Days 112-113

• Joliet IL - Ottawa IL (Heritage Harbor Marina)
• Start 6:40 AM
• End 3"20 PM
• Underway 5:04 Hours
• Distance 39 miles
• Total Miles on Trip 1900
• Av Speed 6.8 knots
• Locks 3
• Weather Sunny 85 Degrees

We left Joliet, at 6:40 With Happiness Is, Adventure Awaits, Ecclessias, Liberty Call and Joy Sea. Happiness Is and Adventure Awaits, had to be thru the Jefferson St Draw Bridge before 7:15am, or they would have to wait until after rush hour for the bridge to open. The Brandon Road Lock wants loopers coming from Joliet to come thru as a group, to minimize the amount of times they need to lock through pleasure boaters. We also timed our passage to avoid any commercial traffic so we did not have to wait for them to lock through. We were not as lucky with the next two locks. We ended up waiting for about 45 minutes at the Dresden Lock, and about 30 minutes at the Marseilles Lock. Over all our waits were not bad, when we got to the Marseilles Lock, there were 2 pleasure boats that had been waiting over 3 hours to lock through.

One problem traveling in a small group like we were, is that we can overwhelm the marinas when we all arrive at the same time. Heritage Marina, is only 1.5 miles from the lock, so we could not even spread out our arrivals. The marina staff was great at handling it even with 2 of us getting fuel.

As soon as we were settled in our slip, Angel and I borrowed the courtesy car, and went grocery shopping. We returned just in time to listen to Jeremy's (Marina Owner) 2 hour river briefing. The briefing covered which anchorages and marinas to stop at and which ones to avoid based on the low water on the river.

Because we had two long days, and the marina was so nice, we decided to spend two nights instead of one. We spent Friday morning cleaning the boat, and then the afternoon in the pool. Friday night we went out to dinner with Tom & CiCi (Godspeed II) Rommel & Amy (Happiness Is) and Wes & Lorraine (Adventure Awaits). We will probably spend the next couple of days traveling with them.

Our next stop will be anchoring out behind Lower Henry Island.