He's Handing Out Cigars

Saturday morning we were greeted by six new little puffballs. Cheney is a proud papa, and he and the Mrs. spent all day corralling their new brood.

Okay, so maybe it was worth a month of being attacked. Even Stan can’t help oohing and awing over how cute they are. Despite my cajoling to be godmother, Cheney still gave me half-hearted hisses and wing-flapping, for old time’s sake.

By Sunday morning, the nest was completely abandoned. Now Mark and I and anyone who comes to see us can come and go as we please, without an umbrella or weapon, without hitting the deck when the goose swoops down on us, without any worry at all.

I kinda miss the old bastard.

The South Loop Yeti Spotted

Last night we took Mazurka on her maiden 2007 voyage. Our friends Jay and Lynn came with us. We planned to go up the river, to Webster and Ashland, and have dinner at the Green Dolphin. It was freezing cold, and raining, but who cares - the calendar says it's spring!



First, we went south a bit, to Ping Tom Park in Chinatown, where we turned around to head north. A police boat was coming towards us. It seemed to be emitting a strange siren, sort of like a dog call. We worried that it was summoning us. On deck, one of the cops crouched low, and waved – I thought for sure he was going to pull us over for something – but then he pointed to shore and called, “There’s coyotes!”

There are rumors of illusive coyotes in the South Loop. Just last week, one reportedly walked into a Quizno’s on Michigan Avenue. I’ve heard them calling in the night, but I’ve never seen one. Not till tonight, when all of a sudden, three good-sized pups burst out of the bush, tackling one another.

They’re fast, and camouflaged, and hard to see at dusk on a cloudy night…but I managed to capture one good image of the mother.


We saw other strange Chicago wildlife on our trip north, such as the not-so-illusive, far-too-prevalent Barge-o-Garbage.


And as for food, the Green Dolphin, while a bit on the pricey side, is definitely worth it. Try the ahi tuna, stay for the live jazz.

My Husband's Mistress

In the past month, I have traveled a lot – to the point where everything I own is in a 3 oz container and I’ve spent a week in every time zone in the Lower 48. On only one of these trips did Mark and I go together. So our seventh month of marriage has been a lot of phone calls and happy reunions. And while I’m away, he reverts to his bachelor mode a bit – bratwurst and scrambled eggs for dinner, staying late at the office, spending a lot of time fixing up Mazurka.

On my last trip away – to Jill’s baby shower in Detroit – I spent five days with Mark’s family, without my husband. We talked morning and night, mostly about how he was getting the boat ready for me to come home. He took the plastic shrinkwrap off, scrubbed and buffed and waxed the deck, put up the bimony he repaired, stowed winter gear like space heaters. On Sunday morning when I called he was drilling holes. “I’m working on the sink that doesn’t drain,” he explained. “What sink?” I asked, since to my knowledge, there were no problems (yet) with any of the sinks. “You know, that one in the kitchen that doesn’t drain – the thing that always stops the water.” “You mean the dish strainer?” “Yeah – that – I’m drilling holes in the bottom.”

I was flattered he missed me so much he was drilling holes in Rubbermaid.

When I returned Tuesday afternoon, Mazurka looked beautiful. Mark came home from work, and after the big kiss and hug, showed me two small bags holding gold. “Here they are,” he said, waving the two couplings in front me – the pieces he had been waiting for to fix the generator.

We went for a walk, came home and made dinner, and talked about what would happen if we moved somewhere else, whether or not we would live on Mazurka. After a week with family and babies and houses, I was in a different frame of mind. You can’t have a baby crawling around in the salon, and where do you put a crib – on the fly bridge? But even without the idea of a family on board, I was growing tired of the constant maintenance. People sometimes tell me, “Oh, living on a boat – you must be saving a lot of money.” These people have no idea what they’re talking about.

“One thing for sure,” Mark said, with love in his eyes, “she needs to be in the water. She can’t survive if she’s not in the water.”

Around 8:30 Mark started to get the look that washes right over me as if I’m not there – the Fixing Mazurka look. At ten o’clock, I kissed him down in the engine room and went to bed. At eleven, several unsuccessful attempts to start the generator woke me up. I went to the door. “Mark,” I said, “I haven’t been home in a week. Can’t you come to bed now?”

“I almost got it…” he called.

