Published in the St Louis Herald Sun

By JIM SUHR : Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press
Sep 26, 2008

ST. LOUIS -- Easing his 46-foot powerboat down the Illinois river, Tom Dimmock welcomed the breeze in his face Friday as a ripple of progress. After a week of being forced to dock because of dangerous currents and floating debris, the retired Raleigh, N.C., lawyer was finally moving.

He didn't get far. The skipper of "The Next 30 Years" learned he'd probably be spending the next couple of days on the Illinois River, trapped along with a couple dozen other boaters in their yearlong trip that snakes its way around eastern North America.

Dimmock and the others have been parked near Ottawa, Ill., about 70 miles southwest of Chicago, waiting out the fast currents and the debris left by Hurricane Ike's remnants that pounded the Midwest this month with rain. The storms caused many stretches of river to swell to levels the Coast Guard deemed dangerous.

Slow signs of progress came Friday, when the Coast Guard narrowed the closed stretch of the Illinois River to just 20 miles. Just a couple of days earlier, that shutdown covered 200 miles.

"It's a big change," said Lt. Chuck Mellor of the Coast Guard's St. Louis office, urging Dimmock and the others to be a bit more patient. "By Sunday, everything should probably be open."

Dimmock's boat is among about 65 taking part in what for has been an annual ritual by their 9-year-old America's Great Loop Cruisers' Association. The journey takes them up along the Atlantic Ocean and up into Canada before meandering into Lake Michigan, then down the Illinois, Mississippi and other inland rivers for a winter in the Gulf Coast, sometimes the Bahamas.

Many of this year's participants are keying on making it to an Oct. 20-23 reunion at an Alabama state park. But given the delay in getting off the Illinois River, Dimmock isn't sure he'll make that gathering.

Dimmock, 59, and his wife just want to make it to St. Louis, where the couple are scheduled to leave their twin-diesel boat and fly home to Raleigh for business meetings before resuming their voyage after a roughly two-week break.

"By then, everyone else will be out of the way," said Dimmock, who'll be a grandfather for the first time in December.

Still, Dimmock says the trek -- his first as a "Looper" -- has been "a ton of fun," taking the couple up the Atlantic's intercoastal waters, into the Chesapeake Bay and up the St. Lawrence Seaway into Canada. A few days in Montreal were followed by a few more in Ottawa before the Dimmocks weaved their way into Lake Michigan, then on to Chicago and the Illinois River.

"This is just one of those things in life where if you don't do them, you'll be sitting in a rocking chair regretting that the opportunity passed you by," he said. "We've met really neat people, seen towns we wouldn't otherwise have seen. And we've learned a lot of history."

And over the past week, a lot about flooding.

For a week, the Dimmocks have made the most of being sidelined at the Heritage Harbor Marina near Ottawa.

They toured the remote area with bikes they had onboard. They've gone into town, taking in the movie "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2" and a concert commemorating the Lincoln-Douglas debates 150 years ago.

"Ottawa's a neat city," Dimmock said. "But we were anxious to move on."

So were others.

"They're getting itchy" to get going, said Janice Kromer, the cruisers' association's executive director.

The Dimmocks finally shoved off on Friday, headed for as far as the river -- and Coast Guard -- will let them. Just moving again, Dimmock said, was "awesome."

"It's a beautiful day, and there's a nice breeze," he told a reporter by telephone as he guided his boat along before a horn's honk signaled that his boat was cleared to go through a lock. "I have a tug pushing a barge coming toward us, so I have to get going."

He politely ended the conversation, and off he went.