As anyone who spends time on The Chain will tell you, there’s nothing like a new boat to get the summer off to a flying start.
For the Fox Waterway Agency, the delivery of three new boats is not only a triple blessing but the key to improved efficiency in the agency’s maintenance of the 35 miles of river that snakes from Wisconsin to Algonquin.
The three shiny aluminum boats were officially unveiled to the public last week at a news conference at the agency’s headquarters in Fox Lake.
On Monday morning, the most powerful of the three had been scheduled to begin shoving a barge down the river to Fox Valley Gardens for spring cleanup work. The procedure was postponed because of high winds, officials said.
The three boats were custom-built to specifications required by the agency and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, according to John Lape, the agency’s field superintendent. The natural resources department is paying for the vessels.
Each is made of welded aluminum and designed with a special use in mind. The shortest, at just over 27 feet, is designed to place the 500 or so buoys the agency maintains and remove hazards from the waterway.
The longest, a 30-footer, is equipped with a crane for dredging operations. The third boat will be used to push the agency’s barges, swamp dozer and other non self-propelled equipment along the river.
The pusher/tug is powered by 600-horsepower twin Mercury inboard/outboard engines, Lape said, a far cry from the two outboards he previously mounted on the rear of one of the barges. The other boats sport twin 130-horsepower outboards.
The cost for the three boats was $231,400, according to the agency’s board chairman, William Dam, with the state department picking up the tab through an intergovernmental agreement, provided that the natural resources department will own them and the Fox Waterway Agency will use them to its heart’s content.
“We’ll be able to do our operations a lot more efficiently with these boats,” Dam said. The waterway agency had relied on underpowered pontoon boats to shove the barges around. Lape said. “It will be nice to work without rocking back and forth,” he said.
Dam said the waterway agency is responsible for the maintenance of 240 miles of waterfront and 6,500 acres of lake. Its work crew of five, with some office personnel helping out as needed, has been able to keep up with most of the work, he said.