I closed the doors to the stateroom and went back to bed, little devils scurrying in my mind, planting seeds of "He doesn’t really love you, he loves the boat. He didn’t miss you at all – he just wants to be alone with his boat." I didn’t give in and didn’t pout or start an argument – and in a while Mark came to bed, put his arm around me and promptly started snoring.

My biggest fear moving on board Mazurka was that I would be living on a project. And truly, that’s what this is – it’s Mark’s epic. And he loves it. He loves solving problems, he loves the challenge. The generator is almost fixed (he was up early and had it running before work today), but lately the water pump has been sounding strange and that’ll be the next thing to go. It’s probably time to fix the toilets before we bring my parents onboard for a Father’s Day voyage. We triumph over winter only to get the problems of summer. It’s the same reason I write – I hate the challenge as much as I love it, and as much as I complain and stress out about a piece that’s not coming together, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Mark respects my writing more than I do - I should at least show him the same reverence for his beloved projects.

Last night as I lay in bed alone, I had to remind myself why I do like living on board – because it’s the most creatively stimulating thing I’ve ever done. Everything is in chaos – the unexpected can happen at any moment, nothing is ever guaranteed, and there are constant reminders that it’s only through the grace of God that the whole thing doesn’t just sink.

But the best moment of all – and after six months of being tied to this dock we’re dying for it – is the moment you take up the lines and push off. Suddenly you feel a different pull: The pull of water, the pull of a story – you forget that you were ever tied to land; you forget there was ever a time you weren’t free.

Running on Ether

When you live on a can in Monroe Harbor all summer, your power source is a generator. Last year, at the end of summer, the generator quit working. Just stopped. Mark replaced the fuel filter; no go. He replaced the glow plugs. Nada. He called his brother Ed, a mechanic in the UP, who told him he could probably get it going with ether. Which is what we did until the end of the season, when we sailed into shore power at Belmont Harbor.

Every time the cabin filled with the sugary scent of ether, I would think of Hunter S. Thompson and his wise words about a man in the depths of an ether binge.

On a dock, you don’t need to worry about a generator. And with all the ice problems this winter, the generator issue has been quiet. Until a few weeks ago, and the early onset of spring, and the fact that as of May 1st, we will be back on a can.

Mark got the name of a guy who works on generators. He called him on Saturday, Paul came on Sunday. He was a surprisingly young kid, but pretty nice, and as he bent down in the engine room to examine the problem, Mark gave him the detailed story of everything he’d done to try and fix the thing. Paul said he had to come back the next day. We were gone, but he came by, and later called Mark to say he had to take the lift pump and test it. He called again to say he tested it and it didn’t work, and told Mark he had to get a new generator. Paul offered to look into it. He called a third time to quote him a price of a new generator, plus warranty, plus installation, all for a meager $15,000. Mark said he’d get back to him.

My husband checked online and found generators that were less expensive. He also posted the problem on a boaters’ site; fellow boaters (the good community they are) responded in droves. “Sounds like you need a new mechanic,” was the consensus.

Mark broke down and called the Onnan, the generator manufacturer. They charge $400 to send a repair guy for two hours. But compared to fifteen grand, it didn’t sound so bad.

When Dave arrived, first thing he said to me when he got down in the engine room was, “Looks like something is missing. Did somebody take something off this?”

So I call Mark at work, he calls Paul, Paul calls me and asks to talk to Dave, and I hand the phone over. They talk for a few minutes, then Dave hands the phone back. “I can’t come today,” Paul says, “But I will return the part tomorrow.”

“I don’t know what that guy is talking about,” Dave says, “He’s talking about ratios that don’t exist.” Without the part, he can’t test the generator, so he leaves, apologizing that he has to charge me anyway for the visit. “I don’t see half that money,” he explains.

Thus begins a daily series of phone calls to Paul to get the lift pump back. He doesn’t come the next day, or the next. Mark calls him at least twice a day. He tells his brother Ed about the situation, and even Ed calls Paul, to talk to him “mechanic to mechanic” about returning the part he stole. Paul does not return the calls. Finally, Mark gets angry. He leaves a message that says, essentially, this is a small boating world, pal, and if you don’t return that piece, I’m telling every harbor master and every marine sales person and every boater I know that you screwed me over. Paul calls him back that afternoon. He was on vacation in Florida and didn’t take his cell phone. He doesn’t mention any of the messages. He does volunteer to put the pump back in the generator, but Mark refuses to let him onboard. “I’m going to start the thing on ether all summer,” Mark tells him. “Yeah,” Paul agrees, “That’s a good idea.”

