Heritage Harbor Marina in Ottawa, IL
Day #67: Up at 6:30 A.M. for coffee, grapefruit and gingersnaps. Showers taken. Working on boat jobs: cleaning up wet clothes, defrosting refrigerator, boat clean up. Cloudy and 63 degrees. Most of the rain from Hurricane Gordon is mainly south of us, we didn't get rain today. 11:00 A.M. Central Time, Michigan versus Western Michigan. We watched the game Michigan won 49-3. We had popcorn with the game. While we were watching the game Bruce from "Bay Tripper" stopped in Bev and him had the courtesy car and asked if we wanted to go to town which we declined, Bruce mentioned that there was going to be a captain's talk at 4:00 P.M. depending when the Looper group of 10 boats that were coming to the marina got to Heritage. We did say that we would be at the captain's talk at 4:00 P.M. Tex and Nancy offered to make dinner for Mike and I on their boat, We talked that we would meet for drinks before the captain's talk followed by dinner. Mike and I went for a short walk around the marina but it started to sprinkle. We headed back to the boat then to "TxAu"'s for drinks. The captain's talk was moved to 5:00 P.M. The harbormaster Jeremy Fowler is very familiar with the river from Ottawa to Hoppe's marine in Kimmswick. Jeremy took us step by step giving us information about the locks, anchorages and general information. We were provided snacks and margaritas. Jeremy talked for about 2 hours. After the talk Mike and I headed to dinner aboard "TxAu". The meal was awesome. On our way back to our boat we ran into Jeremy, the 10 looper boats were starting to come into the harbor finally at 9:30 P.M. CT. This is Mike and my worst fear is that we would get stuck by a lock and would have to try to get to a marina in the dark. Mike went out to help the staff to get the boats into their slips. Truly the staff here at Heritage Harbor Marina are very accommodating to us loopers and they will do everything in their power to make us feel welcome here in Ottawa.
This is a floating pavilion at Heritage Harbor Marina.
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Up one flight of stairs from the marina is this beautiful sand with chair. |
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Looking over the marina. |
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"Parrot Bay" in her slip. |
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Bruce and Bev from "Bay Tripper" at the captains meeting. |
Jeremy Fowler, the harbormaster at Heritage Harbor Marina at the captain's talk.