6/21/14 - 7/1/14   We were in Seneca, IL on the morning of Saturday June 21 doing last minute preparations and planning to leave in a few days.   We got a notice via email that the electric fish barrier in the Illinois River was going to close for maintenance on Monday morning and that no vessels would be allowed through until the following weekend.    We were a day and a half away so we just had time to make it through before closing, if we left immediately.   We did that and after stopping in Joliet for the night made it through on Sunday afternoon.   That gave us just enough time to make it through a couple of more locks and through downtown Chicago and finally into Lake Michigan in late afternoon.   We got a slip in DuSable Harbor in the shadow of Chicago.    It was the most expensive one night slip fee we had ever paid ($131).  Just by chance, our friend Helen had flown in that afternoon for a seminar so we had a great supper with her in her hotel.   The next morning we started up the west coast of the lake and after three nights landed in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.   We were looking for a town to stay in for a while so we could investigate places to stay for the summer by car.   Sheboygan is centrally located in the lake, large enough to offer good services and shopping, small enough to feel secure at night, has a farmers market downtown on Saturdays and Wednesdays, a YMCA across the street, a shuttle bus, a great moderately priced marina, and best of all, the daytime high temperatures at the end of June are around 75 degrees!   We paid for a month, rented a car one way, drove to Seneca and picked up our car and brought it back to Sheboygan.   We felt like we had arrived at our goal.

5/26/14 - 6/20/14   After the Mississippi River,  the Illinois was almost boring.    It has far less current, far less debris, far less traffic, far more anchorages, and it is straighter.    We began to see the Asian Carp junping out of the water and saw fishermen gill netting them.   We were told they use them for cat food.  Once, as I was tying the boat to the dock, an 18" carp jumped out of the water, slapped me on the leg and then flip-flopped back in the water (honest!).   Groups of barn swallows circled the boat frequently.  Two actually flew through the door of the cabin and got stuck trying to get out of the windshield.   The cats thought it was meal time but I captured and freed both before they were injured.   With only two more days cruising time to Chicago we decided to take a breather.   We found a great marina at Seneca, IL and paid for two weeks.    I had some business in Houston that needed my presence so I left Lace and the cats on the boat, rented a car and made the 1100 mile trip to Baytown in two days.   We had long talked about the fact that our little Toyota RAV4 was too small to make the commute to Wisconsin with luggage and two cats so while in Houston, I traded it in on a 2013 Toyota Venza.   On the way back to Illinois in the new (used) car, I dropped into Dallas to visit with my brother and then stopped in Falls City, NE to check on the farm.   I got back to Seneca with five days to catch up on maintenance, do some repairs (while attempting to get anchored in a narrow waterway, I ran the boat into a tree and broke off one of the radio antennas and that's all I want to say about that) and take down the mast (there are low fixed bridges in Chicago that we can't get under without lowering our air draft).   Next stop Chicago

5/13/14 - 5/25/14    The Tennessee River is beautiful.   Rocky hills make sedimentary rock cliffs at the river's edge.   It ends at the high point of the Tennessee in Kentucky Lake.  To avoid heavy barge traffic we did a quick shuffle from Kentucky Lake, through the Barkley Canal (1.5 miles)  into Barkley Lake (large and serene), then down into the Cumberland River (totally unremarkable), then into the Ohio River (fast flowing and commercial) and finally, we turned into the dreaded Mississippi all within 4 days.   As expected, the Mississippi was the most formidable challenge that we had encountered.   Recent rains made the current run between 4 and 5 miles per hour.   That made our speed over ground around 4 mph.   There are very few marinas and almost no good off-the-river anchor sights.    Even St. Louis has no marina for transient boats.   There are concrete wing dams almost continuously along the banks which are to control bank erosion and keep the center of the river deep and navigable.   They do that nicely but make the shore unapproachable for boats our size because of the danger of impact.  It was necessary to get up at around 5AM to be underway by at least 6:30 and run up to 10 hours to reach an acceptable anchorage.    If, for some reason the anchorage was too shallow or not available for some other reason, we needed a few more hours of daylight to find a secondary target.   Running at night is too dangerous.   Even the best anchorages were just off the navigation channel and at night we could hear the river gurgle past with the occasional bump of a branch or log as it hit the hull.   The wake and noise from passing tows (and the occasional train) made sleep intermittant.  If  it weren't for the anchor-drag alarm on the GPS, we would have had to stand watch all night.    After 200 miles of the Mississippi we reached a great marina at Alton Illinois.   It is just above two lock/dams so the current was greatly diminished from here on and it was only 20 more miles until we were to turn onto the Illinois River.

