Why Our Shit Don't Stink

“Do you think it’s full yet?” is a far-too-common question around our home, and oftentimes first thing in the morning. “Do you think the pumpout is full?” Mark will ask me on his way to the head.

“Pumpout” is our term for “sewage.” The sewage tank holds 50 gallons, and emptying it is the bane of our chores together. (Frequent readers of this blog will be familiar with the pump out process…it’s gotten no fewer than four entries.) Actually, pumping out is not that big of a deal – you cruise on over to the dock, tie up, put the nozzle of the pumpout hose into the spigot in the deck, and 7-10 minutes later, the shit is gone and you’re on your way.

Oh, were it that simple. The problem is we never know when it’s full, we’re always guessing, and oftentimes, we guess wrong. We look for telltale signs that it’s full, like a gurgling noise, or a slower flush, or the fact that neither of us can remember the last time we pumped out. But the fact is that sometimes we don’t know it’s full till it overflows into the bilge – the small hatch in the floor in the bow, where two bunk beds serve as my office. The office starts to smell like shit, and then the whole boat, and then we not only have to pump out the holding tank, but Mark hauls the hose into the bow to suck out the overflow. Rinse, repeat.

So Mark bought a sensor. He and his friend Carl hooked it up. It works by two electrical wires suspended in the sewage tank which transmit a current and identify when the tank is at a ¼, ½, ¾, and then a red light flashes when you better empty the tank. But before it will work, it has to be calibrated to empty and full, and before we can calibrate it, we have to figure out when it’s full, and so every morning I’ve been checking the bilge for overflow, and we looked for the tell-tale signs. Except this time, there were no signs – two inches of sewage suddenly appeared in the bilge, and at 7 AM we were at the pumpout dock, Mark in the bow with the hose and some bleach.

I thanked him for doing the crappiest job possible while I waited on the dock. “This is the last time,” I assured him.

I’m sure there’s some metaphor for life in all this, some metaphor about the first year of marriage – that we are learning to handle our shit together, learning how to get rid of it and not let it overflow and stink up our life. I wish there were some sensor to let us know when the stress and anxiety of daily living was getting to be too much and we needed to purge lest it clog up our happy home. And since I like to draw big universal lessons from the mundane, I will muse that the first year of marriage is all about learning to calibrate.

Early Retirees

For three years Mazurka has had cheap plastic lawn chairs on the fly bridge. A few weeks back, in rough weather when somebody went toppling over, Mark started looking for something sturdier. We bought two of the popular gravity chairs, the ones where you lean back and the legs come up, the kind you could sleep in, if you wanted. Last night we made dinner and sat out in the chairs with our feet up, as the sun went down, watching over our toes the traffic on LSD, the bikers and runners and roller bladers and dog walkers.


“This is exactly what my parents do,” I said, startled to realize I was becoming my mother. “They sit on their porch and watch the traffic go by.”

“Most people do this when they retire,” Mark said.

I am 32 years old; Mark is 44. What will we do when we are 65?

A Party Even Gatsby Couldn't Miss

Jay Gatsby threw all his amazing parties for one reason – to get his lost love Daisy to attend. So he never really mingled his parties; he would linger in the outskirts, scanning the guests for a glimpse of his true love.

On Mazurka, he’d have nowhere to hide.

Throughout the summer we have parties – sometimes twice a week, to fit the Wednesday/Saturday fireworks schedule at Navy Pier, where we glide underneath the display, the lake itself giving the best view of the action. This was one of my first dates with Mark, in September, the last fireworks show of the season. He was hosting some friends and their parents and invited me along, and as we found our spot right off Navy Pier, I wandered down to the bow, when suddenly the show started. I sat alone, the fireworks pouring over me, as if they were a show just for one. There was only one other audience member – Mark, at the helm, observing this new girl onboard his boat.

We try to bring people together for different reasons – colleagues, or family, or friends who really should meet each other. Mark auctions off a boat ride for a student fundraiser at his university. Sometimes they are guests neither of us has met – a friend visiting from out of town will bring along their family who live in the suburbs.

That’s part of the great thing about living aboard a boat in Chicago; you can show people who are visiting and people who have lived here twenty years a view of the city they have never seen.

