It wasn’t the fuel filters. The fuel leak mentioned in the last blog entry, I mean. It persisted in a low-grade fashion. I wasn’t sure at first, as one wouldn’t be with a slow leak—and the fuel lines feeding that engine are largely out of reach and view, so all discovery is by feel. Not ideal.

Fuel leak persisting without our immediate knowledge, we weighed anchor Sunday, September 7, at Buffalo Rock State Park and continued south on the Illinois River, retracing familiar territory from our Great Loop voyage in 2019. We knew it was going to be a long day right out of the gate—and it was. We moved through Peru, where I had played a couple of shows during our Loop at the local boat club and a restaurant up the hill, and proceeded toward Peoria, where we intended to spend the night either on the free city dock or anchored nearby.

As the day progressed and we took turns doing hourly engine room checks, I noted that the sorbents under the starboard engine were slowly saturating with diesel. I could not, for the life of me, find the source. The new filters were not it—of that I was sure. My eyes finally settled on some pooled fuel around a reverse-flared fitting on top of the mechanical fuel pump, and I decided that must be the spot. I made a mental note to reseat the fitting once we were settled in for the night.

As the five-o’clock hour rolled around and the light of day moved toward the inevitable golden hour, we rolled into Peoria. Approaching the city docks, we noted that the one dock Stinkpot could fit was already occupied by a looper boat, Vitamin Sea. We turned our sights to the nearby anchorage, hoping to find our rest for the day. As I proceeded into it, I watched the depth gauge dropping, and before I could get into reverse, I could tell by our lack of speed that we were no longer “technically” afloat. I jammed it in reverse and gave it some throttle to back off the mud bottom into deeper water. I began sounding around for enough water to drop the hook for the night—and kept rolling snake eyes. The river levels were simply too low for us to safely anchor here.

On the rivers, “safe anchoring” means being able to get (and stay) outside the navigable channel while at anchor, and the closeness of the two barge tows that passed us while we were scouting for the right spot told me we were chasing unicorns with the current river levels.

With plans A and B dashed, I pulled us back into the channel abaft the second barge tow and continued heading south. Stacey brought me my notes, and the next viable anchorage I had already identified was over 40 miles further downriver. That would not do. We needed something soon. We were tired and hungry.

I centered my planning app on our location and began carefully scanning the banks ahead. I spotted it--Kuchie’s On the Water in Creve Coeur, Illinois—a mere three or four miles downriver on the left descending bank. They reportedly had a dock with 10 feet of depth. It seemed too good to be true!

Buoyed by this revelation, I told Stacey, cautioning that we needed to verify it was still there. The last review was from 2021. If they were still operational, this place was clearly “off canon” for Great Loopers. Stacey whipped out her iPhone, and fingers flying, confirmed Kuchie’s continued existence. Our uncontainable excitement carried us all the way to the dock, where Stacey succeeded in lassoing a dock cleat from the deck for the first time ever—and on the first try.
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Tied up and happy, we shut down systems as usual, pulled on our shoes, and stepped onto solid ground for the first time since leaving the warm bosom of Joliet’s concrete bulkhead. Across a crumbling—but somehow serviceable—dock we marched, up the high riverbank over time-worn stairs, past happy diners enjoying cold drinks, hot food, and a working waterfront vibe enhanced by the recent arrival of a beautiful DeFever yacht. We made our way inside, walked past the unmanned host podium, and toward the bar. We hadn’t gotten far before a slightly-irritated hostess asked, “Two?” behind us. We turned around, gesturing toward the bar, and she said, “Oh, do you want to sit at the bar? Go ahead.” We thanked her and stepped up to our respective perches and started chatting with Karis—our bartender. Stacey commented on the uniqueness of her name, and she said, “Yeah, it’s like Paris with a K.”

Stacey immediately understood that her name was a point of both pride and irritation for Karis and made a point to use it liberally, which the beleaguered barkeep clearly appreciated. We ordered.

I am not sure frequent readers of this blog fully appreciate Stacey’s relationship with the ambrosia known to astute culinarians everywhere as macaroni and cheese, but suffice it to say, she would bathe in it given the chance. One look at the menu and I said, “They saw you coming.” There, among the burgers, sandwiches, and seafood platters, was an entire “mac and cheese” section. At the top of the list was an American Fusion dish so curious, so unlikely, that Stacey gasped—Jambalaya Mac and Cheese.

