829 Miles

One busted fuel intake.
One overhauled head gasket.
One U.S. Boat tow.
Almost two weeks on the Great Lakes.
A father, four sons, a couple friends.
Mazurka arrived in the Twin Ports on Friday, July 3rd.
"Do you think you can step on it?" the bridge master asked the captain.

Abandon Ship!

Well, not really. The ship is just fine, nestled securely in a dock at Houghton, MI. The crew has disbanded - John and Ed return to work, Scott returns to his family, Ed and Bob are back in Lac La Belle, and Mark is driving across the UP to his wife in Duluth.

I figured the next time I would see Mark, he would be waving to me from the helm of Mazurka, stopping Park Point traffic as the Aerial Lift Bridge rose to let his ship pass.

Instead, I'll see him in about two hours when he drives up in his brother's pick-up truck.

The captain returns to Minnesota to close on his other house, his land-based house, and move his land-based furniture and belongings to our new North Shore 1895 residence.

Mark will then drive back to the UP to retrieve his first home and bring her by water to the Twin Ports with his crew of Ed, Bobby, and Wendell.

Sound confusing? You bet. But the engine will be repaired, the gale force winds will have died down, and the crew will be rested.

I am very glad I opted to stay on land for this trip.

If you still need a Mazurka cruising fix while the crew takes a hiatus, check out my recent article in the Chicago Sun-Times travel section: Third Coast Charms.


(Leaving Milwaukee on a calm day along the Third Coast.)

Welcome to lovely Houghton/Hancock

Mazurka has arrived in Houghton, MI, where it will stay for a couple days. Welcome to the Keweenaw, Copper County, home to Michigan Tech.

The trip across half of Lake Superior was smooth, but now the wind is kicking up, with waves 5-7 feet, so the crew is going to use this time to regroup and make engine repairs.

They're losing two valuable crew members (John and Ed) who have to return to work on Monday, but they're gaining Wendell, an experienced sailor and has crossed Gitchigumi several times.

They sound tired.

Forward or back?

"Sometimes there is no right answer," Ed told Mark yesterday, regarding a blown head gasket on the engine.

To go ahead or stay back? The crew debated all day, then went ahead up the St. Mary river, approaching the Soo Locks and the wide open expanse of Lake Superior. Last night they stayed at a harbor, hoping to find a machinist, who was no more. They had parts flown in by UPS. This morning they decided to just keep going, blown gasket and all. If the problem gets worse on the water, they have the parts to make repairs. Which doesn't entirely make sense to me, but I'm not onboard. And thankfully so.

Meanwhile, I get a thrill looking at the location maps Bob periodically sends out via SPOT. To see tiny 38' Mazurka embarking on enormous Lake Gitchigumi is pretty humbling. I can only imagine how small the crew must be feeling.


View Larger Map

Trouble in the Soo

It's never good when black smoke plumes out of your engine.

Awaiting further updates...the crew is in the Soo, but stopped for more engine repairs. I've heard rumors of parts being flown in. This trip is probably going to cost a lot more than we thought.

What do they say about a boat being a hole you pour money into?

Perhaps my friend Tom was right - sell the boat, buy a canoe. Or a kayak. Anything without an engine.

Leaving Lake Michigan

View Larger Map

Yesterday the captain called me around 3:30 p.m. to report that the engine was repaired and they were back on course.

His brother Ed called two other MDOT mechanics who showed up and they all fixed the engine. When they put the key into the ignition, the starter wouldn't turn it over. A new disaster.

John suggested, "Why don't you just tap the starter with a hammer?" They did; problem solved.

Then Mark took the boat a little upriver before Bobby pointed out that the lake was the other way.

As of 3 p.m. CDT Wednesday, they're getting ready to bid Lake Michigan a fond adieu.

My Four Sons

Opting out of the trip was suddenly made okay when Mark's brother Scott was able to get a last-minute plane ticket and arrived in Chicago at 6:30 a.m. on Monday, mere hours before Mazurka cruised out of Chi-town for the last time.


So now the Schneiderhan complement is complete: Ed and his four sons, Mark, Scott, John and Ed, and his friend Bob. What a father's day gift.

They cruised out of Navy Pier on Monday around 2 p.m., with clear skies and waves 1-2 feet. Their route: head across Lake Michigan to South Haven, MI, then start north along the Michigan coastline.

This morning I got a call from Mark around 8 a.m. "We're being towed."

On a routine check at 4 a.m., they noticed fuel in the bottom of the boat. A busted fuel line. They were 28 miles from the Michigan shore.

So they called the Coast Guard, and then Boat U.S., and they're getting a tow into Muskegon, MI. Mark's brother Ed is a large engine mechanic for MDOT and knows his stuff; he was already on the phone lining up parts for when they arrive.

Mark sounded okay - he said the crew was a little deflated, but not without a sense of humor: Scott and John were fishing off the stern while being towed. "This is a great speed - let's get some lines out there!"

Taking a Trip, Not Taking a Trip

A few years ago I went to Haiti on a medical mission. One evening, our team returned to the mission house after working a long day in a clinic with no electricity, no water, and patients lined up for days. No sooner had we entered the house and sat down than word came from the village: a baby was being born.

Four team members grabbed their bags and loaded into the truck. I stayed sitting on the couch. "Aren't you coming with us?" they said, sure that I would get a great story out of this event.

In my mind I could see the hot rooms of the small hut filled with people scuffling over the dirt floor; I could hear the screams. Barging into the crowded home of a woman in painful labor, surrounded by family members, long into the dark Haitian night did not sound appealing to me. No, I wasn't going.

After they left, I went upstairs and sat on my bed, struggling with regret about my decision. It would be a great story. A once in a lifetime opportunity. And what kind of writer was I, to stay at home instead of following the action?

The oldest son of our mission hosts, 10 year-old Stephen, came by - I was staying in his room. "You didn't go see the baby?" he asked.

"No," I told him.

He sat down beside me, his face a beautiful combination of his American mother's compassion and his Haitian father's determination. "It's hard to know what to do," he said. "Sometimes it's better to get the experience, and sometimes it's better to hear about it afterwards." He thought for a moment, then added, "A lot of times, my dad makes it sound more interesting. I wait to hear it from him."

This week, when faced with the concurrent tasks of buying a house and packing and moving all our stuff...and a nonstop boatride of indeterminate length with a crew of five men, I have opted to save my sanity and stay on land.

This was not an easy decision. I'm still sitting on the couch, wondering if I'm missing the trip of a lifetime. Maybe I am.

I'll wait to hear the story from the captain and crew. Like Stephen said, maybe their versions will be more interesting.

That night in Haiti, the American nurses returned rather quickly from the house of the Haitian birth, with an over-the-top story of how they assisted in delivering triplets. Then they confessed: "The baby was already born by the time we got there. They didn't need our help at all."

Are we really taking this trip?

Our last time onboard Mazurka was 30 degrees in mid-November. I'm wondering if our upcoming trip on Lake Superior will be much different.

In 12 days we set sail for Duluth. I'm in denial. There are too many details to figure out before we go. But what's really to figure out? Put the boat in the water, systems check, buy groceries. There's always the anticipation before going on a trip like this, the worry of trying to plan for every single possible incident. But what's really to plan? Start the engine, start moving. Figure it out as we go. As soon as we're freely moving, everything seems to fall into place.

As my friend Erika reminded me this morning, "When you're out on the bow, it's hard to be mad at God."

Mazurka in the Corner

A month to go before our grand tour...

We visited Mazurka in its winter storage. She's ready to get back in the water. Ready for Lake Superior!

Let the Preparations Begin

It's official - Mark found a slip on Park Point. In June, we're bringing Mazurka from Chicago up to Duluth, Minnesota. Under her own power.

You may be wondering what this journey entails.


We will be leaving from the southern tip of of Lake Michigan, traveling to the northern tip, traipsing through the Soo Locks, and along the southern coast of Lake Superior to the far western corner where her new home waits.

This is a very long trip.

On Sunday afternoon I got out the maps and started charting just how long this trip will take. With the two of us driving the boat, which goes at a maximum of 8 mph, if we travel 8-10 hours a day, we're looking at about two weeks on the water. This does not include delays for weather. Mazurka can roll like a metronome in four foot waves. And who knows what Lake Superior might be doing...this beast is more ocean than lake, with huge freighters, heavy fog, sudden shifts in weather, and iron ore deposits than render a compass and GPS useless. This is big time.

Sunday night I told Mark I didn't want to take this trip.

So he got to scheming. Mazurka's Ford diesel engine can run 24/7. A crew of six could run the boat continuously, weather permitting. He called a captain who knows Lake Superior and is game for the ride. By Monday night, Mark had assembled a crew of four and was looking for two more. I heard him saying on the phone, "I don't know if she's going..."

I can never pass up a challenge. This quality gets me into more trouble! But I marched out to the living room and announced, "I'm in."

So I'm in. Only female crew member onboard, who knows what kind of crap job I'll be given. Probably the graveyard shift. But I'll face my fear...

Leaving the Room with a View

With all the views we've enjoyed of Chicago onboard Mazurka, this is our final view of the city from our temporary landlubber condo in the south loop.

I am on the goodbye tour, making the rounds to see friends before I leave. I have been in this city for 16 years, since I was 18 years old - my entire adult life. This is no easy process.

Tuesday I went to see my friend Denise Power in her condo near Lincoln Park. (Denise's story of the Obama rally is one of my favorite recent perspectives on Chicago.) From her condo, she has a spectacular view of the lake, the park, and downtown. Denise and her husband are also trying to sell their place, and while we were overlooking the city, she described to me how recently she realized she has stopped looking at the view. As if knowing she may have to give up the place soon has made her stop taking it in.

I knew exactly what she was talking about. My last few weeks on the boat, I kept telling myself I needed to study our view in Belmont Harbor, the way Lincoln Park looked in fall, the way the downtown skyscrapers shimmered at night. I will never see it again this way, I kept telling myself. But I couldn't make myself look; it was too hard to see it, knowing we were leaving. And in a way, I was already a foot out the door.

