Scott here

Day 5 is over and done with. Not nearly as long as the previous travel days and I don’t think we had any terrifying moments for us today!! The closest terrifying moment came when we were in Starved Rock Lock. We had three boats on the wall and three boats rafted out. The boat we were rafted too was holding onto the lock wall with a pin (AKA a bollard or a timber head). The pin was close to the back third of the boat and they had a line dropped down to the bow and they hung on to that line as well. Well, that line broke so the bow was coming off the wall due to the turbulence and wind. Thankfully the 4th boat had bow thrusters and could move all 4 boats back closer to the wall! That could have been bad!!

Our plan wasn’t to leave until 8:00 am and hopefully lock through at 9:00 am. Best laid plans, right?? We left at 7:45 and locked through starting at 9:30 am. Not bad and just one lock today. Thankful for that! Here we go……

Plan v Actual
Date: October 7, 2023
Route name in Aqua Maps: TD: 10/07/23 (Ottawa to Henry, IL)
Nebo Link: Click here
Crew: Captain Scott, 1st Mate Rita, & K9 Jazzy
Start at: 8:00 am Actual 7:45 am
End at: 4:00 pm Actual 2:48 pm
Total Time: 7:30 hours. Actual was 7:03 hours
Distance: 46.1 miles Actual was 46.7
Fuel Plan: 52 gallons. I’ll talk about fuel below

Side note: Go to Henry Harbor Marina. Great owners, and they are doing a great job here!

Fuel, one of my biggest concerns! How far can 300 gallons go? Well, I topped off today and put in 64.4 gallons of diesel. The engines ran a total of 53.7 hours. I honestly don’t care about the hourly burn rate, although we did idle A LOT waiting for locks to open. The important thing is how far can we go on the fuel we hold? We went 143.7 miles and my math puts that at 2.2 MPG. Again, I’ll take that. That is with running the generator for a couple of hours on the Joliet wall. Let’s reduce that to 2 MPG and take 70% of 600 that will give me 420 miles we can run. I use 70% as I don’t want to plan on using 20% of the fuel for emergencies and a plan on using 10% on the generator while anchoring.

That is a lot of miles, and I just don’t know if I believe that. We have to go 200-250 miles between available fuel stops. It’s 250 if we cannot get to Paducah by Oct. 15 by 2 pm, and 200 miles if we can make it there. The math makes me feel much more confident, but I still have my doubts. I guess the saying ‘plan for the worst and hope for the best’ has taken over my brain!

Well, that is what I have to say about today. Here are some gratuitous photos.