Since we didn’t have any experience driving a boat of this size, Greg signed us up for private lessons. These lessons were to take place in Chicago.
Our boat is about 17′ 6″ tall so we couldn’t cruise the Chicago River through downtown Chicago, which is what we wanted to do. There are fixed bridges along that route that only have 17 feet of clearance. We had to take the Cal-Sag route.
Cal-Sag is short for Calumet-Saganashkee Channel. This route is used primarily by commercial vehicles — that is, barges. Wide barges. Tall barges. Very, very big barges.
Barges have the right of way because of their limited maneuverability. You don’t want to get in their way.
I didn’t mind going along the Cal-Sag. It was industrial, yes. But it was also beautiful
The Cal-Sag is 16 miles long. It generally takes anywhere from 8 to 12 hours to traverse it. It took us 26 hours. Let me repeat that. 26 hours. We left Friday at 6:45am and arrived at DuSable Harbor Saturday at 8:00am.
There are several locks along the way. It takes about a half hour to an hour to get through each lock. Barge traffic, though, has priority and one barge can take up the whole lock for a cycle. So, if you are at the lock at the same time a barge is at the lock, you wait.
We waited. For the first lock, the wait was three hours. For the second lock, one hour. For the third lock, two hours.
When I say we, I mean Greg, Matt, and the captain we hired to transport the boat to Chicago. We didn’t feel we had enough experience to make the journey safely.
Our plan was for me to drive the rental car to Joliet, park it in an overnight lot, and then join the boys on the boat for the Joliet to Chicago leg.
MY TIME IN JOLIET
I drove the car to Joliet with no problem. Greg thought the parking at the Metra station might be overnight. I couldn’t see any signs so I bought a ticket and found out that it wasn’t. No problem. I texted Greg to see how much time I had. He thought perhaps an hour and a half.
Great! Time for breakfast and time to find overnight parking.
After a leisurely breakfast, I moved the car to an overnight lot not too far away. We knew the bridge to the public dock in Joliet was out. I don’t think I realized what that meant exactly. What it meant was that the bridge was closed to both car and pedestrian traffic. I wasn’t sure how I would get across the river, but a bridge worker gave me directions. I just had to go to the next bridge and cross there.
FUNNY STORY OF THE DAY
I was two steps onto the bridge when alarms started sounding and the bridge started rumbling. I thought, “Shit! What have I done?” I looked back over my shoulder and saw the arms coming down to stop traffic. Then the bridge started going up.
At that point, I scurried off the bridge on to the sidewalk.
I was not familiar with the drawbridge system. I wonder, if I had kept walking, would the bridge have kept rising? We’ll never know.
CROSSING THE RIVER
When I was finally able to get to the other side, I walked to the public dock. As I was walking, police cars and firetrucks were screaming by.
I thought someone had drowned. There was a boat tied up to the dock and an elderly gentleman was talking to the police. The officer took a boat hook and poked the water.
I just looked it up now. I thought someone had fallen off the docked boat. According to the news report, though, the man on the boat had spotted the body.
I texted Greg to see how far he was from Joliet. The answer (because of the waiting at the locks) — pretty far.
By now it was lunch time. There was nowhere nearby to eat. I don’t want to cross the river again because my knees hurt and it was still sweltering hot. I checked Maps and saw that there was a Wendy’s 5 minutes away. Off I went. I got to the Wendy’s to discover it is closed. Only the drive through was open. So I ended going back across the river after all.
I had lunch at the same place I had breakfast. I was hoping I could hang out there for a while but they closed at 2:00pm so I was back on the street again.
I headed back to the dock to wait.
One of the things that caught my eye on the way was a business that had set up shop near the casino.
When I saw this business so close to the casino, I got a little sad.
THE PICK UP
I thought the captain was going to dock the boat and that I would board as one normally does. Nope. He brought the boat close to the dock and I jumped aboard. I thought that was cool.
That and the herons. There were so many blue herons on the trip. They would just fly from one bank to the other. We also saw a flock of egrets hanging out and a bald eagle.
THE REST OF THE TRIP
I don’t think we realized how slow we would have to travel. When we were near bridges or in a narrow channel, we could only go about 8mph since we couldn’t create a wake.
We realized that we wouldn’t get to Chicago before midnight. There weren’t a lot of places to stop for the night so we just kept going.
We finally found a place where we could tie up around 1:00am. We were lucky enough that there was a power pedestal. Power means the difference between sleeping and not sleeping for Greg. We both have CPAPs. Greg can’t sleep without his. I can sleep, but I snore and wake up frequently. Greg didn’t bring ear plugs, so the night would not have been pleasant.
We woke up at dawn and travelled the last two hours to DuSable.
Things We Learned
Even though the trip was not intended to be educational, we learned quite a bit.
We had travelled the Trent-Severn in Ontario when we rented a houseboat, so we were familiar with the lock system there. It’s different in the States. The locks close early in Canada. I’m not sure if it is the same on all of the waterways, but the locks were open all night on the Cal-Sag. If you wanted to go through, you had to hail the lock master.
Greg has his VHF license, but he hadn’t used it in a real world situation. We saw how important it was to monitor channel 16 at all times, and to communicate with bridges and barges.
It was a long, long way to Chicago, but it was a valuable learning experience.
