Well, its 7:30 on thursday morning, November 16, and the long awaited trip finally begins. My little brother decided to be my first mate for a few days ( much appreciated ) and turned out to be the first of many blessings in the next few days. The weather would be consistently cold and windy and i really had no idea what i was in for, so it was really great to have help and shift at the helm. To our relief, the engine kept the cabin nice and toasty, so we took turns warming up. Winds were out of the north at 10-12 mph and Lake Michigan had 4' white caps and 6-8' swells so we were glad to see the Chicago sky line after 5 hours of cruising.
We made it through our first lock in the Chicago river easily and got to mile 318 where we moored to a barge bunker for the night. Waking up several times through the night by the rumble and the rocking of passing barges gave us our first taste of sleeping on the river. Friday was more of the same cold and wind, and we made it through our first serious lock (Brandon lock and dam, 38' drop). We made our first fuel stop at Breezy Harbor marina and got 6.6 gallons, lol, much to my relief, since i was told fuel would be a problem and i was carrying 40 gallons.
Saturday morning would turn out to be a real "God gift" as He arranged for me to leave my credit card in the restaurant/bar the night before. That meant that instead of leaving at first light, we had to wait until 9 am to retrieve it, at which point the weather had turned an unexpected corner. Winds of 25-40 mph had whipped the river into a frenzy, it rained, snowed, and sleeted all day, we we would have met with disaster, had we been out in it ( thank you, LORD ). This will happen more, as you will learn in my next post.