The lift pump is waiting beside our door when we get home.

Dave comes for another $400 visit. First thing he says when he walks in the door is, “Do you have an attack goose out there?” Mark and I laugh. Dave is over 6-foot, a Harley guy, with tattoos up and down his arms. He has to go back to his truck for a tool. Mark asks if he should go with him, to protect against the goose. “Nah,” Dave says. But when he has to go out a third time, he asks if Mark will go with him. “I’m not afraid of the goose, though,” he says.

Originally, Paul said there was nothing wrong with the injector pump. He said we needed to replace the whole generator because it wasn’t generating enough compression to pull fuel from injector pump to the injectors.

But Dave finds that it is the injector pump – which the Midwestern Injector people rebuild for less that $400, finding a broken spring that prevented the pump from opening and closing.

When the rebuilt pump arrives, I’m out of town. Mark is excited to put it back together and get it running before I return. He’s hunched down in the engine room, reassembling everything the way Dave instructed him, with his brother Ed on the line. “I had all these washers and these injectors, brass washers, aluminum washers, there was a washer with holes in it – I couldn’t figure out why would a washer have holes in it…. I just had two more fuel lines to put on, the final steps, and there’s an elbow connector coming out of the rebuilt injector pump that went into a coupling that goes up vertically that brought fuel from the primer pump to the injector pump and also fuel to the injectors – it came up to a T – when I was twisting the coupling into the injector pump, threading it into the injector pump, it broke off.”

It’s a $4 piece. It’s on back order till May.

Art Day Onboard

My friend Anne is a terrific painter. She likes to have “art days” with other painters. The host team makes a substantial lunch, which the painters eat together, then take a walk, meditate, have some tea, and get down to painting. She makes an exception for me since I'm not a painter - but I'm willing to learn.

Today was my first time hosting. As we paint with watercolor, it seemed fitting to paint onboard. I was worried about what Anne would think of Mazurka – you know, it’s not the cleanest, although it is pretty damn clean, considering it’s a boat. It's small, and smells faintly of fuel and oil, there are sewage problems, and after the long winter wrapped in plastic, it can smell a little...closed in. I was worrying that she would be appalled at the way we live. But then I thought, this is the Bohemian artist’s lifestyle, baby! What’s more “Bohemian” than going to visit your writer friend down at the river where she lives on a boat? Especially if she’s been up since before 6 AM, making you bouillabaisse to go with fresh-out-of-the-oven French bread?

And there’s nothing worse than preparing for a guest and finding a dead rat floating beside your front door. Literally. The marina was particularly filthy on this day, with all kinds of shit floating by, and when I came back from my morning walk I noticed a strange thing floating among the Styrofoam cups and plastic debris. A white belly with what looked to be short black wings; at first I thought maybe somebody killed a goose; then it turned, revealing two little back legs with tiny rat feet. The belly was as long as my forearm.


The current swept it toward the stern, where it bumped the boat and then started along the side toward the bow. I hoped that by the time Anne arrived, it would be gone. But it wasn’t. It floated there all day long.

Despite this ominous omen, the day went off swimmingly. Lunch was good, Cheney stayed put (to the point that Anne suggested I choose a nonaggressive name - Michel - and speak sweetly to the goose), and our day-long process resulted in some interesting work.


"Cold April Walk," Anne Nordhaus-Bike, Mixed Media: Pen and Ink, Watercolor; 2007.




"Through the Window," Felicia Swanson, Watercolor; 2007

Marcello Mastroianni and a Bullwhip

My Dad suggested a spray bottle with ammonia. We started crossing the dock with an umbrella and a bottle of homemade Windex. Cheney would take on the spray full force, then just dip his face in the river to clean up. He was invincible.

Joe, one of the maintenance guys, said the only way to get rid of the "protected species" was to burn their feet off with lye.

But one day, Mark picked up the failed Field Museum rubber snake and snapped it at Cheney like a bullwhip; just like that, he swam the other way.

Fellini knew how to tame those wild ones all along.