You learn a lot about someone by sailing with them. Last summer, I had a group of my writing friends on board. While Mark drove us around, we read aloud our manuscripts. Just when the last writer was reading, a thunderstorm came up of Lear quality; we huddled underneath the bimony, laughing hysterically. The storm passed as suddenly as it came on, and we watched the fireworks. Later, in the cabin, Mark passed around dry clothes to everyone. “You don’t happen to have a skirt, do you?” my friend Julia joked. Mark brought out a white skirt he made in a sewing class he had taken to learn how to sew curtains for the boat (he was the only guy in the class, and their project was skirts). It was white denim, and fit Julia perfectly. Another night, at the end of a two-week heat wave, we had about a dozen people on board to go swimming; a lightning storm came up; rather than go inside, we collected under the bimony, watching lightning strike other boats in the harbor. Only when the rain came sideways and the grill wouldn’t stay lit did we go back inside, crowding into the cabin, chatting away.

The group dynamics are fascinating. You take a group of people who perhaps have never met, and you throw them all together on a boat where anything can happen. Probably there is beer and wine, and a promise of dinner later on. Put a lifejacket on them and tell them to hold onto a rope as we pass through the locks, and they are lifelong friends. Last night, for example, as we finished a five-hour cruise and headed through the lock at Navy Pier, we came upon very windy conditions and rough water on the lake. It was about a half hour ride from Navy Pier back to Belmont Harbor, where the wind threw us from side to side. Atop the fly bridge, with Mark driving, we blasted Steely Dan and linked arms to keep our chairs from sliding too far. Inside, the crew held tight to anything that might go flying off the shelves (we lost two wine glasses).

You can tell a lot about the crew by the way they disperse on the boat. Our first party this year was a birthday bash for our friend Kathy; most of her guests we had never met. They collected mainly in the bow – they are up front, friendly, taking-life-by-the-horns kinda folks, a lot like Kathy.

Last summer, a crew of psychiatric medical residents spent the entire evening inside the cabin, talking shop, even though we were parked in front of the Hancock building on a beautifully calm night. Most of the time, people collect on the fly bridge, where you can grab a plastic chair and sit near the captain, and maybe convince him to let you take the helm for a moment.

Whatever judgments you make of someone in the first five minutes will disappear once you set sail. ‘Cause now you’re on the water, where anything can happen. The crew is all you have to depend on. Dormant parts of a personality suddenly come alive on rocky waters; someone you thought was wishy-washy, or shy, suddenly emerges with strong, deft decision-making. The introvert can lead the crew; the know-it-all sulks in the cabin. The way a person reacts to the beautiful lake, or challenging weather, or the immense space says a lot about them. And nearly every single time we arrive back at port, our guests will exchange phone numbers and emails – they’ve sailed together; they’ve bonded.

That night I went aboard Mazurka with Mark to watch the fireworks, we learned a lot about each other. I learned he had tools all over the place and didn’t stand on much ceremony. I learned he was generous and kind. He learned I wasn’t the kind of girl who needed constant attention; I was happy to sit on the bow of the boat, alone, watching. I could handle my own business.

He figured I might just make a good first mate.

Dinner Under the Stars

Subzero nights aboard a boat in winter are made bearable penance for all that summer has to offer.

On a Thursday night, when we want to go out to dinner, we start up the engine and drive our house out to the best view of the city.

After a week of feeling like sardines in Lincoln Park, we cruised out to the “playpen,” the calm area right in front of the John Hancock building, protected by a breaker wall. In the summers, yachts park and blast house party music from 6-foot speakers and bikini-clad girls dance on the fly bridges. In mid-May, it’s usually pretty empty. We were the only folks out there, and we dropped anchor and grilled dinner, watching Venus shine brightly in the west. Hunter and Leo came out on deck and wandered around.


Rinsing the lettuce before dinner, I heard something new. “What’s that sound?” I asked Mark. It’s all about sounds and smells aboard a boat. Smells differentiate between leaking fuel and grey water that’s overflown and sewage in the bilge. Sounds differentiate between a sump pump working properly and a water pump that won’t shut off – which is what I was hearing – which indicates that the water tanks are empty. Sure enough, mid-sentence, the faucet ran dry.

“Looks like we’re out of water.”

We’re never too far from the next chore, the next potential problem. Though it’s a strange feeling to be surrounded by water yet out of water, empty tanks are not an emergency – not when dinner’s grilling and the night is still – so we sat on the aft cabin and ate perch and zucchini with our fingers, watched the traffic on Lake Shore Drive, the darkening roof tops of skyscrapers. And in a while we hauled up the anchor, cruised back to Belmont, and filled up at the slip. Then I took a shower, just because I could.

