October 1-5, 2026
It started to rain as we head south to Grafton on the Illinois river. We had one lock to go through and as I was captaining, Howie was the one out in the rain getting the line ready to tie up.
Howie prepping for locking at Lagrange lock.
This is a google map picture with tows going through the lock. We had a pretty easy time of getting through the lock, though it was raining.
The Lagrange lock and dam was pretty easy to get through. We had two other boats that went through the lock with us. I think we have gone through over 80+ locks by now. It is a pretty easy system, getting the lock master to open the doors and let us in is by far the hardest part.
During our time on the Illinois river we have had a pretty good current propelling us forward. We get an extra 2+ knots while traveling. It is a pretty cool feeling to be going 8 knots, but we our speed is really 10-11 knots. The Grafton marina was pretty busy as we got closer and we had to wait a bit to get into the marina.
As you can see from the picture below, Grafton is at the confluence of the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. The current was especially swift here. We had to really pull the boat back as we got closer to the marina. As we made the turn into the marina, we felt a serious pull and had to rev the engines to get around the turn.
We were docked at the fuel dock which was the busy part of the marina. Boats were continually going in and out as people were visiting the restaurant or coming in for a short while to go into town. Howie made an incredibly good decision in putting fenders out on our port side so “if” someone was going to hit us, they would likely hit the fenders instead (yes, you guessed it, we did get hit. A pontoon boat going out hit the backside of our boat. We watched him do it and yelled up at us, “Sorry about that, I was admiring your boat and wasn’t watching where I was going!”). Oh brother. Not the last time we got hit.