This picture was taken when the water was still rising. It got as high as the white building near the cars in the top right of the picture.
This flooding is a new experience for a couple of Great Lake’s Sailors. We have put many miles under our keel in the Lakes. Almost all of Lake Huron, a trip to Cedar Point, the length of Lake Michigan, and a trip across Superior (paying our respects to the Edmund Fitzgerald as we passed 500 feet overhead), this has been our sailing experience. Give us 70 miles of the Illinois River and we really have something to talk about. We have been holed up for 5 days, with more to come.
It is now Thursday afternoon and there is no news as to when we will be able to move on. The river crested at a record on Monday morning. It raises a lot faster than it goes down. The locks along the river will not be opened for traffic for 5-7 days after the river crested. The priority for travel through the locks is commercial first with pleasure craft being allowed through as space becomes available. It really does not make a lot of difference at this point as both the lower part of the Illinois River and part of the Mississippi are closed to pleasure craft anyway!
When we entered the marina on Saturday night our depth sounder read 11 feet. At the height of the flooding it read 23 feet. Normal depth in this marina is about 6 feet.
The management here had been tremendous. There is no clubhouse but there is a “party barge” that we (15 stranded souls) can all gather. When we first got here the fridge was stocked with beer. Oops, free beer. Happy hour begins about 4 and we all spread the rumors that we have heard. Some of those are pleasure boats being stuck in locks and not being allowed to leave, a 30 foot power boat that broke free and then broke up. It must be true because we saw pieces of it floating by. The marina did a BBQ chicken dinner for us today at lunch. At the lunch some boaters from up the river came by for showers as they have no running water or electric. Our Marina invited them to get cleaned up.
As of now we have no idea of when we will get out of here. At least one of the boats is thinking of flying home for a bit to take care of some business. Hmm, wonder where we can fly to?? Grand Isle? No, they still have no power. Bruce Mines, no, there is no house there any more. Oh well, stay with the boat and make the best of a bad situation.
The group that we are hung up with is a pretty good group of people. Some of them are “bailing out” tomorrow and renting a car and heading back to Ohio for a few days. We will hang in here for the duration. The biggest question that all of us have is what will we be charged while we are here. I guess we will find out that info when we check out.
I am working on posting all of our pictures on the Web. Hopefully you will be able to see some of the things that we have seen so far.
On an earlier post I mentioned bad boat names. There are some great positive names out there too. We are staying with a boat named Marbles. I asked them where the name came from. For those of you with a “Bucket List”, this is something to consider. The name comes from a philosophy that from the time one turns 55 till the time turns 75 there are 1040 weeks left in your active life. Any more weeks than that are blessings. Each week of you life being a Marble, use your Marbles wisely. One must be very careful with those Marbles and not waste any of them, each are important. So as we sit here in the harbor it feels like we are wasting a marble or two here in rather than not being out in the river continuing our journey. On the other hand if we were to leave right away, our Marbles may sink with a tree taking out Danny’s Fault.
Here is another reason to count your blessings. I received an email from our friend Andy in Grand Isle. They do not expect to have power up and running for another 3 weeks. Sue is up in New Orleans living in the house with their daughter and Andy is on the Island living in the Exxon bunkhouse. Sounds like a thrill to me!! And Jude and I are bitching about being where we are. If that is not enough to make you count your blessings, check out the following link to see what Ike did to the Galveston area.
http://jakeabby.com/cb/
Take every day of your life and live it how you see fit. You will never know how many you have left.
Love you all, or at least most of you;
Rob
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