Forget the Little Guy

Usually in the City of Chicago, the way to get things done is by finding the employee at a desk in the basement who eats her lunch before a brick wall every day and hasn’t forgotten what it’s like to be human for all the mindless directives she’s given by pompous administrators. This is the lady who has worked so long in the system that she knows it better than anybody else and knows how to help you if you make the appeal that you, too, are getting screwed by the man. She will take pity on you and go to the people who owe her favors and will help you get what you need. She will probably say God Bless You, too.

This is not the way with Westrec.

Maybe it’s the power trip that comes with managing harbors for the third biggest city in the nation. Maybe it’s all the money to be made. Or maybe it’s the fact that more than a few boaters are jerks who have a lot of money and can buy big toys which they don’t know how to operate. Whatever the case, Westrec was not buying the Driver’s License + Vehicle Registration + Insurance Verification we were sending them to prove our residency in this fine city. They weren’t disputing our residence, but they demanded two utility bills to prove it.

We were running into the brick wall these city workers eat their sack lunches in front of everyday. In the late hours of our infuriated head-banging, we had visions of getting a lawyer and suing Westrec for discrimination; we were being discriminated against because we live on a boat and don’t have utility bills.

My Aunt Kathy shook her head, “Just can’t be a non-conformist anywhere anymore,” she said.

Mark can be a little disorganized at times. And while his constant searching for lost items is endearing…and sometimes a little maddening…the good part is that sometimes, his disorganization gives way to the great benefactor called Chance. By Chance, he lost Westrec’s number and did an online search for the company. By Chance, he found the Westrec Head Office in California. By Chance, he called and talked to a nice lady in customer service who said, “What are they making you fax them? Why don’t you send it to me.” By Chance, this nice lady called the Chicago Regional Manager – twice – who finally had his little guy get in touch with us and say, send your lease. So Mark emailed our lease, proving our winter residence, and we haven’t heard anything since.

Sometimes, as in the case with city workers on a power trip, it’s best to go to the top.

And for all parties involved, we are calling this matter closed.

No Love for the Live Aboards

In our first week at Belmont Harbor, Mark came home with the mail and a disappointed look on his face. “They’re trying to…well…maybe it’s not that bad. They’re trying to charge us the nonresident rate.”

He slaps on the table a new invoice – this one from the Chicago Park District, Marine Department, managed by Westrec Marinas, which says that a PO Box does not constitute proof of Chicago residency, and we have to prove we are residents with drivers’ licenses and two utility bills. Or else pay $1,143.56 by May 18th.

Our driver’s licenses give the River City address, but we don’t get utility bills. And all mail comes to the PO Box.

I’m not too upset about it, though. “Will you call them tomorrow?” Mark asks, and I agree – I can be more charming on the phone. We go for a run at the lakeshore, and I spend the entire time mulling over my argument. We live on board a boat, you see, so we have the licenses, but no utility bills. And there’s always the issue of revealing that you live onboard – the boating community doesn’t take kindly to us live aboards. By the time we get back from the run, Mark feels better, but I’m pissed off.

The next morning I call Westrec. I explain my situation to the guy on the phone, that I live on a boat and don’t get utility bills. “You’re on your husband’s boat, you mean,” he says. This irks me, but whatever. He transfers me to Mr. Munson. I explain our situation to Mr. Munson. He tells me that Live Aboards do not constitute residents, because how does he know we’re not spending our winters in Florida? I tell him we’ve both lived in this city a dozen years. For the past three, Mark has lived on the boat. He spends the winters at River City, the summers on the lakefront. This is the first time we’ve ever gotten a notice like this. I tell him we can send the driver’s licenses, but all the mail comes to the PO Box.

He’s not budging; it’s gotta be a driver’s license and two utility bills.

“It’s the same as if you’re applying to be a policeman or a fireman,” he says, “You have to prove your residence.”

If I wasn’t trying to be diplomatic, I would have told Mr. Munson that I wasn’t applying to carry a firearm and drive fast vehicles on behalf of protecting the public; I was applying to keep my boat parked on a dock at the rate of a Chicago resident. They are not the same thing.

Instead, I ask him, “What else can I do?”

“You can write a letter to Scott Stevenson.”

“Who is that?”

“Regional Vice-President.”

