Cruising South for the Winter

For the last few weeks, we have watched Belmont Harbor clear out for the season. It was an especially sad day to see our neighbors aboard the Harbor Dog go; I stood on the dock and waved as Steve and Cindy cruised off toward dry dock.

On Sunday it was our turn. We spent a couple hours packing up Lil Choppin, securing the bikes and plants on board, hauling out the winter lines and putting away the summer ones. Mark organized the lazarette with all our gear. We filled the water tanks, pumped out the sewage, and were on our way.

We were still a little leery of the lake after it claimed three of us last week. The wind had changed direction, so instead of riding rolling waves, we were tossed about in choppy water from all sides. Still, the ride was surprisingly smooth, the weather warm and sunny, and we ate caramel apples as we cruised south for the winter.

We were reticent to leave the trees of Lincoln Park, but we get to trade them in for giants of glass and steel. Now, instead of the constant hum of Lake Shore Drive traffic, we have trains and barges. Instead of watching runners gleefully racing outside on the bike path, I watch runners like rats on treadmills in River City Bally’s. I can sit at my home office and listen to the tour boat guides all day. “And to your left, you’ll see River City, which looks just like the corncob of Marina Towers. That’s no coincidence – they were built by the same architect!” And in the South Loop, we are in the midst of the biggest gentrification this city has ever seen: I counted seven cranes on the skyline yesterday, new condos have gone up over the summer, and we are now within walking distance of the newest, biggest, glossiest Whole Foods in the city. There’s even talk of the property just north of us – the beautiful green space that has survived the jackhammers – finally breaking ground for – you guessed it – more condos.

Hasn’t the housing market fallen through?

Developments like these make the captain nervous – he fears that one day, the whole river will be developed and there won’t be anywhere for live aboards to spend the winter.

By that time, global warming will be in full effect, and the lake will be hospitable year-round.

It’s Nothing Personal

When you live on the water, it’s easy to forget that the lake is not our friend. As much as she means to us – the amazing peace and tranquility and beauty she brings – she is also as vicious and as changeable as a woman scorned. As much as we think we know her, as many years as we may have spent with her, she can turn in a second. We don’t really know her at all.

Our hearts go out to the families of the three experienced sailors who were killed last week in treacherous water, when their sailboat slammed into the breakwater at 95th Street, and to the Chicago Fire Department and the Coast Guard for risking their own safety in the rescue and recovery.

Deep Sea Communication

Every time I climb on board Mazurka, I clutch everything tightly to me - keys, phone, laptop, wallet - because the inevitable can always happen, when making the leap from pier to deck; in the deceptively short six inches of just-a-step, you can lose what you need most.

This has not happened to me yet.

Nor had it happened to Mark, which was somewhat surprising because he has a tendency to lose most everything. Until last Friday morning when he was out on deck, putting out an extra fender and somehow, as he leaned over the railing, the rail knocked into the cell phone holstered to his belt; the phone went flying into the air and landed with a plop into the water below.

He came racing into the cabin. "I dropped my phone in the water. Oh my god, I'm sick about it. It had my whole calendar. I haven't synced in months."

I thought of stories I had heard about people dropping cell phones into stranger places - such as latrines in India - and retrieving the phone, letting it dry out, and finding it worked good as new. I had the same experience when my phone was caught out in the rain. After a day of buzzing, it dried out and I was able to use it. I reassured my husband. "We can get it."

The lucky thing about docking on A Street is that the water is less than six feet deep below us, and often, we can see the bottom. While the salmon fishermen watched us from across the harbor, we attempted to shield the sun so we could see to the bottom - no luck. "I'm just sick about it," Mark kept repeating. "Try the net," I said. "But what will that do?" he asked. "I can't even see it." "Try dredging the bottom," I suggested, "right where you dropped it."

