Monday's Best

Sunday night while we were having dinner on the aft deck, some of our friendly neighbors motored over in their dinghy to say hello.

Their boat, "Monday's Best," is aptly titled because, as the admiral put it, "Monday is always best. If the weekend is storming, Monday is beautiful." Their dinghy is named "Second Best."

On Monday, an overcast, cool, gloomy sort of morning, the admiral's husband, the captain, generously drove Mark all over Racine looking for right-sized alternator belts. Meanwhile, I used the harbor laundromat to do seven loads of laundry. This is vacation!

In the early afternoon, the sky cleared to a beautiful blue, and we hopped on our bikes to explore Racine. We ended up taking a two hour scavenger hunt along the Root River, following these signs through neighborhood streets, backwoods gravel paths, and paved riverside pathways.

The admiral and captain are right - Monday is indeed best!

A Boat from Temperance

Sunday afternoon we left Waukegan beneath beautiful skies, cruising over glass-like water for our next port: 30 miles north to Racine.

I have driven past Racine hundreds of times on my way north to Wisconsin and the UP. Not once have I ever stopped here. Too bad - it's a beautiful town.

"Racine," French for "root," is named in honor of the Root River which flows through town, joining Lake Michigan. The French missionaries who came in the 19th century found a natural harbor created by the tangle of tree roots along the shore where the Root River meets Lake Michigan. For most of the 20th century, the shoreline was industrial, until the late 1980s when the area was rebuilt into a harbor complex.

We pulled into a transient slip, paid the girl at the deli counter, then settled in for dinner on the aft deck.

We are finding that we have two natural conversation starters on this boat. First, our two feline crew members, who jump ship and begin wandering the dock as soon as the engine is off. Nobody expects to see a cat on a boat, especially not a long haired white cat, especially when there's another one who looks just like him peeking around the bow.

The second is the location named on the stern: Temperance, MI. Temperance is located on the otherside of Michigan, near Toledo and Lake Erie. To reach Chicago by boat, you would have to come up through Lake Huron and down Lake Michigan. When we pull into a transient slip, boaters assume we have come from Temperance. "No," Mark tells them, "I just never changed the boat's name when I bought it."

"Oh, good grief," one of our Waukegan neighbors.

Some people assume we are making the Great Loop, the long journey circling through the waterways of Eastern North America, including the Great Lakes.

Now that we're into the cruising lifestyle - glide into a new harbor, meet new people, explore new places, sleep in your own bed - I'm wondering if this short jaunt up the third coast is only an appetizer....

Waukegan: Gateway to the North

Saturday night we spent in Waukegan Harbor, which is turning into our favorite jumping off point for excursions.

We were here just a few weeks ago with my parents for a 4th of July fishing trip.

First of all, Waukegan fireworks are the best ever - hands down - they literally explode right over your head, and they go on for a good 45 minutes. Forget the crowds at Navy Pier, dear Chicagoans - haul yourselves up to Waukegan where a symphony plays for the entire park, followed by the most impressive fireworks you will ever see.

Second, and perhaps the reason we love Waukegan - my Dad caught a fish! After last year's failed Father's Day fishing trip in South Haven, MI, Dad caught a coho salmon on the first morning out.


He said he knew how to pose with it from watching fishing shows.

Yes, we ate it. It was delicious.

This weekend, Mark and I spent the night, rode our bikes to church in the morning, chatted up our neighbors, and set sail mid-afternoon for our next port-o-call: Racine, WI.

Everything and the Kitchen Sink

There are two kinds of vacations: the ones where you go away, and the ones where you stay home. Both have their merits. Going away, you can explore new places, meet new people, do new things. Staying home, you can relax in your own home and catch up on all the projects you've been meaning to get to.

This summer, Mark and I decided to combine the two. We're taking our house up the third coast, aka "Wisconsin."

There's very little packing to do when you take your house on vacation with you. We bought some groceries and warmed up the engine.

On Saturday afternoon, in a sea of fog, we left Belmont Harbor for northern ports.

Granted, Waukegan Harbor is only 38 nautical miles north. Driving, it would take about an hour, even with Kennedy construction. Aboard Mazurka, our turtle Marine Trader, it took four hours.

But is there a better way to travel than by water?