I thank him for his time and get off the phone. I do an online search for Scott Stevenson. In an April 22nd article in the Chicago Tribune called “Moor, moor, moor: Rising Chicago harbor fees make waves, but boaters agree operation smoother,” all about the 8% increase in Chicago Harbor mooring since last year, Mr. Stevenson is quoted as saying, “If a boater is having a hard time financially, they have the option of selling [the boat].”

This is who we’re going to make our appeal to?

“These harbors were supposed to be affordable boating for Chicago,” Mark says, “But it’s only affordable to the rich.”

The thing that is the most frustrating is that no one is disputing the truth. We do live in Chicago. We are residents. We have paid the $4,674.25 for a dock in Belmont Harbor from May 1 – October 30 (that’s $779.40 a month, all you who think boating is a good way to save money…). But boating is big city business; if you can’t provide the documentation, the human factor does not matter. There is no one you can get on the phone and just reason with.

So we are taking an alternate route. Mark found his City of Chicago vehicle registration, which identifies our street address at River City, and his car insurance, which also gives the street address. I wrote a letter to the nice woman who sent us the call for more documentation, explaining that all our mail is sent to the PO Box, but here’s two more pieces of identification, plus the license. Mark is going to fax it all today.

We’ll see what happens.

Bluegill and Trout and Carp, Oh My!

The other morning Mark went out on the deck - "Hey, look at these fish!" he calls. Trout, maybe ten inches long, swimming a foot below the surface, just outside our door. Last night, we were spotting bluegill and more trout. This afternoon, I was out on the stern, talking on the phone to my parents, when I had to interrupt. "Mom, there's a four-foot carp swimming right in front of me. There's another one...and another...." I counted as many as ten at once, swarming together, hovering. They're huge, and ancient-looking, and no, I wouldn't want to catch one, even though my dad says they'd be fun on the line.

Oh, the wildlife we do see.

On the Street Where You Live

Moving in Chicago conjures up a lot of unwanted hassle: maneuvering a rented truck through tight alleys, badgering your landlord for the rightful return of your deposit, bribing your friends with beer and pizza to move all your boxes of books and sleeper couches up three flights of stairs. And once you move to your new place, the fun has only begun – now it’s time to unpack and take care of all the stuff the last tenant ignored and find your way around your new ‘hood.
Moving Mazurka to our summer home in Belmont Harbor was a picnic – literally. Our crew of four actually thanked us for having them along. We loaded a few hoses and remaining equipment onto the bow, said goodbye to the geese still tending unhatched eggs, hauled the dinghy to storage, and set sail.

At dusk we passed through downtown and the lock at Navy Pier, and in the darkening sky of a near-full moon, sailed north to our home for the next six months, in the northern armpit of Belmont Harbor, precariously close to Lake Shore Drive and the bike path, where the gates are locked but people jump the fences anyway, including us because at 11 o’clock at night, there’s no one in the Harbor Master’s office to tell us the code for the gate.

It was almost ten o’clock when we docked and fired up the grill, and nearly eleven when everyone left to hail a cab back to their parked cars. I stayed onboard, alone in our new slip. The first thing I did was call my dad. It felt odd to be in such a strange harbor, where there’s no internet, and no friendly neighbors, where my cat Leo took off running down the dock, under the fence into the park, where feral raccoons the size of small bears are just waiting for a fight. All night I had nightmares about where I had parked my car and people stealing from us.

In the morning, I didn’t feel much better. There was some fence-jumper fishing right by my kitchen window while I made coffee.

It’s a weird thing to move, even if the interior of your home doesn’t change.

I checked in with the Harbor Master’s assistant, and he congratulated me for getting into Belmont. This is the trendy harbor in Chicago. Later in the day I met the unofficial mayor, who also keeps his boat on A Street; he filled me in on how things work around here. And while I appreciate the strong recommendation for the honey wagon service, I still (for some strange reason) want to pump my own shit.

When we first moved to River City last November, I was appalled by the garbage, the industrial plant pumping smog right across the river, the concrete and cement and lack of trees. But it grew on me. And then there are no more attacking geese, and I had learned the neighborhood, and the river took on the smooth, easy living of early summer…and it was time to go.

Mark says it was time for us to leave the nest, too.

(Thanks to crewmember Carl for the photos of Mazurka's summer slip and the skyline at dusk...and to Mary, Chris, and Jeff for helping us move!)

Eight-Foot Dinghy Needs a Good Home

We got transferred for the summer from a can in Monroe Harbor to a dock at Belmont Harbor. Goodbye South Hotel Ten and rough waters…hello shore power!