Against his better judgment, he did as I advised. One sweep, nothing. The second sweep, and up came the cell phone. We erupted into cheers, causing the fishermen across the way to wonder if we'd come upon a new method for catching salmon.

I wish I could tell you that in 24 hours the phone was good as new. This is not the case. All of Mark's information from the last six weeks is gone forever to the bottom of Belmont Harbor.

The good news is that, while waiting for his new phone to come, Mark was able to borrow Mazurka's phone, the one that will call him if there's an emergency on the boat. So as long as we don't burst a pipe in the next couple days, we'll be just fine.

It's Snagging Season

The salmon are here.

And so are the fishermen. They surround the boat, jumping the fence and fishing off the piers. From inside Mazurka, it feels like we are under attack.

Wednesday afternoon, I was working at home when I noticed men six feet from our home hurling fishing lines off the piers and vigorously reeling them in. It’s called snagging: the idea is that you throw a heavy lure out and reel in fast, hoping your hook will “snag” a fish. It’s not really fishing, and it’s not legal.

I went outside and chatted up the fishermen; their whole family was standing in front of our boat, watching them. I did some outdoor chores, like filling the water tanks. For the most part, I don’t really care that people jump the fence and fish – that’s their business, and they’re not really hurting anything. Often, they get the point when they see me around – they’re not supposed to be on the docks; they can fish from the other side; they usually leave.

Thursday afternoon, there’s a new set of fishermen. I was cooking dinner, and so I repeated my performance, going outside, doing chores. I asked one guy casting close to us what he was fishing for – he explained the salmon have come in, and in a month they’ll be feeding and you can catch them on lures, but for now, you have to snag them. He says they’re okay to eat because they come from way out in the lake. He was very excited because it was his mother’s birthday, and she loves salmon, and they were going to fix her a surprise salmon dinner.

I watched him snag two fish right in a row, calling to one of his partners (with a whistle sounding eerily similar to calls used on the street to run drugs); his partner came by with his pole, snagged the fish, and they hauled it up together. I asked if I could take their picture; they proudly agreed.

One after another the salmon were snagged, brought in, two or three feet long, and heaved over the fence. The guys worked quickly, like thieves – they began to get greedy, rushing to the end of piers, looting the harbor for all the fish they could snag, while Mark and I sat eating dinner, under siege.

And then somebody spoiled the fun and called the police. Two squad cars showed up. The cops kept two of the guys at the fence for a long time, checking their licenses. One of their teammates evaded the police and lay on the dock, before finally crawling onto the back of a boat and ducking down, waiting. The cops took all their salmon – 7 or 8 long, strong fish – and heaved them over another fence, into the bird sanctuary. It was disappointing and a sad to think of these salmon just a few days earlier, large and free, swimming cold, deep Lake Michigan. And then they made the mistake of coming into Belmont Harbor, snagged by thieving fishermen, thrown as a feast for thieving raccoon.

The hiding fisherman sat on the back of a boat for a very long time, after his friends were let go, while the cops still milled around. By this time we were out on deck, getting ready to push off and head for the pump out dock. The guy on the back of the boat started to get up. I motioned for him to stay put, that the cops were still there. He sat back down quietly.

As we approached the pump out dock, the police had worked their way down the harbor, asking for driver’s licenses, fishing licenses, checking poles and lures. One of them helped us tie up. The fishermen with licenses and legitimate lures were allowed to stay, others had to leave.

It was pretty quiet on our end of the harbor for the rest of the night, but the fishermen stayed throughout the rest of the harbor. At 2 AM, Mark went out to check the bumpers (they had turned in the wind and Mazurka was hitting the dock). When he came back to bed, he described the line of fishermen opposite Mazurka, reeling in fish. This morning at 5:30, the harbor was still teeming.

A Year and a Day

Last summer, when Mark and I were planning our wedding and figuring out where we were going to live, I committed to one year on Mazurka.