The next day I saw my friend Betty for lunch. Betty and I met a couple years ago, at a thank you brunch at Stanley's for Lincoln Park Shelter volunteers. I had been there with my volunteering husband for a few hours, had eaten breakfast and chatted it up and was just about to leave, when in comes Betty. It took less than ten minutes of talk for me to realize this was a fascinating person I wanted to know better. Betty is a writer, editor, and long-time volunteer of many Chicago organizations, who knows Chicago culture like no one I've ever met.

On Wednesday we spent a leisurely lunch at Stanley's, staying almost till supper, starting with the big topics (the move, the election, her thrice-broken arm), then moving on to the books we are working on (her book that has suddenly revealed its shape, my Mazurka book that has suddenly revealed its ending - and possibly the epilogue!), and then we got down to the random stuff that happens in our daily lives, which is my favorite part of talks with Betty.

She tells me about her electricity went out on a Sunday morning. She walked to Starbucks to wait to call an electrician. On her way inside she talked with the guy on the corner selling Streetwise, the $2 paper for the homeless. She sees him daily, and he calls her Betty St Louis, even though she's lived in Chicago a lot longer than her childhood under the arch. Betty tells the Streetwise vendor she is looking for a phone to call an electrician and he hands her his cell. She goes inside to sit by the window, opens the phone, realizes she hasn't a clue how to work it. She looks up at the SW vendor through the window and he comes inside to help her.

She finds an electrician who does the work on a Sunday morning for $65. She thinks he deserves more for a Sunday morning and he says, "Okay, $75."

"It helps being a little old widow," she tells me.

I laugh out loud. "I have never thought of you that way," I say. "You'd have to lose the edge and the wit."

A few days later the electrician comes by to check on her. He brings his girlfriend, who keeps rabbits and a rooster in her urban backyard. "They're a fabulous couple," Betty says, "They're weird - you would love them."

A few days later she is waiting on the street for a cab. A black stretch limo appears and the driver says he'll take her for the same rate. He charges her $5 for the trip; she gives him $7.

While we talk, people keep coming around to say hello to Betty. You would think she was Studs Terkel for how many random people know her and know her well. She remembers details of people's lives even though she can't remember where she met them. She epitomizes the best of living in Chicago - the warmth, compassion, and respect people can have for everyone they meet throughout the day, from the Streetwise vendor in front of Starbucks to the busboy at the restaurant to a friend you might not see again.

Eventually it's time to leave; I have to catch a bus up to Lakeview for another appointment. Betty and I part on the street. I don't start crying until she is around the corner.

On this goodbye tour, spending time with the people here who I love, listening to their daily lives, I am getting my last look at my daily life in Chicago.

The view is so extraordinary I almost don't want to look.

Phantom Wave Syndrome

Walking among boats in heated storage is like swimming underwater with ghosts. They are hoisted up high, so that you walk beneath the water line, their plastic covers rustling softly around you.


The first thing Mark and I noticed when we climbed (and I mean climbed) onboard Mazurka Saturday afternoon was that she felt like she should be moving, even though she wasn't.

It was a very strange, sad feeling.

We spent Saturday afternoon aboard Mazurka, doing the last cleaning of the season, but for different reasons: Mark was cleaning in case a potential buyer needs to come onboard; I was cleaning so that she'll be fresh and ready when we take her up north next summer.

I am having a hard time leaving this boat.

Mark, surprisingly, is up and ready for the next adventure.

"I got tired of the transient lifestyle," he confessed. "The pump-outs not working, the electricity going out, and then when they shut off our water in Belmont Harbor, that was it."

I had learned to just accept all that inconvenience as boat life. In exchange, I got the sky and the trees and the water constantly beneath me. I miss the water. We can see the lake and the sky from our fancy south loop furnished temporary condo. It's not the same. We are always the same temperature; we are always level. At night, I still feel the water beneath me.

Someday Might Be Tomorrow

On Saturday night, after Mark and I had spent all day shuttling boxes from Mazurka to storage, I asked him, "Do you think someday we might look back on this and think we were crazy for living on a boat?"

"Someday might be tomorrow," he replied.

Sunday morning we found a brief lull in the gale force winds and took Mazurka for her final voyage down the Chicago River. She now sits comfortably in a cradle in heated storage, beside million dollar yachts.

I took one final picture of her in the water. "Till we meet again," I thought, because I was being melancholy and dramatic. In reality, till we meet again is probably next weekend, when we'll be back to give her a good thorough scrubbing.

Someday might be tomorrow, till we meet again is next weekend, and in the meantime? The meantime is Mark and me and two cats nestled very comfortably in a one-bedroom south loop condo, complete with dishwasher, in-unit laundry, and all the hot water you want to fill that nice, deep bathtub.

We made it just in time for the snow.

Not Even a Few Last Drops?

Although Belmont Harbor is supposed to keep its water on until November 15th, they decided to turn it off early this year. Maybe because temperatures got below freezing; who am I to judge. All I know is that in our few last days onboard Mazurka, we've had to resort to some creative ways of filling the water tanks.

Even at the end, it's comical. Save those tears, you guys! (You might need them to wash your hands.)

We've spent our last night as liveaboard newlyweds. Tonight we graduate to a furnished condo downtown, our temporary digs for a month, complete with functional plumbing!

Last Appearance in Chicago

On Saturday night Life Aboard Mazurka made its final literary appearance before it sets sail for dry dock.

Many thanks to Jenny Seay, my good friend and organizer of the Tamale Hut reading series, and Jaime, owner of the Tamale Hut, for giving me the opportunity to read one last time. And thanks to all the audience members who came out to listen on a very cold night.

Here's an excerpt of the reading:

One morning in our last month on Mazurka, in the few weeks before leaving Belmont Harbor, Mark went out the door for work and I stood in the doorway, waving to him as he carried his briefcase and blue lunch bag filled with the sandwich I had just made him. He turned on the dock to look back at the boat. I opened the door to see if he needed something. He stood looking at the side of the hull, then at me, his eyes taking in the whole scene. It occurred to me that he wasn’t looking at anything in particular – he was taking it all in, as an impressionist painter does. He was checking out the condition of his boat, as he often did, and as he did, he was checking out the condition of his life. This was his life: boat, wife, living on the water, just the two of us.

Time to pull up anchor and head to a different harbor, which we were preparing to do; this life was coming to a close; we would soon be bound for land, for the unknown.


(One of our last mornings in Belmont Harbor.)

No Place Like It

We may be leaving in six weeks, but in sixteen years of living in this town, last night had to be the best.

All Good Things

It's been a quiet week in Belmont Harbor.

The end of the season is near. Sailors sadly come to the docks now, hauling their last crates for the last trip of the season - bound for dry-dock.


Mark and I are contemplating the end, too.

Last week, Mark accepted a faculty position at the University of Minnesota Duluth. He is set to start in January. And while Duluth sits right on lovely Lake Superior, it's impossible for us to live on Mazurka in a city that spends eight months of the year in winter's ice cold grip.

The honeymoon is over; we are moving to land.

This is pretty exciting news for us for lots of reasons - northern Minnesota is gorgeous, we love winter sports, this position is Mark's dream job, and there's an almost-endless frontier to explore.

For months we have been contemplating what to do with Mazurka if we moved to Duluth. It's still not entirely clear. But while we had been thinking for sure that we would have to sell her, now we are considering taking her with us - making the great trip from Chicago up the western shore of Lake Michigan, through the Straits of Mackinac, skipping through the top of Lake Huron, and coasting along the southern shore of Lake Superior. This will be a hell of a trip.

And it will have to wait until next summer.

Our plan for now is to stay in Belmont Harbor until November 15, spend a month on the wall at River City, and then haul Mazurka out during the uncertain cold of mid-December. Our much-loved home will spend the winter in dry-dock while we head north to a home on Garrison Keillor's land. And next summer? We'll see what happens....

Wabbit Hunting?

Or gearing up for the Flatwater Classic?

Early Sunday morning, we took Mazurka and the Lil Choppin for our annual volunteer work as safety boats in the canoe race down the Chicago River, run by Friends of The River.

It's a fun event - if you think fun is getting up at 6 AM on a Sunday morning, heading to the heavy traffic areas of the Chicago River, and staying steady for nearly five hours while trying to keep canoers and kayakers to the west wall so they don't get run over by tour boats; if you think fun is being ignored by these canoers and kayakers who sometimes yell at you for getting in their way; if you think fun is getting stuck in the pouring rain. (Here are Mark, Tony, and Rick yelling through a megaphone: "Stay to the West Wall!")


It's really super fun if you like small spaces. Then the Lil Choppin is for you, where you can motor up and down the river in a cramped Zodiac raft for five hours, eating Doritos and peanuts and little gem donuts and telling off-color jokes. After about four hours the rain starts and you get slap happy and start rowing forward while trying to remember all the words to the Muppet Show theme song. Nothing like a litany of Helen Keller jokes to make an hour of cold rain fly by. Thanks, Carl.

Actually, it was a lot of fun. Especially if you have a great crew, which we did.


Best costume in this year's event: the viking in the bow asked, "Which way to the Ikea?"

It Was Bound to Happen

This evening, about twenty minutes before Mark and I are set to leave for opening night of the Chicago Art Open, I go on deck to look for Leo. He's only been out a few minutes. Leo is agile, strong, a good jumper, and can maneuver his way pretty well around the dock. And he always returns to the boat when I call him.

When I go outside and call his name, he yowls in return. I call again; he yowls again. Something is wrong. Inside, his brother Hunter starts crying and howling. I go searching down one of the docks and it sounds like Leo is howling from right under me. I lay down flat on the dock and peer underneath; I see his wet tail. I stretch my neck a little further and see him: he's standing, soaking wet, on one of the floats under the dock. He has somehow fallen in, swam under the dock, and climbed to a perch beneath the dock.

Now comes the impossible task of getting him out of there. He's right under the dock, and the only way back to land is through the water. He's not coming willingly. So I jump in, reach under the dock, and pull him out by the scruff of the neck. He claws his way up my shoulders and Mark pulls him out.


He then proceeds to run to the boat and hide where he feels safe: the litter box. We now have a soaking wet long-haired cat with clay clumped in his paws and hair, tracking wet litter all over the boat. A quick shower, and his brother Hunter to help clean him up, and he's good as new.

I'm not really buying this whole Turkish-Vans-love-water stereotype. They've both fallen in; neither of them is eager to go back anytime soon.