Karis immediately piped up, “Oh yeah, that’s the best thing on the menu.” Nothing else needed to be said. Stacey ordered it.

I, on the other hand, ordered a burger and a beer. It was all very good—and exactly what we needed after a long day of trials and tribulations.

Check paid, we momentarily went back to the boat to pull on another layer. The sun was heading down, and there was a nip in the air. Appropriately clothed, we made our way back up the bank to the road and enjoyed a two-mile sunset walk that took us by a rail yard and allowed us to have a conversation with a very timid-but-curious deer. The doe stood not twenty feet away and watched as we chatted with her while she enjoyed her evening meal of wild grasses on the roadside. We slowly moved along. She was still there when we came back by a few minutes later, and we chatted some more. Eventually she scampered into the nearby woods, and we made our way back to Stinkpot and turned in.

Monday, we rose with the sun and dropped lines just in time to join a fleet of looper boats making their way to the Peoria Lock. We fell inline with them and locked down. We had our eye on a 40-50 mile day, but it wasn’t to be. We weren’t an hour or two below Peoria when our starboard engine just died. There are not too many things that will kill a diesel engine that is happily rumbling below decks—it usually comes down to fuel or air, and the air filter was fine. Since I knew we had an as-yet unconfirmed fuel leak, it was clear to me that the leak had worsened and the engine was “sucking air” at the leaky spot I hadn’t yet found.
I had a suspect after feeling around for fuel—a section of flexible fuel line that led from the flared copper lines to the mechanical fuel pump. I deemed it a repair I could not make underway, and we decided our only recourse was to run to the next Stinkpot-accessible anchorage in Havana to deal with it, which we did over the course of the next five or six hours at a screaming 4 knots, arriving a bit after 3pm.

A little Googling revealed that Havana had an ACE Hardware not far from a dinghy dock. The plan was that I would remove the leaky hose section and carry it to the store to match up the ends with what I could find at the store to install a proper piece of fuel hose that I already had aboard. Once at anchor I set to work preparing the dinghy to be launched and then moved to the engine room to “hug” the diesel engine and remove the fuel line. I disassembled the copper line end first and moved to the engine end, and as soon as I had my diesels-soaked (gloved) hand on that end of the line, I noted that the connection was loose. I put a wrench on it and gave it a little more than a quarter turn (with a good bit of grunting) to drive the connection home. I reconnected the line to the copper, noting while doing so that the copper was exerting “loosening pressure” on the opposing end, so the situation would surely repeat eventually. I, then, bled the line, smiled to Stacey on my way to the helm station where I started the engine. It gloriously roared to life. I deemed this a win for the moment that would carry us to a place with land services and retail locations—even if I had to wrench on the connection daily.

I re-covered the dinghy, and we spent a quiet night in Havana dining on frozen leftover chili from the freezer in a beautiful spot secure in the knowledge that we would be underway on two engines in the morning.

Did we really stay for three nights? Yes. Yes we did.

The setting: Joliet, Illinois! The humble burg where ‘Joliet’ Jake Blues was released from prison at the beginning of The Blues Brothers movie. The actual prison where James Belushi’s character played the tin cup was closed years ago, but we couldn’t help enjoying quotes from it during our stay. How did we get there? See? Now there’s a story.

Loyal readers of the Captain’s Log will remember that my most recent entry had us tied up on Sunday, August 31 in St. Joseph, Michigan. This free city bulkhead/dock on the St. Joseph River is a charming place to stop in settled weather, though I imagine that westerlies could bring in a rather nasty, bouncy seiche. This turned out to be a wonderful stop. Once settled in we took position on our aft deck to watch a huge laker, the Manitowoc, turn in the nearby turning basin come through the nearby drawbridge, and pick her way through the ridiculously thick and often dumb holiday weekend boat traffic. I mean we actually witnessed a pontoon boat full of people sitting in the fairway in front of the massive ship taking pictures. They were a single engine failure away from becoming a holiday statistic. I’m sure alcohol was not involved.