Mini Mac

Friday nights in Belmont Harbor are usually raucous affairs with lots of drinking, loud music, and scantily clad women and men. Look what happened last weekend - three boats burned.

Tonight's flavor is distinctly different.

I arrived home around 8:30 to find a quiet, serious pall over the water. Not that the harbor is empty - but people are focused, working, preparing. I watched one shirtless guy with a cigar in his cheek unloading case after case of water and soda from the trunk of his car, and piling them one by one at the gate.

"Can I help you?" I offered.

He took one look at me and was probably about to say something like, "No thanks, honey," but then I added, "I have a cart."

He looked at me in awe. "You have a cart?"

I lent it to him. He called me, "Your worshipfulness."

It's like Santa's shop on December 23rd, folks: tonight is the eve of the Mackinac.

The Race to Mackinac is the annual race from Chicago's Navy Pier up to the top of Lake Michigan, to the Straits of Mackinac. And this year is not just any Mac - it's the 100th annual.

As we are heading out on our weeklong trip up the third coast Saturday morning, we might see them heading out....

But in case we miss them, earlier this week we got a view of some future Mac Racers -a sailing class Monday morning at the mouth of Belmont Harbor.



Mark calls this the "Mini Mac."

Space, the Final Frontier

Somewhere in the first ten minutes of every Star Trek movie, there is the shot every Trekkie is salivating for: the gratuitous, indulgent, slow and delicious scan of the Starship Enterprise.

Forget the mission, forget the crew, forget the captain - even Jean-Luc Picard pales in comparison - we all know, it's all about the ship.

(My favorite opening shot, incidentally, occurs in Star Trek: Generations, the passing of the torch from James T. Kirk to Jean-Luc Picard, when the opening credits reveal a bottle of Dom hurling in slow-mo through space, then crashing against the bow. I don't even care that the accompanying crashing sound would be technically impossible to hear in space - I love it anyway.)

Monday, I felt this same thrill in real life. Sunday night Mark and I took Mazurka south along the river, stopped for dinner at Lawrence Fisheries Dock-and-Dine, then trekked further into the industrial region near Ashland and Archer, where we docked for the night, got up and ready for work, then watched as a crew at the Chicago Boat Yard carefully placed Mazurka in two slings and a crane operator (who later told me he had been working a crane for 40 years, and helped build the CNA building and Harbor Point, among other downtown icons), lifted all 22,000 lbs of her into the air for a good scrubbing.







While the captain discusses the zinc plates with the crane operator, his first mate and feline crew members wait on the dock below for our house to return to water.

Within just a couple hours, Mazurka was clean and we were on our way to seek out new life and new civilizations...to boldly go where no one has gone before...

Right after heading to work for the day.

Slept Right Through It

Friday night I was in bed and asleep by 11:00. Sometime later, I heard yelling in the park – probably drunk kids, I thought. And a little later, a lot of sirens – probably coming down Lake Shore Drive, I thought. I went back to sleep.

But Saturday morning, more sirens. We came out on deck to see the sky between us and downtown filled with billowing clouds. Two docks south of us, firemen swarmed the dock. When they stepped back, a charred mess of a boat was left in the water.


What happened? Word on the dock – ‘cause you know every boater was out there to see what was going on – is that around midnight a citronella candle on a fly bridge went a little too high and ignited the bimony (the canvas canopy over the bridge). The guy panicked; the bimony went up in flames.

“How could you sleep through that?” our neighbor asked Mark. “There were flames 100 feet high and 200 people out here.”

All the boats are covered in soot. Not only is the boat charred, but the two boats on either side are damaged, too.

By the next day, they were hauled out, and things have returned to relative normal around Belmont Harbor.

Check out the Chicago Sun-Times story.

Fire!

We survived the fire! Thanks for everyone's concerned calls and emails. Mazurka remains untouched - not so with the few unlucky boats two docks south of us.

Pictures to come....

Raft On, Venture On!

Every year Mark auctions off a boat ride to raise money for his students. This year, we took the lucky winner Dominic and his friends for the inaugural Saturday fireworks of the Summer 2008 season.

It was a pretty standard trip: fairly calm water, anchoring for hamburgers and potato salad in the playpen, touring around Navy Pier and heading south along the lakefront...



and then we ran into our old friend and fellow River Rat Doug James, Captain of the Venture On.