The Dancing Nun

The second time I met Mark was in August 2005, at a co-ed bridal shower for my best friend Jill, about to marry Scott. Mark was the groom’s oldest brother. He showed up on a 1988 Honda Goldwing, all 5’6 of him, and barreled through the back sliding doors, compact, wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt, propelled by burley arms and legs.

He was, of course, a trawlerman, like Redmond O’Hanlon describes in his hilarious, wonderful book Trawler about fishing off the northern coast of Scotland:

He was obviously a trawlerman – even I was beginning to be able to identify one, generically: big shoulders, a flat stomach, and, most apparent of all, massive leg-muscles: muscles so absurdly well developed that trawlermen seemed to have to buy their trousers many waist-sizes too big: their broad leather belts hold the extra cloth puckered tight.

“Here comes Mark,” the groom said, laughing.

We all arrived early to help, but the grill was already warm, the crudite waiting on pretty platters. So as maid of honor, I stood in the Oak Park living room with the best man, making awkward small talk, while toddlers of other early guest played at our feet.

“Here, I gotta show you the dancing nun,” Mark said, rifling through photos on his Trio. Why this urgency to show me the nun picture, I wondered. Did he know my mother had been a nun? Did he know I had written an unpublished novel about young nuns?

Mark’s boat had just won third place in Chicago’s Venetian Night, the annual July boat parade that draws more than a million people to the downtown lakefront. Decked out in a Blues Brothers theme, Mazurka had a painted set, elaborate light show, singers, dancers, Jake and Elwood, and of course, a dancing nun.

I found it intriguing that he lived on the boat year-round. I was also intrigued by his large, piercing blue eyes that seemed to focus intently on whoever he was talking to – at the moment, me – and take in everything about them. Still, I worried that I would get stuck talking to him the entire afternoon. So when I saw my chance, I politely excused myself.

As most people still hadn’t arrived, Mark turned to the next logical guests: he got down on the floor and played trucks with the toddlers. A couple hours later, he told me some funny jokes. A month little later, he asked me on a date. A year later, we got married.


Never trust a man who pledges his life and love to you, then blindfolds you, gives you a bat, and pushes you on your way.

September 30, 2006

Ike Strikes Chicago

When you live aboard Noah's Ark, three days of rain - 8.54 inches - is nothing.

We even found the source of the dripping water in the cabin (unexciting story) and spent the weekend floating happily as the water around us rose.

According to Tom Skilling's blog, U. S. Army Corps of Engineers meteorologist Keith Kompoltowicz estimates as much as 877.5 billion additional gallons of water have now been added to Lake Michigan.

Maybe more, considering how much water the City of Chicago added into the lake.

By Saturday morning at 7:30, the underground Chicago water storage network called "Deep Tunnel" was full. The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District opened the sanitary canal locks in Wilmette, near Navy Pier, and at 130th and Torrence to release the water into Lake Michigan. According to the MWRD, most of the liquid was storm run-off; only 1% was raw sewage, as quoted in the Chicago Sun-Times.

But if you read a little further, when the MWRD opened the locks, it released four billion gallons of water per hour.

One per cent is still 40 million gallons per hour of raw sewage being dumped into the lake.

What do you do when the City dumps that much raw sewage into the lake that you live on?

Well, on Tuesday my friend Anne and I went swimming at Montrose Beach. We were careful to keep our heads above water.

So What If Summer's Almost Over?

It's never too late to plant a garden.

Where's All This Water Coming From?

There are common questions in the liveaboard household, including:

“What’s that smell?”
“Where’s all this water coming from?”
And my favorite, often asked by the captain on his way to the head first thing in the morning: “Do you think the pumpout’s full?”

If these three happen simultaneously, you know you’re in trouble.

Every captain is intimately familiar with the question, "Where's this water coming from?" When visitors come aboard for a tour, captains will often tell the story of a leak: where the water came from, how he figured it out, how he fixed it – or how he’s trying to.

A caulking gun is never far away. Mark fires it up and scours the boat, caulking at will. For months we endured a terrible leak in the aft stateroom; every time it rained, water would silently seep down the wall, mildewing and destroying books and papers beside the bed. We left the shelf bare – heartbreaking in a place with so little room – until Mark discovered that the caulking near the front of the fly bridge was rotten. He somehow deduced that rainwater was coming into the top deck through the fly bridge, seeping down the length of the boat, and draining into the cabin through the aft deck. This sounded like a pretty big leap in logic to me, but he caulked and sealed the fly bridge one weekend, and the leak in the aft stateroom stopped.

An important lesson I have learned living aboard this boat: if you throw enough possible solutions at a problem, one of them will eventually work.

But sometimes, when you plug up one leak, the water finds another spout, as was the case yesterday morning at 5 AM, when I was lying half-awake and heard the unmistakable sound of water pouring very close to my head.

"We have a leak!" I yelled to Mark.

He came running in from the salon (yes, he was up at 5 AM), and asked me three times, "We have a leak?" to which I answered three times, "yes!" all while we are scurrying to clear shelves and lay out towels and grab the big pot from the galley to catch the water.

We know where the water is coming from - which G-H-I hurricane is it today? - dumping several inches of rain on us yesterday.

Time to get the caulking gun.

Turkish Vans

A new friend - fellow writer, boater, and cat owner Denise Power - visited me onboard Mazurka. I introduced her to Hunter and Leo. "Oh!" she said, "They're that one breed that loves water!"

I got these cats from the Anti-Cruelty Society, so who knows what kind of mutts they are. But later that day Denise emailed me with the name - Turkish Vans - and suggested I look them up online. I did a quick search and founds pages and pages devoted to my cats' brethren. With long white fur, amber spots, ringed tails, and the exact temperament described, Hunter and Leo are Turkish Vans.

The best part of the story is that Turkish Vans are known for loving water. The myth is that they came to Mount Ararat aboard Noah's Ark and swam to shore. In modern times, they swim for fun. (I don't know if Hunter's swim last year was fun for him...but he did know what to do.)

This explains why they look like they're swimming when they drink water, why they let their tails drag in the water, and why they will sit on the narrow ledge of the deck, fearless. Hunter and Leo waited eleven years on land for the moment they could move to Mazurka. I have half a mind to take them swimming this weekend.

Where the Salmon Are

My parents came for the last-fishing-trip of summer. Our plan was to head to Michigan City, Indiana, where the perch have come in and the salmon charters go out every morning. But after listening to the marine weather report - 4-6 ft waves, 15-20 mph winds out of the northeast, we decided to stay in Chicago and fish in the morning.

We cruised out early Saturday morning with the charter boats and eventually caught up with them (considering we go 8 mph) at a ridge 70 feet deep, heading 60 degrees out of Belmont. It was rough water, but Mark and my Dad were ready to fish. I manned the helm, trying to keep her steady while they got their gear in order. After a while I noticed my Mom was missing. She was down in the bow, seasick. Our husbands expressed sympathy and compassion for her, but they clearly were not leaving until some fish were in the boat.

My Dad wandered away from his pole for just a minute and when he returned, Mark was reeling in a King Salmon on his line. Nice guy that he is, he helped bring it in with the net.
I have seen fishermen will themselves to catch something; once, when we went on a halibut trip in Alaska, everyone had caught halibut except the one guy on board who really, really, really loved fishing. Right before we pulled up anchor for the day, he brought in a prehistoric-looking Ling Cod. It was the coolest thing I have ever seen come out of the water - too bad it was three weeks before Ling Cod season and had to be throw back.

Not to be outdone by his son-in-law, my Dad got serious about fishing and willed himself to catch a fish.
Objects closer to the camera may appear larger than the are.

I made an important catch: a planer board that got loose.

And my Mom's seasickness cleared up within a mile from shore; she came up on deck, fresh-faced, "I feel better!"

An Average Day in My Neighborhood

I have been spending a lot of time aboard Mazurka these days, working from home. A laptop, internet, and a cellphone are all I need.

It's beautiful out here, and quiet, especially during the week when people are in everyday mode. After observing the everyday action for a while, I've noticed there does exist an "average day" in Belmont Harbor. It is slightly different than an average day in Rogers Park, Andersonville, or Bucktown.

I wake up and look out my front window to see a man bathing. He swims near the stern of his boat, climbs out, soaps himself on the swim platform (he's wearing shorts, but he still scrubs every area), and jumps back in to rinse.

A new sailor arrives mid-morning. He's mad to find another boat in his slip. He cusses and glides into a free slip next to us, goes to see the harbor master who is not there, comes back madder and still cussing, calls the harbor office again. They tell him to stay where he is. Problem solved.

Ducks swim by, often.

Late afternoon, I notice hands sticking out of the water near a sailboat north of us. Then two more hands, then a head in a mask. Two divers hoist themselves out of the water and onto the dock, talk to the captain, then plunge back in. They are scrubbing the boat. A crew beside them warns them to look out - they're about to start their engine.

The evening passes quietly. We watch the fireworks over Navy Pier.

In the shower, I notice the water pump sounding strange. It's straining. I realize the end is near. I quickly rinse out the shampoo just as the water dwindles to a slight trickle. I can't remember the last time I filled the water tanks, but they're empty now. I race to the front of the boat to turn off the water pressure before the pump burns out, then head to bed. Filling the tanks can wait till morning.


The Liveaboard Bathroom: We even got shower curtains.

Professor, Navigator, Seamster

It's good to have a captain who can not only fix the engine and a non-functioning pumpout, but can also stitch it up.


Mark's not into knitting or crocheting; sewing with a machine is a different world altogether. It involves machines. Loud machines, with foot pedals and levers.

With me as his assistant, he stitched up the bimini in an evening, making him the first man with whom I have ever sewn.

Whole Lotta Lightning

Yesterday morning we went to work in torrential rain showers, but last night was the true show - starting about 7:30, the wind picked up, the sirens blared, and the whole city was encased in one hell of a lightning show.

Mark and I were both away from Mazurka during the first wave. We arrived home in the brief peace between 10-11 PM and found a little kiddie swimming pool floating beside our bow, and then we looked up: the wind had shorn the bimony right off the aluminum poles atop the fly bridge. The narrow strip of snaps still wrapped around the pole, the rest of the canvas had begun collecting a swimming pool of rainwater.