After the “show,” we enjoyed dinner at the Silver Harbor Brewing Company, which was quite good, and then kicked about town for a little while. We had been lamenting that we were out of fruit on the boat, and, as if by magic, a beautiful apple tree appeared on the street next to a children’s museum. We may have borrowed a few more than we could eat in the moment. I’m still not sure what variety of apple they were, but they tasted absolutely…umm…free! We made our way back to the boat to enjoy some time taking in the scene and the breezes from Stinkpot’s covered sundeck.

As evening approached, our thoughts turned once again to our stomachs. I had my eye on a soul food restaurant about a mile away. It was chilly and had been spitting rain on and off all afternoon, but we deemed it an acceptable risk and pulled on our walking shoes. Arriving at All That and a Touch of Soul, we were taken in by the smells immediately. Without waxing philosophical about the Philly jerk chicken and cheese sub Stacey ordered or the smothered pork chops I selected with sides of macaroni and cheese and collards, or even the sample of the braised oxtail that the chef dropped by our table for us to sample, let me just say that I have seldom had a dining experience that was such a perfect combination of gritty, local joint and “why don’t you just roll that whole pot over here for a little while.” I will be savoring that meal in my dreams for weeks to come.

Check paid and our trotters back on the ground, we exited the restaurant into unrelenting pouring rain. Stacey’s apparel revealed her forethought of this situation, but mine, alas, did not. Our quayside arrival had her mildly damp and me resembling a drowned rat. I changed into my pajamas, and we entertained ourselves with some of our St. Joseph’s ice cream haul before turning in for the night.

Thursday morning we again rose with the sun. I began considering preparing us to get underway, but I had one issue nagging me. In studying the charts of the Illinois River which lay before us, I realized that Joliet’s free wall was likely to be our last real connection to land for a little while. Despite Tuesday’s showers, moderate localized drought conditions had depths on the river down a foot or two from normal, and a dearth of ports that had sufficient depth for the new Stinkpot’s deeper keel would necessarily keep us from stepping off for some time. It sure would be nice if our dinghy was usable, since I ostensibly had the missing part in hand to make it so. I proclaimed that we should stay another night so I could do exactly that. Not sensing any objection to that plan, that’s exactly what we did. I spent the day tearing down the 15-horsepower Mercury: draining the lower unit, removing the lower unit, replacing the impeller (which I needed to cut off the shaft), reattaching the lower unit, filling the lower unit with new gear oil, and, finally, changing the oil and filter on the engine itself. It was a long day’s work, but it got done, and at the end of the day, I was rewarded by one of our legendary “app walks.”

As long as Stacey and I have been together, we have periodically done these walks. We pick an area with restaurants we want to try and walk to two or three different places to eat only appetizers. You can tell a lot about a joint by its appetizers. This time we enjoyed average bar snacks and an RC Cola at the Chicago Street Pub and stuffed mushrooms and a “Caprese Panini” (chicken, tomato, mozzarella, and pesto) sandwich at the more upscale Juliet’s Tavern. The former had very personable staff and forgettable food while at the latter, the opposite was true. Ultimately satisfied, we trundled back to the boat in the warming sunshine and began making our preparations for a dawn departure.

With the rising sun Friday, September 5, we began singling up our lines and disconnecting from power. At 7:44AM CDT I started the engines, and we were underway. We locked through Brandon Road, Dresden, and Marseilles Locks and ultimately had the anchor down at the Buffalo Rock State Park anchorage last night around 7PM local time—a long day of cruising, rewarded by some home cooking at anchor at the foot of a beautiful, cliff-rimmed oxbow anchorage. We turned in soon after the dishes were done.

Today did not start off well. During my engine room checks, I found fuel pooled under the starboard engine, blessedly retained inside a fiberglass sump. After cleaning it up with sorbents and checking for loose fuel line connections, I set to finding the source. I noticed some fuel in and around the secondary filters, so I changed them (not done during the commissioning). I’m hoping that was all it was. I didn’t have that all done and the fuel systems bled of air until nearly 11AM. In looking at our itinerary, I made the painful decision to remain here another night. We have a long run ahead of us to get to a reasonable anchorage and prefer to not run unfamiliar waters in the dark. This is a beautiful spot. We’ll sit right here and enjoy some leftovers aboard while I get other work done. Tomorrow we’ll weigh anchor with the dawn and make some miles, hopefully without a fuel leak.