Venture On is an awesome trawler. Actually, it's more like a two-story house on water, with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, an engine room you can stand in (with everything very neatly labeled), and the most complete galley to which any landlubber could aspire. When Captain James hosted the end-of-the season River Rat party, those of us who endure boats with a 13' width (called the "beam") sat in his 18' wide living room and sighed. "Isn't this beam heavenly?"

So Mark and Doug hatched a plan, and Dominic's party suddenly sailed beyond the ordinary; Venture On put down its anchor, tossed out its bumpers, and Mazurka saddled on up beside her and "rafted on."

(The view of our little boat from atop Venture On.)

Our whole party jumped ship for the more exciting of the two boats.

Beside the heft of Venture On, Mazurka bounced like a plastic toy duck. While our party disappeared, Doug's son and daughter politely boarded our tiny vessel - maybe they felt sorry for our little boat? - and we chatted it up. Before long, our party returned, and we took in our lines...almost leaving behind one crewmember who jumped onboard just in time.

Were the fireworks better that night? Quite possibly.



Thanks to Dominic Chan for winning the auction.Thanks to Alisa Kusolvisitkul for taking awesome photos. And thanks to Captain Doug James and his crew for letting us raft on!

The Live Aboard Backyard

On May 1st we cruised to Belmont Harbor for the summer, leaving a South Loop backyard that looks like this:


For a northside backyard that looks like this:


This season we're on G-Dock, which puts us smack in the middle of the harbor, away from Lake Shore Drive and the bike path and fishermen who jump the fence to snag salmon beside our kitchen window. Now when we get up in the morning, we can watch the sunrise over the lake, and the only fishermen we see look like this:


But when you live in Lincoln Park, you never know what you'll find in your backyard. Like tonight, when I looked up from my dinner to see this:


Yes, that is a photo shoot of a naked lady.


Maybe our car, aka "the landboat," will make a guest appearance in the October issue of Playboy?

Creative Editors at Work

Besides traveling far and wide and writing about it for the Chicago Sun-Times, I've been working on a book about our newlywed life on Mazurka, and publicizing the live aboard life.

Some very creative editors have come up with some stellar headlines:

Trawler Scrawler in the River Cities Reader.
-and-
Hull House in Lake Magazine.

Cheney Update 2008

March was a busy month for us live aboards - mainly because we were everywhere but living aboard Mazurka. Two weekends in Iowa...then California, Texas, and Duluth, Minnesota. The captain's in Arizona right now, leaving me to defend our homestead against wild animals.

In between our trips, we would venture back to Mazurka, leery of what the Cheneys might have been up to. For the last two years, they have nested by the second week of March and commenced their full-force attack on anyone who dared venture within twenty feet of their eggs.

Just before D-Day, Mark built the contraption to end all nest-building:
It seemed to do the trick. The Cheneys would wander around aimlessly, unable to get under the chicken wire. We thought the problem was solved and they would find a new place to build their nest - somewhere far, far away. Until one night I came home and found this:
That's right; in the narrow strip of free land between concrete and chicken wire, Mrs. Cheney built her nest. And laid an egg in it. But on the night I traipsed by, she and her husband were nowhere to be found.

This did not bode well for us, as the new nest was now even closer than nests of previous years. So we got out the umbrellas and succumbed to another spring of relentless attacks.

Except Mr. Cheney had disappeared. Mrs. Cheney would hiss and fuss when we passed by, but she seemed to be on her own, except for a few younger-looking geese, second-rate stand-ins for the pater familias.

We wondered if something had happened to the old fella. Mark and I would approach with our umbrellas hoisted, ready to defend, but when the stand-ins merely waddled by, we would sigh, "Nope, not Cheney." We theorized that perhaps he thought one measely egg wasn't worth guarding, that he had abandoned his wife.

And then four more eggs appeared in the nest, and Cheney returned in rare form, wrecking umbrellas and attacking us and our guests with his usual gusto. Our brother-in-law Ken, surviving an attack while protecting his own small children, observed the slingshots, whips, and umbrellas decorating our saloon and said, "You know it's goose season when you're surrounded by protection."

