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.