Looks like we got a lot of sewing to do. Other than that, we are safe and sound.

At the End of the Tour

When you travel by boat, it's wise to leave an extra day at the end in case bad weather prevents you from cruising home in time for work Monday morning. Wouldn't want to miss that.

Or, in our case, the extra day can be used when you come into an unexpectedly fun harbor.

Kenosha was an afterthought; we knew we'd need a stop between Port Washington and Belmont, and we'd already explored Racine and Waukegan, so Kenosha seemed the logical choice for something "fresh," as Mark puts it. As in, "I like vacations where we do something fresh and creative."

(This statement cracks me up. Is living on a boat "fresh?" I guess you could call it that.)

On our last night in Port Washington, we serendipitously met some Kenosha harbor citizens who gave us the lowdown on the ever-expanding harbor.

When we arrived in Kenosha the following afternoon, a half dozen fellow boaters greeted us on the dock, helping us to maneuver into the narrow slip and tie up. They spotted the bikes on the aft deck and asked if we had come for the international bike race, Food Folks and Spokes. (We didn't race - so the Colombians won.)

As we experienced in every other harbor, trawlers are like good will ambassadors of the boating world. Sailors and power boaters alike are attracted. "You can tell this is a loved boat," one sailor told us.

We decided to spend an extra day in Kenosha and take the county bike trail back north to Racine, to the lighthouse on the northern end of town. We left just after noon, stopped for a leisurely two-hour lunch at Ivanhoe in downtown Racine, biked the rest of the way to the lighthouse, and got back to our dock in Kenosha around 6:30.

Total biking miles for the week: 70
Total boating miles for the week: 190
Total ice creams eaten: who's counting?

Sunday morning, we left Kenosha under overcast skies and a sight western wind. My favorite part of this last leg started just north of Waukegan, as we encountered a large barge off the starboard. Then we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by fishing boats. Mark sat to my left, reading, as I manned the helm, maneuvering clear of anyone. There was something eerie about passing so many still boats. I imagined we were passing through a graveyard of ghost ships and had to be very quiet and not disturb any of them, and not attract attention. I thought about the ancient mariners, the Greek and Norse, and the mythology that evolves on the water, when you spend days upon days out at sea, listening with your eyes to the sky and the waves, tasting the wind with your skin.

Something different happens to us on the water. Something indescribable, though we keep trying to find words for it. Something about so much space and so much hidden depth that opens the mind and the imagination. A limitless expanse of nothingness - full of possibility, ready for exploration.

There are three of us in this marriage - Mark, me, and Mazurka. In the beginning, flinging around a can in Monroe Harbor, or stuck in the ice on the Chicago River, I resented the hell out of this fact. But now, nearly two years later, if Mazurka needed it, I would carry her over land like an Argonaut.

Maybe we come to love something most when we realize we may have to give it up.

Animal Models of Behavior

Mark and I have frequent discussions about sea sickness and its management.

On board, we keep dramamine, ginger pills, and the weird electric zapping bracelet that gives your wrist little zaps to distract you from the fact that you've got a headache, you're nauseous, and you're afraid you might lose your dinner in front of a crew of people you just met.

I have been prone to sea sickness a few times - it's not fun, especially if you live on the boat. There's something that makes me think I should be over it by now.

"You just have to learn to get over your fear," Mark tells me.

What's fear got to do with sea sickness?

On this trip, I'm learning, everything.

We happen to have the scientific animal model of Hunter onboard. Hunter and his brother Leo have learned that when Mark pulls the floor of the saloon up and gets down into the engine room to check the oil, he's probably going to start the engine. When Mark approaches the helm to rev things up, they run for cover. Hunter's ideal spot is in the engine room, wedged on top of the fuel tank. This is a horribly nasty place and in the summer, as temperatures can reach 100 degrees in there. I have to block their entry and leave them in the aft stateroom, where they can hide in any number of closets and cupboards or under a sleeping bag.

Hunter especially suffers terrible sea sickness. Drool starts dripping from his lip before we've even left the doc. While underway, he sometimes chooses very specific spots to lose his lunch - like the captain's pillow.

I was a little nervous on this trip that he would be miserable the entire time. Surprisingly, as days passed, Hunter became less fearful and would leave the closet to explore the saloon and the rest of the boat, even with drool hanging from his lip. He learned to manage the rocking and jump in the windowsill and watch the passing water.

On the final days of the trip, we did the unthinkable: we brought him up to the fly bridge with us. Howling at first, he quickly realized the floor was not going to disappear, and he climbed into his chair, flopped onto his back, and started purring.
Now that he's kicked that fear, he's making all kinds of leaps and venturing off whenever we look the other way. He either conquered his fear for good, or Redmond O'Hanlon, in his terrific book Trawler, is right about sea sickness: eventually, you just get used to it.

Fishing Pox

The harbor in Port Washington is packed with charter fishing boats. We were granted a slip between two fishing charter boats. They leave early in the morning - around 4 AM - which on our first morning, had me believing in my dream-state that Mark was going to make me get up and go out with them.

On our first morning, I was out on deck around 10 AM when I noticed a trend in the people wandering the harbor walk: groups of moms, grandmas, little kids. When a charter boat came in, all the groups would approach the boat; one group would remain, the other groups would wander off. I realized I was watching an ancient ritual: the women waiting for their fishermen to come in.

On our second morning, one of our neighbors, Fishing Pox returned early - about 8 AM. I reasoned the fishing must have been fantastic and they caught their limit early. We came out to see their catch. Surprisingly, the boat held the captain, his wife, and some of their friends. They had gone out for fun.

One of the friends was preparing to clean their catch on the dock. He opened the cooler to reveal three pan-sized fish (two king salmon and one rainbow trout), and one large mother of a king, maybe three feet long, its back glistening pink, its tail spotted black, and one eye watching us.

"Who caught that one?" I asked.

"The captain," his friend said.

Gus, the captain, is the only charter fisherman in Port Washington who goes out fishing on his morning off. "When it stops being fun, I'll quit doing it," he told me.

We can love something so much we decide to take it as a career. If it's really a vocation, we'll do it on our day off, without pay. There's always the mother king waiting to be caught.

Couple Visits Small Town - Never Seen Again

Port Washington is just about the cutest lakeside town you have ever seen. "A combination of New England charm and Midwestern friendliness," as its tourism site proclaims, is no marketing scam. About 30 minutes north of Milwaukee, the City of Seven Hills has the friendliest people and the most beautiful lakefront - you won't even notice the huge generating station looming to the south. (But if you do, take heart: what was the world's most efficient coal-fired plant in 1935 has been rebuilt into a cleaner, more efficient gas-fired power plant.)

We arrived Wednesday around noon in "The Port" as locals call it, and after docking Mazurka in a transient slip beside all kinds of charter fishing boats, took a stroll around downtown. The ladies at the Visitor Center piled us with menus and maps. We ate an actual Mexican meal at "Beanie's," bought lilies and rare blue orchids at "Brown's," Polish sausage and Wisconsin cheese at "Bernie's," and pants and shirts for Mark at "Anchor Men's Store," where the attentive, friendly, not-too-pushy salesman is tailoring Mark's pants cuffs as we speak.

As we wandered back to the boat, I got an eerie feeling. "This is far too perfect," I told Mark. "This is like some episode of the Twilight Zone - young couple visits small Midwestern town, never to be seen again."

But a good place to look for us would be the miles and miles of paved bike paths linking these small towns and the lakefront.

Detour to the City of Clocks

Tuesday morning, as we prepared to leave Racine for Port Washington, there were beautiful blue skies and a marine forecast of winds out of the Northeast, 10-15 knots, waves 2-4 feet.

"It's going to be rocky," Mark said.

Not that I didn't believe him, but I had this idea that we'd be granted special clearance - like God would split the waves just to make a calm path for our 5 1/2 hour journey. I fully expected to be in the City of Seven Hills by dinner.

Mark was right. Those 2-4 foot waves were closer to 4 or 5, and luckily we were heading into the waves, rather than rolling along sideways, so that our nose went up and down rather than side to side, which cuts down on sea sickness, though I concentrated on keeping my muscles loose, my hands and jaw unclenched - tension only makes sea sickness worse.

I sat at the helm, managing the roller coaster ride, while Mark checked the engine room. Grey clouds rolled in from the west, so that half the lake was blue beneath blue skies, the other half grey. Milwaukee loomed in the distance. We kept riding the waves, spray shooting over the bow of the boat, soaking us up on the fly bridge. Milwaukee closed in. Mark and I counted the minutes to Port Washington: we still had three hours to go.

"It's going to clear up after Milwaukee," I announced, for no other reason than there are no other harbors between Milwaukee and Port Washington, and surely God was about to grant us a reprieve. But then reality (the "real" God as opposed to my "fantasy" God) appeared before me: the field of white caps had tripled: this was not going to get any easier.

"Can we go into Milwaukee?" I asked Mark.

I didn't have to ask twice. We very carefully switched places so that he took the helm, and I took on the new job of making sure nothing fell overboard as we tilted back and forth at 20 degree angles. As we headed toward shore, rocking side to side, I fleetingly thought of the chaos happening inside the cabin, and our poor cats - but at this point, it was every man for himself.

Once docked at McKinley Marina, we went down into the cabin - the place had been ransacked by reckless thieves. The stereo and lamp lay on their sides, the kitchen counter on the floor, the contents of the fridge across the room. There were books and papers and drawers all over the forward cabin. I hadn't tightened the windows in the forward cabin, and the entire office - including computers - were wet. Hunter and Leo were huddled, terrified, near our pillows in the aft cabin, cat puke everywhere.

We were upset.

I was mad at myself for not battening down the hatches, mad that electronics were wet, cats were sick, and we were in Milwaukee. Milwaukee's a fine city - but it's just that: a city. McKinley Marina and its encompassing park look far too much like our home in Belmont Harbor and Lincoln Park. The sound of traffic and sirens in the distance was daily life, and this was vacation. I wanted small, quaint, provencial towns. But at least we were safe, and nothing was broken, and even though it was a pain to put everything back in its rightful place, in a couple hours we were done.