But the ultimate protection was yet to come...when one of our neighbors called to say he had a BB gun we could borrow. Mark practiced on some new geese who nested just north of our bow - aiming carefully at the tail end, just enough to make them uncomfortable without causing any real harm. Just a few times is enough to train any Pavlovian creature.

So now Cheney guards his wife and his new nest, and when we walk by, he reluctantly lets us pass with hardly a sneer.

I still raise my umbrella, just in case.

They're Back

It's March...it's mating season.

The Cheneys are back.

I'll let you know how it goes with Mark's elaborate plan for a chicken-wire-tulip-design in their nesting area. But these are hardy fowl. They survived the pin pricks, the ammonia spray, and constant harrassment by visitors with umbrellas. I don't have much hope that this season will be any different.

Get Out Your Dustpan

I've long been a fan of snow-shoveling.

Bundling up, trekking outdoors, pushing snow around with heavy, non-technical tools like shovels, and the satisfaction of a driveway cleared and a job well-done.

This winter I emailed my dad, who lives three hours west of us and can give me the most accurate weather report of what's about to hit. "Got snow?" I asked.

"Get your dust pans ready," he replied.

The only thing more satisfying than shoveling the deck with a dustpan is going up under the shrinkwrap and beating the plastic so the snow slides off.

It's been a constant 70 degrees inside Mazurka, and now the sewage tank is empty, too. Winter life on board seems pretty good this year.

Though Mark is having second thoughts. Last week, after spending nearly four hours with a guy and a van and helping to pump out the sewage tanks of five of our neighbors, my husband confessed, "The novelty is wearing off."

Date Night

Thursday is Date Night - the one night of the week when Mark and I don't schedule anything, and we do something together. Date Night is not always going out - most of the time it's staying home and eating dinner at the table and hanging out.

This week on Wednesday, the red pumpout light signalled it was time to empty the sewage tank.

On Thursday I got home early and decided that I would surprise Mark by taking care of the pumpout by myself. This is not a simple task: we are on the opposite side of the marina as the pumpout hose, and since we can't start the boat and drive on over to the sewage system, we have devised an odd method that, for the most part, works pretty well:

1) Toss one end of the water ski rope 30 feet across the marina to the other dock. (This sometimes takes several tries.)

2) Walk a quarter mile around to the other dock and attach the rope to the pump out hose.

3) Walk back to Mazurka, use the ski rope to pull the pumpout hose across the marina, attach the hose to the port.

4) Walk back to the other side of the marina (or, call one of our neighbors docked on that side) and turn on the sewage pump.

(Are you getting tired of walking back and forth yet?)

5) When the monitor onboard Mazurka reads empty, walk back (or call again) to turn off the sewage pump.

6) Unhook the hose from Mazurka; walk back to the other side to drag the hose across.

Sound exhausting? It is. With two people, you can eliminate the walking back and forth, which saves you 20 minutes. Still, I thought it would be sweet for Mark to come home and find that I had done the job already, and all by myself!

I got the rope across the marina on my first swing - this was a good sign. Problem was, we've had a lot of snow around here lately. The hoses were not only buried under the snow, but one was frozen in a heap of black ice created by plows. One of our neighbors came out to help me dislodge the hose, and we put them together and I ran around to Mazurka and began hauling the hose across the water. It was heavier than normal. After a lot of tugging, I was just getting the hose hooked up to Mazurka when Mark arrived.

With the hose hooked up, we were almost home free. But it wasn't pumping. The reason the hose was so heavy? It was frozen inside. So for about an hour, Mark tended to the hose in the river, waiting for it to thaw. When it finally thawed, he tried it again - still not pumping. So back to the other side of the marina he went, where he and two of our neighbors commenced to pulling apart the sewage system to try and figure out the problem.

Date Night this week looked like the captain in the sewer for two hours, and the first mate in the boat feeling sorry for herself.

Two days later, and River City maintenance is apparently trying to fix the problem. And yes, our sewage tank is still full.

Not What I Wanted to See

Monday afternoon I came home for lunch and as I'm making a salad, I catch sight of somebody's legs outside our door on the dock.

I took a closer look - white guy, mid 40s, balding, standing there, looking around. This is not all that unusual - people will sometimes come out to take pictures of the loop, or just get a view of the river.

But the next thing I know, he's unzipping his jeans and pulling out a body part I have no business looking at.

