popcorn and we are about to bust out the Monopoly Empire game as we have a few hours yet until tonight’s ‘sailor’s midnight’ finds us! This Thanksgiving, I am very thankful for my wonderful family and friends and most of all for having the courage I needed to live the life I am living.