 

5/7/14 - 5/12/14   As we moved into Mississippi the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway was becoming much easier to deal with.   There had been no recent rains so the waterway flowed much slower allowing us to greatly increase our progress north.   This is a canal that the U.S. Congress created in the 80's to connect the Tennessee River to the Mobil River for commercial traffic.   This project was based on an Army Corp of Engineers estimate of the barge traffic that would be using it which turned out to be wildly optimistic.   It is much straighter than the lower rivers so it was much easier to pilot.   The highlight of this stretch happened when we approached the last lock before the Tennessee River.    The Jamie Whitten Lock has the largest lift on the river at 84 feet.   There was already a very large tow (a tugboat pushing barges is refered to as a "tow") already in the lock when we were approaching.   The Black Belt was a 3500 horse power behemoth pushing 5 barges filled with coal and coke and 2 empties.   Some tugboat captains would not want to fool with pleasure boats but this one allowed us to tie up to him and take the ride up.   That saved us more than an hour of wait time while he rode up alone.   The next day we reached the Tennessee River.

4/26/14 - 5/6/14    We had a few minor mechanical issues (as always) so we planned on stopping in Mobile Bay at Dog River Marina which is a full service marina with it's own West Marine.    Unfortunately our weather window was about to close and once closed it would have been days before Mobile Bay was fit to travel on again.   We skipped Dog River and ran the length of the bay in one day to the relative safety of the Mobile River.   We knew when we started this trek that going up the rivers against the current might be a slow proposition and that proved to be the case right away since recent rains upstream resulted in the Mobile River flowing in some places at 2-1/2 miles per hour.   That made our speed over ground as low as 4-1/2.   We came on an extremely good anchor spot just off the river about the same time as a three day stretch of intermittent heavy rain and lightening so we stayed put and waited for it to pass.    There is some strategy for going up a river.   The river flows fastest in the center so the idea is to stay as close to the bank as possible.   That is also where logs, branches and other river debris accumulates (we saw a whole dead hog floating) and also where the shallow water is.   Also there are eddy currents which make the boat want to turn in the wrong direction.   So to pick up 1 mile per hour or so requires constant steering and checking the depth sounder.   The river is very pleasant.   It is transitioning from the cypress tree of the swamps to the pine trees of the southern forest.   Also we are just brushing the southernmost extent of the Appalachian Mountains so we are seeing rolling hills with occasional rock outcrops.   As we reached Demopolis, AL we had been 9 days without spending a night in a marina or having internet or reliable phone service so we spent a couple of nights to recharge.   Since we left Mobile we had traveled 214 river miles but only 126 miles as the egret flies.

4/15/14 - 4/25/14   Houma LA is a great place to stop.   We know the dockmaster from previous stays.   He rides from home on his bike to collect $25 per night including electricity and pump-out.    We shook hands like old pals.    We met a couple on a fairly large sailboat that was registered in Deer Lodge, Montana.   You can apparently register a boat wherever you want, regardless of whether there's enough water there to float it.    Anchored out the next night on Lake Salvadore.    Lots of noise from airboats, presumably on tourist swamp tours, but that quieted with evening.  

   We planned to stop for a couple of days to visit friends that we hadn't seen since the loop in 2011.   They live in a swamp on the Tickfaw river which is northwest of Lake Pontchartrain.    If you look in the encyclopedia under "Cajun Hospitality" their picture is in there.    We stayed three days and they fed us three squares a day, took us to West Marine (twice), Walmart and the grocery store.   The highlights were "Shrimp and Grits" and Chicago style deep dish pizza with homemade crust.   Nice folks.   We said goodbye and two days later we were across Lake Pontchartrain.and back on the Intracoastal Canal headed east.
    Mississippi Sound is basically 90 miles of open water punctuated with a few barrier islands.   It can really be uncomfortable if the weather turns bad on you but we had a great crossing including a night at anchor off of Horn Island, a National Seashore.   At the eastern end is Dauphine Island, Alabama where we stopped at the marina for the evening.    Dauphine Island has some nice attractions including two Civil War forts and an aquarium but we wanted to take a pause.    Tomorrow we start north into Mobile Bay.
   

    4/1/14 - 4/14/14    We planned on taking the Confetti up to Lake Michigan and to leave it there as our summer escape from Texas summers.  Our projected departure date was April 1st but a couple of bad weather days and a string of mechanical difficulties (aft head pump froze up, fresh water pump quit, galley lights stopped lighting) all seemed to be conspiring to prevent our leaving.  Thank you Mike and Linda for the taxi service through the false starts.   As it turned out, all those events were fortunate because they were fairly easily overcome at the home dock but would have been practically impossible to remedy after we were already underway.   We stopped in Seabrook Shipyard to get the Confetti's bottom pressure washed and scrapped then waited a day at the dock for an extremely windy day to pass.   On April 9th we finally set out on a perfect travel day and ran the length of Galveston Bay to enter the Intercoastal Canal.   We docked at Stingaree Marina on the Bolivar Peninsula.   We walked 1/2 mile to a Valero for a $4.00 half gallon of milk and then half way back when we felt our steam running low.   I thumbed down a local in a pickup who trucked us the last 1/4 mile.   Funny how you forget how far a mile is when you're on shoe leather.
    The 50 miles between Bolivar and Port Arthur is almost totally undeveloped because it is so low and flat that it is an unsuitable dwelling for anything except many varieties of birds and the occasional cow.    We enjoy the birds (and the cows).
    The boat was performing well.   The new navigation software on the laptop with it's Bluetooth GPS was working great (Thanks Johnny!).   We anchored at Shell Island just shy of the Louisiana state line and the newly rebuilt windlass pulled up the anchor the next morning without a problem.
    Bow Tie Marina near Lake Charles is a nice place to stop.   It has reasonably priced fuel and is walking distance to a Dollar store.  It's in the shadow of the L'Auberge Casino but we didn't donate.   We wanted to leave early because the first obstacle of the day was a lock that reportedly was closed for maintenance.   It turned out the lock master was cordial to pleasure boats and he passed us through with very little delay.   Later an alligator was sighted entering the water from the bank.   It reminded me of the Tarzan movies.    We were now 160 miles from the Mississippi and we stopped a day in Intracoastal City, to wait out a line of thunderstorms.   It's a nice commercial dock with WiFi but the work boat traffic goes by 24/7 so we were waked and rumbled occasionally in the night.   Next stop Houma, LA.