I know my patterns. A lot of times, when thrust into a new situation, I fight and kick and scream and try everything I can to escape - until I just surrender, and then I really, really like it. Like Kindergarten. Like Chicago; for the first two years in this city, I wanted to run screaming like it was still on fire. And then I settled down and realized everything this city has to offer and that it's a fantastic place to live.

I thought maybe the same thing would happen with Mazurka, so I promised to live a full year on board. If I hated it after a year, we could move to land.

On September 30th, we celebrated a year of marriage, a year of living together on this boat. And though there have been some challenges (like the river freezing, the heating system going out, the pump-out overflowing, and trying to prove our Chicago residence), not for one second have I wanted to live anywhere else.

I love Mazurka.

I love coming home to nature every day, in the middle of a huge city. I love the transitory nature of our home - that we are meant to move, that nothing is ever intended to be permanent. And I love lying in bed at night, watching the ripples of water reflected on the ceiling above us.

Mazurka has converted me into a true live aboard.

And for our anniversary, we spent the weekend on the move, riding Mark's motorcycle seven hours north to Door County, and island hopping via ferry to Washington Island and Rock Island. Call it reconnaissance for next year's mission to take Mazurka up through Death's Door....

20% Discount

The captain and crew of the Mazurka have been pretty busy these days. Life on a boat is not all recreation – there are jobs to attend, money to earn. So lately, things around the boat have not been so ship-shape. Groceries haven’t been bought, floors haven’t been swept, and the laundry – the laundry has been collecting under stairways for weeks.

In his bachelor days, Mark used to take his laundry to the River City cleaners. When I came on board, I thought $75 for two weeks of laundry was too expensive. Give me a roll of quarters and a few hours and I’ll do it for ten bucks. We also have no shame about doing our laundry at our parents’ and siblings’ houses.

On a recent deceptively-free afternoon, I tore off the quilt and comforters, stuffed them into a bag, and proclaimed the laundry would be done. That was a week ago. Since then we have been slumbering under a sleeping bag, the laundry spilling around us. Mark had suggested taking the laundry in to the cleaners, but I refused, saying it cost too much.

By last Saturday morning, there was nothing left to wear. Mark piled everything we had into two huge bags and found a laundry just across Lake Shore Drive. The guy was amazed we lived on a boat, and promised to have it done by Tuesday. He didn’t speak great English, and some things were lost in translation…but he said not to worry, he would take care of everything.

The laundry was a day late. “I’ve never seen so much,” the guy told Mark. “I’m still working on it.”

“What does he have to work on?” I asked Mark. “Just throw it in the washer and dryer and fold it.”

Tonight when I got home, Mark was waiting for me. “Is the laundry here?” I asked. “Yes,” he said. “You’ve never seen such clean clothes.” “How much was it?” I asked. “Well,” my husband said, “we’re not taking any vacations for a while.”

I started guessing. “More than $100? More than $200?”

The grand total – at a 20% discount – $380.

What did we get for our $380? An amount which made Mark’s hand shake while he wrote the check, and compelled me to call the launderer and complain that this was dishonest work that we never asked for? What did we get?

Ever single item in those two bags was dry cleaned and ironed, including oven mitts, ball caps, and t-shirts. The launderer worked tirelessly to get oil stains out of Mark’s work clothes and sweat stains out of my running sweatshirt. The sheets were ironed and packed neatly into plastic bags. My underwear was safety pinned to hangers in perfect descending order. This man took more pride in cleaning our laundry than I have for cleaning the entire boat. He even included eleven pages of notes detailing his week’s work.

Our one and only time at Lakefront Cleaners resulted in the cleanest, crispest clothes we have ever had on board.

“Everybody always wants dry cleaning,” the launderer told me on the phone, apologizing (but not offering any money back – after all, he had the check in hand). “Next time I will know what you want.”

There won’t be a next time for Lakefront Cleaners. We’re going back to rolls of quarters and waiting for 25 cent washers. It’s worth three hours of my time.