While replacing the contents of my bathroom cabinet that had fallen into the sink, I found my favorite perfume - Calvin Klein's "Euphoria," (the first gift Mark gave me) - and put some on. Right then, I started to feel a little more like myself.

We spent a low-key evening in the City of Clocks. I caught up on emails and phone calls, and Mark fixed stuff: the cup holder on the fly bridge and a windchime; he even got out his sewing machine and stitched up pants that had torn. I kept turning on the weather report, hoping it would suddenly change, but it remained constant: forecast for Wednesday was NE winds 10-15 knots, waves 2-4 feet. Exactly what we'd just come through.

"The boat can handle it," Mark said, "but can we?"

Before going to bed, I made myself stand out on the deck and take in the city. I was powerless over the weather. If we had to spend another day in Milwaukee, we could visit the art museum and the farmer's market and bike around. Maybe it wasn't what I was expecting, but it would be okay.

The next morning, Mark was up early, returning from Home Depot with a new bolt for the alternator and some coffee for me before it was even 7 o'clock. "It looks calm out there," he said, "Let's make a run for it."

We battened down the hatches for real this time, preparing for the worst. And though the weather report was exactly the same, the lake was completely different - she was calm, soothing, without a white cap in sight.

I learned something important today: weather reports and radars are not to be relied upon. Better to look at the reality right in front of you. And listen to the captain when he says, "Let's make a run for it!"

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.

"Thanks for putting up with me...

…I know it’s not your typical way of living in the city.”

Mark tells me this Sunday night as we’re walking to dinner, after a weekend full of winter preparations. Saturday was spent building the shrinkwrap structure (similar to a barn raising minus the teams of Amish to help), wrapping the boat in plastic, and waving a blowtorch to shrink the plastic. This year, we waited to buy the shrinkwrap until five inches of snow had fallen – which meant that all the rolls of 26x100 were gone, and we had to settle for 20x100. Seeing as Mazurka has a beam of 13 (the width across), 20 was cutting it close. (A little too close – we got creative with some tape in the bow.)

Note to wanna-be live aboards: shrinkwrap your boat before it snows, before it’s 20 degrees, before the sleet and freezing rain and plummeting temperatures make the 8-hour job almost unbearable.

By Sunday, there was more plastic to shrink, and then chores like filling the water tanks. Mazurka holds 150 gallons of fresh water, and we need to refill every 10 days or so. In the summer at Belmont Harbor, this is easy; you take the hose hung beside your boat, connected to the spigot beside your boat, you turn the water on. In the winter, docked on the wrong side of the marina, this job is a bit more complicated; the spigot is all the way on the other side of the marina, beside the condo building. There are no fewer than seven hoses that link together and snake along the docks, through the river, and up to our dock, and if just one of these hoses is not emptied properly, the remaining water will freeze, making it impossible to fill the tanks – which is exactly what happened. So Mark turned the water on and waited for the hoses to thaw. After our tanks filled, we went through the laborious process of emptying the hoses by draping them all over the marina.

Mark also installed the de-icer, the bubbling fan extended beneath Mazurka, which keeps the water circulating around the boat (and saved us last year when the river froze). There were some other odd jobs in there, too – to be honest, I don’t know what all he did, because by mid-afternoon I was back to my old ways and hiding inside at the computer with coffee and hot soup and two large, furry, personal portable heaters.

Everything is harder in the winter. The basics of filling water tanks and emptying sewage tanks (especially when the pump out hose bursts on a cold Wednesday night) are hard enough without battling the elements of snow and ice. This is about the time when I start asking, “Why are we doing this again?”

I have come up with three reasons:

1) I like adversity and battling the elements, the worse the better;
2) There’s something very comforting about settling down into a warm, protected cabin on the water, while the wind and snow and ice blow outside;
3) Living on a boat is cool, no matter what time of year.

Still, we’re both ready for a vacation – maybe some place tropical, maybe with backpacks and bicycles, maybe this Friday….

A Good Reason to Wrap Early

Who knew it would snow on December 5th?

All Wrapped Up for the Holidays

The River Rats (and other Rodents) love this time of year for decorating.


Find Mazurka in her holiday gift wrapping.

Ol' Man Winter Flexes

Last week I called my mom and told her we were getting ready for winter.

"Oh that's a pain," she said, "changing out all the summer clothes for winter ones."

That's not even the half of it.

If you are considering living onboard a boat in winter in CHICAGO, of all places, here is what you will need to prepare:

1. Plastic for the inside windows
2. An electric heater
3. A diesel furnace
4. 3-4 space heaters to put around the boat
5. Colored lights (if you're feeling festive)
6. Super strong duct tape to seal up every vent (and there are many)
7. Strips of grey sponge with adhesive backs to seal up the cracks around doors and anything else
8. Shrinkwrap. This is a whole 'nother chapter and future blogs will include a complete lesson in how to build a structure and then wrap your boat in plastic and shrink the plastic tight as a drum with the equivolant of a flame thrower.

We learned a lot last year, especially when the Chicago River froze and Mazurka was locked in the ice like Shackleton's Endurance. We learned so much that PassageMaker Magazine (THE trawler and ocean motorboat magazine) is going to feature an article about our adventures in its January/February issue.

Here's hoping we avoid a repeat performance this year.

You Wanna Put it Where?

Ever since the laundry fiasco, the captain has been obsessed about getting a washer and dryer for the boat. He’ll wake up at 4 AM and start researching them online. When we come home at night, the first thing he does is get the tape measure and start measuring areas in the forward cabin, near the bathroom. He’s ready to pull out the counter, cut into the closet, destroy the drawers beneath the bunk. Last weekend when we visited Jill and Scott, they spent all afternoon discussing where it could go. Mind you, they weren’t on the boat – this was all hypothetical. Call it a visualization exercise.

Tonight I’m sitting in my bathroom when I hear Mark just outside with the tape measure. “I think I found a spot,” he says. “In the engine room, where the litter box is. We’d have to find another place for the litter.”

“Are you really going to do this,” I call out to him.

“What – don’t you want it?”

I think for a second. A washer/dryer combo is expensive, bulky, troublesome to install, and quite frankly, I don’t think it’s going to really wash and dry our clothes. There are a million Laundromats in this city. For a drive across the State of Illinois or Michigan, we can do our laundry for free.

“No,” I decide. “It’s not worth the hassle.”

“I just like thinking about where it would go,” Mark says.

I don’t entirely believe him. He has an intensity of thought and a singleness of purpose that is admirable, but could also result in a huge washer/dryer sitting in the middle of the salon, too big to fit anywhere on the boat, reducing our 12 feet of living space to ten. Oh, when you live on a project....

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.

A Day at the Races

For the past four years, Mazurka has served as safety boat for the Flatwater Classic, the annual canoe and kayak race down the Chicago River. Sponsored by Friends of the River, the race starts on the north side at Addison, winds its way south through downtown, and crosses the finish line in Chinatown.

This year, we had not one, but three safety boats. Mark captained the Mazurka; Carl captained his zodiac raft; and I captained our zodiac, fondly named “Li’l Choppin.”

I was excited about being captain. The day before, I pumped water from the little zodiac, which had been sitting out through too many thunderstorms and had collected a good foot of rain. I scrubbed her down, painted on her name and little musical notes. I don’t know what came over me; I’d never yearned to be captain, yet here I was, stroking the little raft the way I watched Mark pat Mazurka.

It’s a love thing, between a captain and a boat.

Race day started early. After receiving our orders, we cruised out with our crew – Sharyl, Scott, Myke, and Carl – before 8:30. We locked through at Navy Pier and took a deep breath – it had been all summer since we’d been on the River. We missed its quiet, calm sense of purpose.

Mark brought Mazurka in front of the Merchandise Mart, and we started setting up the zodiacs with motors and gear. Sharyl was my first mate – a physician on call for the weekend – but with her pager and cell phone, she could answer pages from the water (which she did). We headed north, not quite sure where we were supposed to be – or, to be quite honest, how to drive the boat.



Now wait – I’ve driven the zodiac once. And as a kid my dad used to let me pull the cord on the outboard motor on his 14 ft fishing boat. I mean, I was pretty sure I was going to figure it out. Still, as we were floating away, I called to Mark, “Which one is the throttle?”

After a quick course (outboard motors are forgiving) we secured our location where the river forks, just north of downtown. Our job as safety boat was to keep racers against the west wall, out of the way of huge tour boats and any other crafts coming down the river.



Paddlers descended the river for the next four hours, in everything from long canoes with crews of 20, to a single kayaker bent on winning. (One intense dude ignored our directions to stay to the west, later cursed Mark and Myke and Mazurka for being in his way, and later still tipped his kayak and had to get help from Carl and Scott. I think he lost.) Families came in kayaks and canoes (one mom was towing her daughter’s kayak), construction workers and pirates, and a lone racer standing atop his board, paddling with a long oar.

We refueled once, and when I shut off the motor, we experienced what the racers heard the entire way – the stillness of the River in a huge urban landscape.

And there is something very cool about motoring down the Chicago River towards the Sears Tower and seeing your house floating at the base of so much steel and glass.


At the end, we tied up in Ping Tom Park in Chinatown and celebrated with the racers and volunteers, grateful for this awesome city.

After a day in Li’l Choppin, the captain bite is strong…I think it’s time I learn to parallel park Mazurka.

Bow thrusters, I fear you not.

Hot Water, Cold Water, No Water, Way Too Much Water

Our six-gallon water heater is leaking. The captain tried fixing it, but it’s on its way out. To keep it from leaking too much, we are turning off the water pressure unless we need to shower or wash dishes.

This leaking water heater happened about the same time diesel started appearing in the engine oil, at the rate of about two gallons a trip.

Nothing on a boat is stable for very long. After nearly a year on board (yes, our newlywed year is almost up), I’ve learned not to get excited and not to get upset when I wake up and there’s no water and the floor of the salon is gone and my husband is in the engine room in his underwear with a manual and a bunch of tools. This is life on a boat.


The small things make me grateful. Now that the six-gallon heater is a goner, we can buy a new one – a bigger one – yes indeed, folks, our new water heater holds 10.5 gallons!

And a boat – as Noah knew – may be just the place to be when the world is coming to an end. Last week, as the rest of Chicago was pummeled by wind and rain and funnel clouds, Mazurka floated just fine, protected in this northern pocket of Belmont Harbor, with all her necessities self-contained, including a generator in case we lost power. (While her captain and first mate, however, rode a motorcycle through the second wave of the storm.)

