Our trip from Joliet was not what we had planned. It was supposed to be an easy day with two locks and a nice afternoon at a quiet marina. We decided that we would wait to leave until after I had finished working and the big crowd of boats had headed off. This turned out to be a mistake. By the time we arrived at the Brandon Road Lock they were too busy to take us through. It took about three hours before they finally called us to the dock. Fortunately we were able to raft up to Nepidae so at least we didn’t have to hold station for several hours.

When we finally got past the first lock we worked our way down the river to the second lock, Dresden Lock. By the time we arrived at the lock and checked in with the lockmaster it was 4:30pm. He advised us that we would again have to wait.

The way the locks work is that the commercial barges get priority, and the lockmaster tries to fit in the pleasure craft where he can. It is easy if we are headed the opposite direction of the barges because we can usually go in when the lock is lowered for the next commercial barge. In cases where we are headed the same direction as the barge traffic, we have to wait for some available space. Many times the commercial barges fill the entire lock. Other times the materials being carried on the barges are hazardous, and they won’t let pleasure craft in the lock with that type of cargo. Finally in some cases there are splits, where a set of barges being pushed is so large that they must be divided into two lockages. In this case the second part of the split is left blocking the exit to the lock so nobody can make use of the lock until the split loads are reconnected. This is what happened to us. We waited three more hours for the lock to finally be available.

So now it is 7:45pm and it is dark. We had shared the lock with one other boat, a sailboat named Passages. They let me know that they had no lights and asked if they could follow us. So we led the way down the river in the dark with every light turned on and our spotlight in constant use. We were blessed with a clear night sky and a full moon, which made it much easier to see. We slowly made our way along the River for almost three hours until we finally reached our destination at Spring Brook Marina in Seneca, IL. Our tagalong boat made it as well, but they were unable to enter the marina because of their deep draft, so they went back out to tie up to a barge for the night. We docked in the dark and were so happy that the day was finally over. It was 10:45pm.