We planned a trip for 6/5/21 to 6/12/21
The plan was to go from our home port in Wilmington, IL to New Buffalo, MI the first day, leaving at 5:30 AM Saturday morning. Then on to Grand Haven, Pentwater, across the lake to Sheboygan, Racine, and spend the last two nights in Chicago, before heading back down river to our home port. Many thanks to Tim and Kim who came with and helped along the way. It was a great time with many life long memories….
5/29/21
Wait – The trip starts on 6/5, why does the log start on 5/29? Well, I figured I would drop a line about the days leading to it. The weather was bad, but I figured I needed to get my batteries replaced before I went out on the trip. We had some older batteries that port side just wasn’t cranking the motor well without the parallel start. I came down this Friday in the rain to replace the batteries and add one. The setup when I got it was 2 on the Starboard side and 1 on the Port side. I put four down there, two for each side.
When I came out of the engine room after replacing the batteries the cabin was filling with smoke. I immediately hit all the breakers and grabbed my flashlight. Come to find out it wasn’t smoke, it was R22 filling the cabin from the AFT air conditioner that was just fixed. The line they soldered must have become more frail under the heat load from the torch they used to solder it. Great, I thought 4 business days to get an AC on board because it was going to be in the 90’s on our trip. I went outside and let the steam of the R22 blow out. After going back in I had to make some modifications to the battery holders where I put the 4th battery. I brought what I needed outside and closed the door. I wanted it to stay cool in there now with only 2 AC units.
When I finished up and went back it, it was steamed out again with the salon unit blowing the line right at the compressor. This was the other unit I just had repaired. HA!! Now I have two units to have within 4 business days. I searched and searched. The brand I wanted didn’t have a distributor that could get me the model I wanted. I ended up going with two units from MarinAire.
I paid $300ish for Next Day Air shipping knowing my tight deadline and also knowing it was a holiday weekend. First thing Monday morning they were emailing me confirming my order and everything about it. They were delivered on Wednesday! I had them installed in about 4 hours. I already had the old units removed.
They are way different that the units I replaced, and may blow a degree or two warmer but still stay way below the -20 degrees of the return air. I measured down to 48 degrees. They are way quieter but I find the best way to run them is with the fan on all the time. I prefer the fan running when needed, but they cycle the fan. I’m assuming get to a fresh temp check as the sensor is on the front of the unit checking the return air. I do plan on talking to them about this. The other great thing is they have IR remotes which also allow you to get an add-on for about $70 to put these on WiFi. I have a hotspot on the boat so this will let me turn the units on before I get there. This was a huge plus.
6/5/2021
We spent 8.5 hours on this side of the lock. It took us 9.5 hours to get though the first lock. We ended up tying up on the other side of the lock for the rest of the day. It was only 3:00P and we could have made it further, but I didn’t want to push it. We cancelled many slip reservations and figured we would see how it went the next day as we had two more locks to go through.
6/6/21
Today we got under way. The charts told me my 16ft clearance would make it under all the bridges on the Calumet so we took that way. We also went that way because we haven’t been. Going this way avoids the Amtrak bridge that was a pain to get lifted when we brought the boat home. We cleared two more locks and ended up having to lift 3 bridges. 7.5 hours of boating today and made it to New Buffalo.
6/7 was rained out and we stayed in New Buffalo.
6/8/21 – 6/9/21
Today we went to St Joseph for two nights. Caught a great sunset, checked the clarity of the water with the GoPro and pieced together a video from 6/6 to 6/7.
6/10
Today we headed back to Chicago. We saved gas and did more relaxing than boating as initially planned. We ran into quick a bit of fog that was supposed to be cleared by 1AM before departure. At times we were running around 5-6 knots due to the dense fog. Also ran a video of the crossing. The cross trook roughly 3.5 hours.
6/11/21
Today was the Chicago play day. We were staying in DuSable, ran down to Burnham, then up to Montrose, then back down to the PlayPen for a little anchor time.
6/12/21
The trip is ending. Headed back to home port for a Steak Fry at 3PM. The trip took 8 hours but the GoPro only had enough storage for the first 1. I completely filled a 256G SD card and didn’t get any extras. We got back right by 3P.