So many of our long-limbed neighbors were not so lucky. The carnage is heartbreaking.

Male-Pattern Baldness

My friend Mark Mershon (also bald) named this photo. I was going to go with something flat and explanatory like, “While Sophie eats, Mark changes the oil with a hand pump.”

Socked In At Waukegan Harbor

This past weekend, the Mazurka party flag was up. Our complement: Mark, me, Mark's brother Scott, his wife Jill (who has been my best friend since junior high) and their three month-old baby Sophie.

The plan was to head north to fish for salmon. Instead, we encountered torrential rain and 20-30 knot winds and spent three days socked in at Waukegan Harbor, playing Risk and Blokus and eating sugary snacks. It was a great trip.

And if you’re going to be socked in anywhere, Waukegan is an interesting town. The harbor has laundry, showers, wifi, free coffee, and a friendly community of boaters.

Beyond the harbor, you have downtown Waukegan, home to Ray Bradbury, Jack Benny, the biker bar Hussey’s serving an incredible weekend breakfast, some interesting fountains, and a whole lot of riff-raff (present company excluded, of course).

At Night, Mazurka Becomes a Death Trap

As a kid, I read that spiders are a Native American symbol of creativity. I decided that I loved spiders and wanted them near me. Big ones, little ones, daddy-long-legs with freaky-long legs, and tiny ones crawling across my ceiling in the middle of the night. I never feared they might drop on my face while I slept – I revered them all.

Good thing, too, ‘cause now, I live with hundreds.

At night, Mazurka becomes a death trap. Spiders are everywhere, inside and outside the boat. In the mornings I inevitably stumble through an invisible sticky net on the way to make coffee. Their wide intricate webs from anchor to dock to fly bridge wave like delicate Japanese ladies’ fans, beckoning come hither with killer lace. At dusk, if you lie on the aft cabin and look up at the sky, all around the mast you will see spiders climbing and falling, tatting and spinning, tiny acrobats more intent on creating art than feasting on flies. In the mornings, their webs are strung with insects wrapped like lanterns, dangling secure in the breeze – a good breakfast after a long night of work.

The Summer Galley

Cooking and kitchen storage is easiest in winter when the cold weather provides extra refrigeration outside. On winter Sunday afternoons, Mark and I cook meals for the week and keep them stored outside under the shrink wrap. It’s a lot harder in summer when, without storage, you’re faced with only preparing what you will eat. And you are limited to eating just what you prepare. So after a long day of work when it’s 90 degrees and the restaurant budget is tapped, here’s how we’ve solved our challenge of the summer galley.

1) Shop Often. There’s really no way to get around this one. I think of it as the European way. Shopping frequently helps you eliminate waste and eat fresher food. It does take more time throughout the week – three trips to the grocery store as opposed to one or two – but it takes less time per trip; you can usually zip in and out with a few things, and we tend to spend less overall when we spend three times a week rather than once. It also helps that you only have to plan what you’re going to eat 2-3 days in advance, rather than seven. When we’re on a seven-day shopping schedule, we inevitably run out of one crucial ingredient and have to make an extra trip to the store, anyway.

2) Keep the Refrigerator Clean. You’d think with a small refrigerator (about the size of the one in your college dorm), it’d be easier to rotate stock and find what you need. Not so. With such a small space, stuff easily gets crammed to the back, where it sits for months. Or else condiments end up taking half the fridge. A good once-a-week cleaning is necessary to defrost the tiny freezer and make sure we’re getting the most out of such small storage.

3) Follow the Collegiate Theme. Along with the dorm-sized refrigerator, every boat’s galley can benefit from the other staple of the collegiate kitchen: the hot pot. Use it to boil water for tea and coffee (and get rid of the coffee maker), and any number of foods.

4) Grill It or Go Raw. Mazurka has a great stove – with three burners, all functional, and an oven. But when the cabin is 82 degrees, a pot on the stove can bring it over 90. Therefore, in summer, we use the grill off the fantail almost exclusively – or we eat raw.

Here are some of our favorite summer meals:

Asian Spring Rolls
These are a great hot weather meal, and fun to assemble when you have guests, too. With a hot pot to boil water, you can avoid turning on the stove entirely. The trickiest part is finding the spring roll wrappers (flat disks made of rice) and the rice sticks (which look like thin pasta). Asian stores stock them, or you may have to specially order them on line or at your grocery.

Arrange plates and dishes with: shredded lettuce, grated carrots, scallions, crushed peanuts, thinly-sliced red pepper, fresh basil and cilantro. Shrimp is the first choice on Mazurka, but any meat (or tofu or no meat) will do. Prepare the rice sticks by placing the noodles in a pot and pour boiling water over them; let them sit for about ten minutes before draining. Prepare the rice paper by putting boiling water in a wide pan and dipping the disk into the water until it becomes soft and malleable. Place the paper on a plate, fill it with a little bit of everything, roll it up and eat it. Peanut dipping sauce (I make some with peanut butter, water, soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, fresh cilantro, and chili paste) is a great accompaniment.

Mark experiments with fillings – he stuffs them with olives and artichoke hearts for Mediterranean spring rolls, and a mango/cucumber/red pepper/coconut dish for dessert.

Mediterranean Tapas
Humus, Tabouleh, Baba Ganouj, fresh tomatoes, artichoke hearts, cucumber, feta, black olives, spinach, red onions, lettuce, sprouts, some grilled chicken, and some pita bread. Spread them out on a table, assemble at will. ‘Nuff said.

Mango Black Bean Salad
This is a variation of a recipe my friend Anne makes. Take 1 mango, 1 can of black beans, chopped red onion, chopped fresh cilantro, fresh grated ginger, a little lime, a little chopped red pepper. If you like it hot, add some chopped green chili. Mix together.

Caprese Salad
You can’t go wrong with fresh tomatoes and mozzarella, basil, olive oil, salt and pepper. (Especially when you grow the tomatoes and basil on the dock!)

Mazurka Salad
This salad didn’t originate on Mazurka – but we eat it so often that it’s become our house salad year-round. Romaine lettuce (or spring mix), garbanzo beans, walnuts (or pecans), dried cherries (or sliced green apple or pear), bleu or gorgonzola cheese (or not – depending on how healthy you’re feeling), balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

A Few Things I've Learned About Entertaining

In his bachelor days, Mark threw a lot of parties on Mazurka. He says that having a boat in Chicago means taking people out to show them a rare view of Chicago.

In his bachelor days, he also entertained like a bachelor – meaning there wasn’t a whole lot of clean-up before the party, a whole lot of preparation at all….

Things are different when you’re married.

All summer, we’ve had guest out on Mazurka, but in the past few weeks, we’ve had a half dozen parties. All different mixes of people; all different outcomes. As the wife, first mate, and hostess, I tend to stress about preparing for these events.

Here are a few things I’ve learned about stress-free entertaining on the water:

1) 12-14 guests are optimal. Mazurka can host up to 30, but it’s damn uncomfortable trying to squeeze through the walkways, and you end up parking yourself in one spot all evening just ‘cause it’s easier than trying to maneuver through crowds. A dozen people means everybody can move about freely, mix and mingle, and even escape to a quiet area if they need some alone time on the water.

2) Pump out before and after each party.

3) Don’t apologize for the diesel smell – or any other strange smells; it’s a boat; there’s nothing you can do.

4) Give guests the tour and explain the plumbing first. Then tell everybody where the life jackets are. In rough water, allay people’s fears by telling them what the captain has told you: there is no way this boat is going to tip over.

5) Tell guests a dish to bring. This is a tricky one – especially because I’ve always thought if people are coming to my house for dinner, they should not be obligated to bring anything to eat. But going out on the water is different – and preparing the boat, plus dinner in a small galley, will take all day and wear you out before anybody arrives. It’s better to have too much rather than not enough, but having too much on a boat with little storage means sending food home with people, or taking it to coworkers the next day. Also, be explicit in telling people what to bring; at one party we had three desserts (and way too much left over for me and the captain), at another, there was no dessert at all. Don’t assume: guests will just bring wine, and then you’re left with a dozen bottles of wine and no side dishes. Which brings us to Lesson 6…

6) Keep the alcohol to a minimum. I know boating and drinking go together. On our small dock alone, there’s the Absolute and Cranberry, Rolling Rock II (in green font just like the label), Bumpy Night (flanked by two martini glasses), and Aquaholics. Somewhere in Chicago, the Betty Ford is cruising. Every weekend, we watch boats return to the harbor with half-naked guests staggering and reeking of beer. The captain and first mate should do not drink at all (yes, you can get a DUI on the water); but guests should also know they can go overboard on the tiniest wave – or slip, fall, and hit their head on the deck. It’s hard enough trying to keep your balance and your wits about you on a boat when you’re sober.

7) Let people help clean up. I’ve been amazed at the deft organization skills of our guests on board. Before I even know it, the fly bridge is clean and people are hauling out garbage bags. Use paper plates and let everybody take a garbage bag to the dumpster on the way to their cars. The raccoons will be glad to see them.


(Thanks to all our guests this summer – and especially to Jeff and Gail and their crew for the most fun Sunday afternoon!)

Well, That Answers That Question

We have some interesting wildlife out here in Belmont Harbor. Hordes of raccoon families, for one thing, led by parents the size of small grizzlies. The other night Mark and I came home and parked the motorcycle beside the dumpster where a family of seven was feasting on pretzels. The little ones climbed the fence as we neared, but their mom stayed put, munching away, keeping an eye on us. Pretty soon her babies returned. “Welcome to Flood Bros. Family Dining,” Mark observed.

Tonight I was out watering our garden (we have a garden on the dock – six tomato plants, basil, sage, dill, parsley, cilantro, and chives), when something resembling a small shark swam underneath me, between the dock and the boat. I looked down, thinking it was a large carp. But it was hairy...and swimming above water. And there were two.

