12 miles of hell

In the last post I promised to tell you about the 12 miles of hell. Boaters call it that because it is a skinny piece of water where the Cal-Sag and Chicago canals come together and it is also a fleeting area for the commercial tugs that work up and down the inland rivers. A fleeting area means it is where tugs drop off their barges and collect new barges for the trip back down river.

These are not small tugs I am talking about. These are tugs that run 24 hours a day, carry three crews, and push 6-12 50 foot barges in front of them. As you can see in the picture, they have a steering station that can be lowered as necessary for bridges, but generally runs up high so whoever is steering the boat can see over the barges to determine what is coming at them.

Tug with the pilothouse in the raised position

In the 12 miles of hell you find multiple tugs maneuvering their barges in all directions. Some are docking against the walls of the canal, some are turning into basins in the side of the canal, some have already dropped off one load and are turning around in the canal to pick up another load. As you can see, the canal is only about two tugs wide which leaves a poor pleasure craft (tug terminology for recreational boaters) either sitting still waiting for them to move, or dodging between them from sitting spot to sitting spot.

Two tugs, no room

Even when they are not moving, just sitting next to their barges, there is not a lot of clearance between a tug and the canal wall.

We spent nearly 90 minutes getting through the fleeting area.  Just as we arrived three tugs were maneuvering at the entrance area, blocking the entire canal. We had to pull into an unused fleeting basin and wait for them to sort themselves out.  We knew about the three tugs, and how to hail them by name to find out what they wanted us to do, because Jim added an AIS (automatic identification system) receiver to our collection of toys last winter.

All commercial boats broadcast an AIS signal with their name, size, location and destination. The receiver picks that up and, with a wireless interface to an iPad, displays the information and the boat's location on a navigation chart on the iPad. The chart software also displays where we are. The AIS has a range of about five miles, so we get early warning of what is coming towards us. We can see what the river is like between us and the tug and know, if it narrows, that we need to slow down to stay in a wide area where the tug can safely pass. With the AIS display we know the oncoming boat's name and we are able to hail them and agree exactly how we are going to pass when we do meet each other. It takes a lot of the tension out of driving a pleasure craft down a commercial river.

We had funny interaction with one of the tugs yesterday. We were in a wide but twisty part of the river, so we couldn't see the tug but we knew he was there. We called him and agreed on the passing protocol, no problem. But when we came around the last corner and he could finally see us, he called and wanted to know how it was that we knew he was there. Jim and the tug captain had a nice conversation about pleasure craft AIS receivers.