Slow But Steady Progress

Thursday was an uneventful day. We left Ottawa and made it through the Starved Rock lock in about 1/2 hour. That’s a record locking time for us so far. We decided to anchor out at Lower Henry Island for the night rather than make the run to Peoria. The guides state to approach the anchorage from the south west which we did. We ran aground and took three attempts to extract ourselves. I thought Karen was going to kill me. We went further south and came in again with much more water under our keel. We’re seeing tons of White Pelicans and American Eagles.

One of many groups of White Pelicans along the way.


I made blueberry muffins to warm the cabin and attempted some fishing. The fish don’t seem to like shrimp but appear to love hot dogs. Haven’t landed any fish in the boat yet other than the nasty Asian Carp. It’s been a chilly day and it’s now a very dark and cold night. 

Great Blueberry Muffin Recipe from King Arthur Flour.



Perhaps we should have left a little sooner to escape to cool weather. Perhaps we should have left later to escape the flooding. Well see what happens. Currently the Mississippi river is very high below Grafton Il., so we may end up there for several days. Fern who is the river guide for that area is telling boaters to stay put. Too much debris in the water and it's a hazard for pleasure craft to be on the water. Apparently much of the water and debris is coming out of the Missouri river from flooding up north. Karen was reading that the are about 60 barges backed up due to the flooding issues. I have to admit it's not too bad being at the IV Yacht Club for 2 days.
Last Mango on Game Day. IV Yacht Club.

We also cracked open the fantastic rum from Billy and Judy. This rum only gets a little ice put in it. Thanks guys!

Preparing for the next 3 days traveling and staying at anchor Karen and I decided to walk into town. We then decided it would be better for our health to return to the yacht club and either get a ride or use someones car. We had 2 different people offer their cars to us. Quite incredible. 

Even I could hear when trains passed by this house.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Out of contact for a while

Image
The trip down the river on the 14th and 15th has not been that pleasurable. Let me start by saying that when we are boating or sailing, weather is the number one thing to follow closely. The flooding on this part of the Illinois River is incredible. Water is well over the flood stage. That’s good because we’re less likely to run aground. Last Mango needs at least 4 1/2 feet to float without running aground. Also the high water makes the current run faster which helps lessen my fuel consumption (currently .46 gallons per hour @ 2400rpm). The downside of the high water is the amount of debris in the water makes it somewhat stressful to be motoring down the river. I told Karen it reminds me of the video game Frogger. Almost constantly having to dodge logs, tree branches and tires. Tree branches and more. More Debris. More Pictures of Flooding. Flooded dam. We get to pass right over it without locking. Hurray! Picture Maury and Sandy fro
Read more
Image
 4-10-21 Our last night in Florida has me thinking of this years cruising season and how different it was from previous years. Karen and I talked well before the normal winter cruising season about staying home quarantined in Iowa City for the winter. We debated the pro’s and con’s and quickly decided that we would enjoy quarantining aboard Last Mango much better. Being aboard Mango (even if we didn’t sail a lot) would allow us to enjoy the warm Florida weather rather than what turned out to be a much colder and snowier Iowa winter. Not to mention that the Florida summers are really hard on boats in storage. Boats like RV’s or just about anything else fare better when used regularly rather than sitting idle. We really feel for our Canadian friends who were stuck up in the Great White North, we missed them and look forward to seeing them next season. This year spending almost all of our time in and around the Fort Myers Beach area has me being thankful for several things. First I have t
Read more

Good Bye Key West, Hello Shut Down

Image
4-4-20     As of this writing Karen and I are residing at her parents house down here in Florida. The past several weeks has been a stressful adventure for us and I’m sure everyone else. Karen and I were not sure what shoe would drop next as Florida began to take the Coronavirus more seriously. We were very happy spending time at Stock Island Marina and Resort in Key West as we started to sense trouble was heading our way. Each day I would wake up reach over and turn NPR on the radio, each morning broadcast would reveal more spread of the virus around the world and across our country. Karen was very nervous as each day brought more bad news. In the whole scheme of things we’re very lucky, we were not concerned for our health (maybe living in a false reality) but we were concerned about Florida being shutdown and not being able to pull and store Mango. We had plenty of food, water, fuel and could sail anywhere we wanted (winds permitting). Sailing down Hawks Channel towards Key West
Read more