11/19/11 -  11/30/11   We left Dog River Marina and completed the Great Loop at 11:30 in southern Mobile Bay.   We toasted with coffee and changed the burgee (the small flag on the bow) to our gold looper flag signifying that we had completed the Great Loop.  Now all we had to do was go 600 miles west to home.   We crossed Mississippi Sound in two days anchoring at Cat Island and Rabbit Island Louisiana.   We crossed the Mississippi River with it's two locks and headed for Houma Louisiana City Dock.   This stretch of the Inter-coastal Canal is flat and swampy with few turns and long straight waterways.   We traveled several more days through Morgan City, Port Arthur, and finally into Offats Bayou in southern Galveston Bay.  We had a very fortunate weather window and made it up the length of the bay amid heavy ship traffic and into Seabrook Marina on November 30.   In ten and a half months we had traveled 7251 miles.  We had a great feeling of accomplishment but I was ready for a change back to hard ground.   Lace wanted to stay on the boat and never go home.  Of course we did go home and even now are working on a staggering to-do list.   We don't know what we'll do with the boat.   What we do know is that we are going to stay close for another year and then maybe we'll do it all again.   There will still be a lot to see:  Padre Island, the Bahamas, the Florida Keys, and lots of places in Canada that we missed.    For right now it's good to be home!

11/6/11 - 11/18/11   We were again southbound in the Tombigbee River.   We saw a fellow in a sail boat built from sticks, plastic bottles and blue tarps.   We passed him very slowly so as not to upset his fragile craft.   A couple of nights later, as we were anchoring in a very secluded lake just off the river, Lace saw a bear.  We scrambled to get the binoculars but he ran into the woods and we never saw him again.   We later found that this part of Alabama has a sizable bear population.   We were now approaching the old "14 mile" railroad swing bridge that was under renovation.   The new bridge was already in place and as we rounded a corner there was the old bridge span coming up river on two barges.   It took up nearly the entire river width but after a radio chat with  one of the tug boat captains we were able to pass.   Unfortunately when we got to the new bridge, it had stopped functioning and couldn't be opened.   We anchored in the river to wait for repairs.   It was just as well because it was cold and raining and not a good travel day anyway.   The next morning wasn't much better but the bridge opened and we passed under and made our way down to Mobile, Alabama.  Mobile Bay was pretty choppy but we made our way down to Dog River Marina expecting to stay a few days until the weather cleared up.   Over the next seven days we re-provisioned, did some maintenance and with the help of friends' rental cars visited the battleship Alabama on permanent display in Mobile, visited the Naval Air Museum in Pensacola and visited Fort Gaines, a civil war fort on Dauphin Island.   Even though we had not quite completed the loop, we combined forces with a couple that was about to complete their loop, and hosted a champagne happy hour on the Confetti.  By one count we had twenty loopers on the boat to toast our completion.

10/14/11 - 11/5/11   After visiting Chattanooga, TN we're back on the Tennessee River west bound toward Wheeler State Park at Rogersville Alabama.   We were a little ahead of schedule so we took our time and enjoyed the fall colors and the wildlife (lots of Bald Eagles)  We arrived in Rogersville on 10/20/11, three days early for the America's Great Loop Cruisers Association Rendezvous but we enjoyed the park and took long walks in the woods.   Lots of deer.  When the conference got started there were 53 boats from all over the U.S. and Canada and over 250 people attending.   At this point in our journey we had already taken the boat over 6000 miles so we didn't expect to benefit from the educational part as much as previous meetings but we found the  classes useful.   Of course we enjoyed seeing old friends and made some new ones.   That was probably the last time that we will see some of those folks and we were sad to see it come to an end.   We were back on the river toward the Tenn-Tom Waterway which is near the intersection of Mississippi, Tennessee and Alabama.   The Tennessee Valley Authority built hydroelectric dams on the river to supply electricity to the nearby communities but I was surprised to see the number of coal fired power plants we passed.   We saw many barges piled with coal.   We were southbound now and as we began to approach the Gulf of Mexico, we felt the end of our trip growing near.