I open the door and yell, "Hey!" catching him mid-piss, a yellow puddle collecting in the snow right outside our door.

He jumps and puts it away and runs off. As he's high-tailing it down the dock, I hear him calling to one of our neighbors, "I thought you were the only one out here!"

A little later our neighbor comes by to borrow some shrink wrap tape. "Sorry I scared your friend," I told him. "Maybe I should have invited him in to use the head."

Note to those of you helping your boater friends this winter: No matter how appealing it may be to pee on the middle of a dock smack downtown Chicago, try to use some discretion. You never know who's front walkway you're pissing on.

Things That Go Bump in the Night

Last night we may as well have been swinging 'round a mooring can in Monroe Harbor.

We arrived home just in time to watch the blizzard winds whipping Mazurka like a flimsy flag, pounding her port-side bow against the dock, the new fender busted off its hook and floating down the Chicago River.

When docked on the Chicago River, lines have to be kept somewhat loose; the water level changes so suddenly and dramatically (it's not unusual for the level to drop or rise three feet in an hour), that lines pulled tight can inflict a lot of damage. So with loose lines, and extra fenders out, we whipped back and forth all night long. Mark got up twice to check the port-side, fix the fenders, keep an eye on the tearing shrinkwrap.

Around 2:30 I thought about going out to help him in sub-zero temperatures; then I had the thought which still comes up occasionally: "It was your dream to live like this," and I burrowed down and went back to sleep.

This morning, it's zero degrees, but we're still floating.

Captain's Log

Mark's favorite Christmas present this year - the only one deemed worthy of a photo - was a gift from my Dad, the "Captain's Log." There have been plenty of jokes about stardate and all that.

Yesteday it earned its first entry - when ice formed around the bow and Mark turned on the de-icer, a powerful fan that extends from the dock under Mazurka and circulates water around the boat.

And other than that, the coldest weekend of the year has had little affect on the boat. The captain covered all the inside windows with clear plastic, and we are a delightful 71 degrees. "The only thing that made it a little cold is that my wife chose this weekend to go out of town," Mark told a friend yesterday.

1:00 AM and All's Well

Winter months can be slow onboard a boat. For about five months, we are locked into a slip, wrapped in plastic, sitting. Mazurka becomes just like any other home, except for the intermittent rolling caused by a passing river barge.

Onboard cabin fever takes a slightly different spin than on land. We fall into a rut of anticipation…at any moment, disaster may appear. You have to be ready.

And sometimes, when cabin fever is especially bad, captains and first mates may invent problems.

Like the other night, when I was awoken by Mark in the saloon, waving a flashlight everywhere, opening the hatches and yelling in a panicked voice, “Wake up! There’s water all over the floor! The boat’s leaking!”

The boat wasn’t leaking, but the vase of star lilies on the table was, knocked over by one of our feline crewmembers.

I always give the captain a hard time about his middle-of-the-night anxiety. At least once a week (depending on the amount of stress at work), he’ll be up, rounding the cabin, looking for signs that the heat is out or the bilge is overflowing.

This week Mark was gone and I spent a windy, wintry night on Mazurka alone. Around 1 AM I was awoken by a loud thud at the stern, right behind my head. I lay quietly for a moment, listening for the inevitable leaking water of a sinking boat. Then I got up, put on my robe and boots, and ventured out into the cold night.

The South Loop is sometimes a miracle – in the heart of downtown Chicago, there can be moments of absolute stillness. The stars and half moon lit the dock, and there were no sounds of construction, no humming of electricity; just me, the river, the geese wintering on the nearby dock (yes, they’re still here), and then – THUD! – the port side of the bow swung and nearly slammed right into the dock. It would have hit, too, had the cracked fender not buffered the impact.

I watched is slam again, judged that Mazurka was in no danger of sinking, and went back to bed.

If a busted fender is the only thing we have to fix this winter, I’ll consider it karmic payback for surviving last winter.

Mele Kalikimaka

Hawaii was good to these boaters. We took a break from marine methods of travel in favor of bicycles, backpacks, and motorcycles.


The Ne Pali Coast - 11 miles of rugged terrain climbing 5,000 feet. You bet we conquered it - on foot, carrying 35-lb backpacks.


For the full story of the epic ten-day adventure, check out the January 13th Sunday Sun-Times Travel Section.