Hello:

Summerside II has been making steady progress going down the Illinois River.

She left downtown Chicago on Wednesday and we dropped Paul Pfeiffer on a small barge tied up on shore so he could walk up and get an Uber at Marine Salvage business and get going to Colorado.  Jim and John continued on to Harbortown Marina on Tuesday afternoon and stayed there.  It is a great little marina with good restaurant Jim and I had been at before when we drove the shore for carp marine research project for Mich Attorney General Office.  We went through Navy Pier Lock and then two others at Brandon Roads and at Lockport with minimal delays of say 1.5 hours at the latter two.

The next day TH Summerside II had a bad day due to delays at the Marseiilesis lock where we had to wait 6.5 hours to lock through and with 5 other looper boats.  We ended up locking through with Coast Guard Buoy Tender vessel.  There had been a 15 barge tow in the lock most of day due to having to lock 8 barges and then 7 barges and also due to them running out of hours of service for the key officers and needing relief crews so they sat in lock.  As result we only made it 30 miles out of planned 60 miles.  We also tried to cock at dusk at Ottawa City Dock but Coast Guard vessel had already nosed in there for night and as we approached he told us the entry to docks themselves was very shallow and to be very careful and so we went back upriver 3 miles to Heritage Harbour north of Ottawa City.  Saw some beautiful white pelicans on water marshes.

Note when we are running downriver we get 8.2 knots often which is .7 more per hour than normal 7.5.  In Mississippi we are told possible 5 knot current so we would get 12.5 knots per hour which is 15.0 miles per hour so smoking.  But in Ohio and Tennessee we will be against current so down to 5.5 knots per hour at best.

Friday morning Summerside II left for Peoria at 630AM with 80 miles to get there and one lock at Starved Rock and the lock was not bad at 1.5 hours.  We again went through with the other 5 loopers.  We made it in great time to Peoria's Illinois Valley Yacht Club where we got to know the 3 guys on Haley Rose and the husband and wife owners of Miss Utah and yes she was Miss Utah.  HMS Vagabond was with us to and a beautiful tug yacht but did not join us for dinner.  We hope tos ee them down the road.

Saturday morning Jim and John did various boat chores and packed up to leave boat and pick up our rental car (took Uber to go get it) from Enterprise. We then drove Sat afternoon back to Lansing.  We will be there couple days and pick up Paul to drive back to boat to resume trip.

Crew of the Summerside II