A few nights ago one of our Venetian Night guests told us she saw something strange swimming in the water. “Not a raccoon,” she said, “not a rat, not a beaver – but like a beaver – they have them at the Shedd Aquarium.” “An otter?” I asked. “Yeah! An otter!” she said. We all told her there was no way there were any otters living in Belmont Harbor. But I tell you what – I saw them. Two of them. They were swimming side by side, and I followed them all the way to the end of the harbor, where they swam around a bit. The security guard came by. “What are those things?” I asked her. “Ducks,” she said, smoking a cigarette, not looking where I was pointing. “No,” I told her, “THOSE things.” “Oh my God…” And we stood together for a long time, watching the otters, trying to convince ourselves maybe they were beavers – but no, they were otters. Furry, long, with narrow heads and small teeth. (Note to Reader: they were not otters. They were muskrats. Mating muskrats. Cue "Muskrat Love.")



We walked with them as they swam back along the boats. I stopped in front of Mazurka and picked up the hose to finish watering the plants. Hunter and Leo had come out by that time and were roaming around. “Don’t you worry about those cats?” The security guard asked me. “That they might fall in?” “No,” I told her. “They’ve lived on the boat for a year – they’re pretty agile.”

Cats falling in the lake was an early concern. I knew from childhood (and mean boys throwing cats in the Mississippi River) that cats are good swimmers. We had a rough plan that if one of the cats fell in, we’d throw them a line or a hook or get the net or steer them toward the swim deck. Then rinse them off real good.

I finished watering the plants and took my bags inside and came back out in pursuit of Leo, who was making his way down the dock. The last I saw of Hunter – who is unfortunately the clumsy one – was him standing on the Harbor Dog, ready to jump on the Mazurka. The next thing I hear is him miss the boat – I turn just in time to see him miss one of the ropes and land in the water. He could swim all right, but he also cried like you’ve never heard a drowning cat cry in your life. I screamed for Mark – who was on the phone inside – and rapped at the door for him, running to get a hook. Hunter is swimming in circles and crying and gurgling water. I had half a mind to jump in for him, right where the muskrats had been. I extended one of the gaffes into the water, and Hunter grabbed on, but as I lifted him out he fell back into the water. I’m screaming to Mark, who is oblivious. I throw Hunter a rope (who knows what I expected him to do with the rope). He’s trying to climb up the flat walls, and slowly swimming toward a nearby swim deck. Just then, Mark emerges with the giant fishing net (it was hidden at the bottom of the lazarette), and fishes out the poor cat. He stumbles around a bit, then lets me pick him up, take him inside, and rinse him in the shower.

Oh, Huntie. Huntie-runtie. A little slow, he’ll probably forget this by the morning. For now, he’s got some bathing to do.

A Typical Beautiful Summer Sunday Afternoon

Today I had eight hours of work to do for a Friday deadline that’s about a dozen monkeys on my back. Instead, I blew it off because it was just too damn nice outside. Beautiful summer Sunday afternoons don’t happen all that often in Chicago – when we are blessed with blue skies and calm waters and a sweet breeze, we should take advantage of it.

Rather than taking out Mazurka, we decided to go for a ride in the little zodiac, which we named “Li’l Chopin.” We loaded up with towels and sunscreen and soda and headed for Montrose Harbor, which is about three miles north…maybe a little more. On the way out there, I asked Mark, “How much gas does that thing hold?” “Enough to get us there and back,” he assured me. “I just filled it up.”

We motored for nearly an hour before reaching Montrose Beach, where we put down the anchor just outside the buoys. The beach was filled with people, with boaters and jet skiers and kayakers practicing not far from us. The water was warm, and we swam around the zodiac for a long time before deciding to jump back in and head home. The problem is, you can’t really jump into a zodiac. Or climb. Or gracefully lumber up. A zodiac raft is damn near impossible to climb into if you’re in the water. Mark and I tried to climb up on opposite sides, to steady the boat, but as he's trying to pull a limb inside I'm laughing hysterically. He’s got one leg in the air as a boat comes by, “Need some help?” they call. Mark gazes over his leg nonchalantly, “No, we’re fine." We try climbing up the stern, bracing against the motor. Finally, we try the old fashioned way; I climb up on Mark, into the zodiac, and pull him up after me. We’re on our way.

I’m driving back to Belmont, with Mark in the front, when about a quarter of the way into the trip…put…put…put. We’re out of gas.

“Well, I kind of just filled it up,” Mark explained. “When we were in South Haven. Maybe it was halfway full.”

We’ve got a long way to row. Like almost three miles. Mark takes the oars, and I begin bailing the boat with a pop can (water has collected from waves over the bow). Lesson for next time: bring extra gas and a bucket.

This is going to take hours. We’re bickering about the best way to go back. I vote that we row to shore and guide the zodiac in the water from shore, via rope. Mark thinks it’s best to row. “I just hope the oars don’t break,” he says.

Just then – I’m not kidding – the piece that attaches the plastic oar to the raft cracks, making it impossible to row.

Luckily, we’ve got extra supplies in the emergency bag, including the plastic piece that cracked. We’re putting it together when a jet ski saddles up beside us. “Need some help?” asks the driver, his arms covered in tattoos.

Our new friend Dan takes our rope and tows us at back to Belmont, very slowly. Mark looks back to me, his brow furrowed, “The only thing I’m worried about…”

“Don’t say it!” I plead, “Don’t say it!”

He doesn’t say it – not till Dan drops us off in Belmont Harbor, and Mark is rowing us back to Mazurka. “The only thing I was worried about is that you’re not supposed to tow a zodiac – the ropes are only secured to the raft with glue. They could rip right off and the boat would sink.”

Maybe we'll try it again next weekend.

Whose Hobby is This, Anyway?

Mark just returned from a six-day conference in Orlando. Usually, I like to go with him on business – I work poolside while he sits in conference rooms all day, and I get to enjoy the rare luxury of a bathtub. But there are three very strong reasons I didn’t go with him: Florida – July – Disney.

Mark joked to his colleagues, “Yeah, she’s home, keeping the boat afloat.” Before he left, I fretted just a bit. For six day and five nights, I would be in charge of Mazurka. If something went wrong, I was the point person. This scared the hell out of me. Not like the captain was backpacking in Alaska and unreachable; and not like he didn’t leave me with a boat in working order – the water tanks were filled, the sewage was empty. In fact, everything on Mazurka is ship-shape – part of Mark’s plan to abstain from any work in the month of July and just enjoy the boat (if you own a boat, you are laughing hysterically right now). And except for the first few days of the month, when the varnishing project went a little long, he’s kept to this abstinence.

But I don’t know a whole lot about this thing I live on. When bells and whistles go off and stuff starts happening for no reason, my first reaction is to ignore it till Mark fixes it. My knowledge ends at differentiating the flat-head screwdriver from the Phillips, and sometimes I don’t even do that.

To be completely honest, I regard this boat as Mark’s hobby, not mine. He lived on it before I ever came into the picture. He loves working on it. There are few things that give him so much joy and peace of mind as pulling apart the entire boat and putting it all back together. This is not my idea of fun. We have divvied up the tasks among us – his stuff is outside, mine is inside, and I stay the away from the engine room. But on a beautiful Saturday morning as he’s pulling out the varnishing tools to recoat the teak on the deck one more time, I’m hiding.

Meanwhile, our fellow summer campers, our neighbors aboard the Harbor Dog, are re-canvassing their boat. It’s a big job, sewing canvas covers for the windows and side railings; they brings out the sewing machine on the aft deck and work close together, solving problems like how to make hundreds of holes for the grommets. (Answer: soldering gun.)

Mark and I both noticed this together-ness. This is what marriage is about, right? Working together on a joint project – whether it’s children, a boat, or life itself. So even if this was Mark’s boat long before I ever came into the picture, and even though boating is not my first choice in hobbies…I think the time has come that I have to give a little, learn about how this thing works, and start pulling my share of the weight.

It could be worse; it could be football.


(Captain in Training)

Any Real Fishermen Out There?

This morning, the 4th of July, five fishermen arrived at our door at 3:45 AM. We were underway by 4 AM in search of salmon.


Right before dawn, I started to feel queasy. Due to only two hours of sleep or semi-rough waters, seasickness took me over. I wasn’t the only one. Out came the wristbands and Dramamine. I stayed on deck just long enough to snap the sunrise, then disappeared inside.


After proclaiming to Mark, “I hate this and I’m never going fishing with you again,” I collapsed into bed and slept for three hours, without even taking any dramamine. When I awoke, we were heading back to Chicago, empty-handed, nauseous, disappointed, and tired. There’s serious talk of hiring a charter boat to take us where the salmon actually bite.

“At least I got the planer board working,” Mark said.

So I’m just going to throw this out there to all you “real” fishermen. Send me an email if you know what you’re doing when you fish the waters around Chicago…where are you catching these illusive salmon?

Welcome to Belmont Summer Camp

Our original plan for the weekend was to head north to Waukegan on Thursday, cruise on to Milwaukee on Friday, hang out at Summerfest for the weekend, then head back to Chicago by the 4th of July. We waited all day Thursday in Belmont Harbor for the wind to subside…and all day Friday…and by Saturday, decided we weren’t going anywhere; instead, we spent our vacation right here in Belmont Harbor.

Good thing there’s plenty to do: with our neighbors aboard the Harbor Dog, we went running, shot arrows at the archery range, played doubles tennis, went for bike rides, had craft time (otherwise known as varnishing and canvas-making), and essentially spent a week at summer camp.

When you’re an adult at summer camp, you get to stay up as late as you want, sleep as late as you want, and there’s no camp counselor to boss you around.


Half an hour late for tennis? Eh, who cares? Don’t feel like going swimming today? Take a nap instead.

Dear Mom, Camp was great this year. We made neat friends. Can’t wait to come back next year.

In Search of Calm Water

Some days more than others I am aware that we are at the will of a higher power. Think you're in charge of how things go? Try living on a boat.

Like yesterday, when a party I had planned for months – about twenty people coming on board on a Wednesday evening for dinner and fireworks – was precariously postponed by a violent thunderstorm. At 4:30, I am sitting atop the fly bridge, the only place I can steal a wifi signal, hunched over my laptop to protect it from the rain, emailing my guests to say that as the rain is coming sideways, we’re probably going to cancel…but I don’t know for sure. It could pass and by 7 pm there might be beautiful, smooth sailing. At 5:30, I make the call to cancel, and I get in touch with each guest to let them know. And by 6:30? You guessed it – clear skies and calm water.

