Grafton Marina waiting on the remnants of Hurricane Gustaf

Thursday, Day 12…I’ve already lost track of the days and date. Rolling on the River plays in my head and we’re now anticipating an increase of flows as we plan to enter the Mississippi tomorrow. It’s reportedly a natural increase to about to about 3 knots from the 1 knot we have carried down the Illinois River from Chicago.

The big question now is how much more it may get. Yesterday we lifted anchor at Bar Island with our new best friends on Our Turn, a nice 44 DeFever that is now for sale. (they are just finishing the loop) Hurricane Gustaf met up with a southeast bound cold front and the combined mess went from the Gulf of Mexico to Georgian Bay on our Sirrius weather screen. We began a WX broadcast flash flood warning as we made it to Grafton Marina (nice) about 3:30 in the afternoon. We also picked up a broadcast on 22a that is calling for a 15 foot increase on the Upper Mississippi which is the chartbook we switch to tomorrow.

It was a good day on the river yesterday. Up early to catch a lock opening at LaGrange Lock and Wicket Dam. Down the river 85 miles to Grafton. A lot of barge and tow traffic even a few car ferried. We spent the day looking at the weather screen tracking the two converging storms. One small patch of thunder storms and a little lightening was all we saw early and the rest of the day was in a small patch of the clean area at the center of the converging storms. We were lucky. The winds picked up as we made the Grafton entrance and it rained much of the night.

Here comes the big muddy!

So today we’re securely tied to the end of a floating dock here at Grafton and watching what the river is going to do. The remains of the hurricane and cold front look like they will move on through to Michigan and the east coast. It’s raining as I type.

50 amps is kissing the batteries, ice is being made and the laundry is spinning in Air Conditioned comfort.

Fuel here was $4.40 a gallon and we took on 100 gallons. That should give us a pretty good range now and we’ll look for fuel again when we hit the Cumberland River. I am actually impressed with our fuel economy. I was thinking we’d get about a gallon a mile but it looks like we’re double that. We’ve been running steadily at just over 8 knots at 1200rpm on these old twin 3208 CAT 375’s. A few increases in speed for Tows, bridges and weather…… and a daily push up on plane to blow out the carbon.

I splurged and bought a new Nikon SLR camera with a 28 x 200 lens for the loop trip. After years with small digital’s and squinting at the back screen, it’s really nice to be back to a single lens reflex camera. My last camera was a 35mm Pentax Spotmatic F bought used in Detroit in the 70’s. My how things have changed. Image stabilization is great from a moving boat. Digital is too easy….I’ve taken hundreds of pictures already! I need to delete the bad ones and will save good ones on a thumb drive for file backup.

We are using Verizon Air Card for the internet access and it has been fine until the lower Illinois river the last couple of days. Difficult connecting…but it might be the weather. Vaughn is doing better with her Blackberry and Verizon access with that phone.

A number of other Loopers are here in Grafton…..we talked with Eagles Nest, a 49 DeFever. I’ll see who else is here today.

Ooops…another song is taking over…..raindrops keep falling on my head……