So Mark and I decided to head out just the two of us. We cruised up to the playpen and dropped anchor in front of the Hancock Building. Our plan was to spend the night and in the morning, make our way up north, to Waukegan for a night, then on to Milwaukee.

It’s a cool thing to be able to make a decision to go on an extended trip, and half an hour later, you’re on your way. The feeling you may have forgotten something doesn’t go away, but you have the peace of mind knowing that you can’t possibly have forgotten anything: you’re taking your whole house with you.

The playpen was calm, protected by breaker walls, except for powerboats passing through at top speed, which sends ripples of high waves. So we put out the stabilizer – a hinged wing of stainless steel that is suspended down into the water from the boom; as the boat rocks, it floats up and down in the water, creating enough drag to keep us from rocking too much. It doesn’t completely take away the rocking, but it makes it a whole lot more manageable.

The passing storm stirred the water and dropped the temperature, so it was too cold to swim. Instead, we spent the evening on the aft deck, in a sleeping bag, watching the fireworks over Navy Pier, drinking vanilla tea.

After the fireworks, most of the boats left the playpen, except in a short while we noticed two powerboats, rafted together with a party, drifting closer and closer to us. They didn’t have their anchors out. When they were within 20 feet we started to get nervous and stood out on the deck. “Don’t worry,” they called to us, “We see you – we’re moving.” Except it took forever to get their engines going and someone in the drivers’ seats – we wondered if they were all plastered.

Their boats drift even closer; “Let’s get out of here,” Mark says, going to start the engine. By now, there are twodrivers in the other boats who at first steer straight for Mazurka before correcting the direction. I go up top to man the wheel while Mark begins to pull up the anchor. Except it won’t come up. The foot pedal on the deck, which starts the wheel to pull up the anchor, is a little touchy anyway, but after a good ten minutes it’s still not working. The other boats have driven safely away, but now we’re stuck with an anchor lodged in the mud at the bottom of Lake Michigan.

It’s after 11, and Mark gets out his set of tools and an extra foot pedal (yes, we have an extra foot pedal on board), and commences to figuring out the problem. I am tired and collect the cats into the bed – they’ve been fighting seasickness all evening – and the three of us settle down to sleep together. It’s nearly midnight when Mark returns to the cabin. “I figured out the problem!” he proclaims. “The anchor is powered by the same source as the bow thruster – and I didn’t have it on.”

This problem solved, we decide to stay in the playpen for the night, as the waters have cleared of boaters and are calm. We drift off to sleep.

But before the sun is up, I am awoken by strong rocking and my husband wide awake and cleaning up cat puke throughout the cabin. “The wind shifted,” he says, wiping his feet. “It’s coming out of the northeast. We’re going to have rocky waters.”

We also have new neighbors, blasting house music at that early morning hour. They look like people who have been partying all night, as opposed to early-risers up to see the sunrise.

The cats are hunched miserably low in the engine room, but come out when Mark starts the engine. It’s not yet six when we pull up the anchor and begin our cruise back to Belmont. The weather report cites 10-15 mph winds from the northeast, rising to 15-20 mph in the afternoon. There’s a small craft advisory warning. We’re not going anywhere today.

So we sit in Belmont Harbor. I call our Thursday night Waukegan guests and cancel the second party this week. With a cooler full of Italian sausages and kabobs, we’ll wait till tomorrow to head north.

Go Fly a Kite

It’s never a good sign on a first date to run out of gas – especially if your mode of transportation is a boat.

Long before I ever met him, Mark’s first grade teacher, Sister Susan, set him up on a blind date with a woman who lives in Milwaukee. Mark lived in Chicago at the time (on land), and decided it would be fun to take his boat, the Escape Hatch, up to Milwaukee for the blind date, and stay there for the weekend. But it’s a much longer ride than he anticipated, and by the time he got within a quarter mile of shore…he ran out of gas.

He had to call the Coast Guard to help him, which is no small thing. They board your boat, check out every nook and cranny, charge you for the gas and their time, and no doubt give you a lot of shit for being a dumb ass who ran out of gas. All the time this is happening, Mark can see his blind date sitting on the dock, waiting for him.

Needless to say, they didn’t hit it off. Not that they didn’t get along, there just wasn’t a spark.

As a parting gift, he sent her a kite. I scoffed when he told me that detail. “What?” he said. “We talked about kite flying.”

The Thirteenth Plague

We headed back to Chicago early on the morning of Father’s Day. Somewhere off the shore of Michigan we hit a pocket where the high and low pressure systems meet: this is where the black flies hide. Mazurka was overcome with thousands of flies of all natures – tiger and leopard print, big and small, fast and slow, all of them biting. There were everywhere, dying by the hundreds, feasting on each others’ carcasses and us. We rinsed the boat again and again to no avail. No insect repellant or thick clothing could hold them off; finally, we came inside, where the relief was that you only had to swat one or two at a time, rather than a hundred.

For the rest of the day, every slight tickle got a swat.

When we were within an hour from shore, and could see the downtown skyline, we heard over Channel 16, “Mayday! Mayday!”

Mark turned it up; we leaned in closer.

The Coast Guard out of Monroe Harbor responded, asking for the nature of the problem.

“I’m stuck,” the guy replied.

“What do you mean, you’re stuck?” the Coast Guard answered.

There was no response. The Coast Guard called for them repeatedly. No response. Finally, the boater called again, “Mayday! Mayday! I’m stuck!”

The Coast Guard answered again, asking for the location and nature of the problem.

“I’m off Fullerton Harbor,” the boater said (there is no Fullerton Harbor, but we imagine he was somewhere just north of downtown). “The engine just shut off. I tried to get it going, but it won’t start. I’m stuck.”

“Are you taking on any water?” the Coast Guard asked.

“Negative.”

The Coast Guard then asked the boater to switch to a different channel. We switched along with them. “First time in my life I ever heard somebody call mayday,” Dad said.

On Channel 22, the boater described how he couldn’t start the engine, and he was afraid to try – he feared taking in air. (??) At that point, the Coast Guard asked him for his cell phone number so they could call him privately.

But we knew the rest of the story; he ran out of gas.

“Who runs out of gas on the lake?” Dad asked.

I looked at the captain. “I’m sure no one on this boat.”

Day 3 of Fishing

Standing on the bow at dawn with my Dad, he proclaims on the third day of fishing: “From what I can tell, these are ideal conditions for fishing. 1) You’ve got a falling barometer. 2) The wind is from the Southeast. 3) The water looks good.”

It was a nice theory, particularly after two days of not catching anything.

Our first morning in South Haven, Mark and Dad did some reconnaissance, learning that nobody at in the Harbor knew much about fishing at all, and that the nearest place to buy a fishing license was the Walmart two miles away. Thus the benefits of taking your house with you turtle-style wherever you go showed through once again – we were able to buy our licenses online and print them out without ever leaving the boat. We headed out at noon that day – far too late for any real fish to bite, but enough to learn the lay of the land. We found a steady increase in depth and no salmon; in the late afternoon we headed closer to shore for some perch, but found nothing. Another boat pulled alongside us. “We saw you were parked here for an hour and hoped you were getting something,” they called. We shook our heads and didn’t say much.

On Day 2, Mark and Dad got up early enough to follow out the charter captains, hoping to get some insight into the key fishing spots. Again, we returned home empty-handed.

That evening, Mark and I took a walk around downtown South Haven in search of ice cream and information. He sweet-talked a nice lady charter captain who told him that we were doing all the right things, even using the right green “mountain dew” lures, except that the dipsy-divers should not be off-set; as it was, they weren’t going deep enough to catch the salmon. She also said that they were catching fish – not a lot, but some.

That night, there was serious discussion of the fish to be caught.











Day 3. We had done all the research, and now we had this last bit of information that would ensure the salmon would be ours for the reeling. (There is a lot of reeling to be done when you’re casting out more than five hundred feet of line – as evidenced by the black and blue marks in my thigh from bracing the pole.)

It did seem like a fortuitous morning. And the hours wore on…the gear was spread about… we were calling out the depth changes every five feet…and no fish.

Not to say that the day was without excitement. About 11 AM I was inside on the phone to my brother Jim, trying to get his advice for these fish, when I hear some ruckus on deck and somebody call, “It’s the DNR!” I came out to find a green boat with CONSERVATION on the side saddling up to Mazurka. I raced back inside for our licenses and passed them around, all of us waving them. The two guys from the Department of Natural Resources nod at us – oh yeah, we see you got your internet licenses, they say. I’m still on the phone with Jim, narrating this shake-down. “Ask them where the fish are!” he tells me. “Where are the fish??” I yell out. But the two DNR guys just look at me and laugh. “They’re here,” they say. “Somewhere.”

Somewhere. Somewhere is actually a place in time, not in the Lake. ‘Cause when we got back to Chicago and I talked to Mark’s brother Scott, another fisherman, he said the one thing we have no control over: the king salmon don’t start coming in till August.

The Captain and His First Mate

Let’s Go A-Courtin’

We happened to be in South Haven for “Harbor Days,” when the town sets up a stage alongside the Black River for concerts at the mouth of Lake Michigan, and the place is full of parties. At night, people take their zodiacs out and go visiting, sort of like a modern Victorian gentility. Except in this century, you gotta wear a life jacket.

Everything but the Campfire

Last Wednesday night our crew arrived at the South Haven Harbor after traveling all day across Lake Michigan.


The harbor was closing up for the night, just in time to assign us our slip alongside the sailboats rather than the powerboats. “Those guys like us,” Mark said, “’cause we’re not that far from a sailboat. And they’re all thinking about trawlers, anyway.”

I let Hunter and Leo roam around on the deck, taking their tour of boats. One by one, they would board each boat, wander around the deck, then move on to the next. Leo found a sailboat that was open (the owners were at dinner) and disappeared inside for nearly an hour. I could see him through the top hatch, sniffing everything. There’s only a slight problem that I can’t board the boats my cats feel more than welcome to explore – I stand on the dock, calling to them, shaking their treat can, utterly ignored.

The next night, after a fruitless search for salmon and perch – “Is anybody catching anything out there?” our fellow fishermen called helplessly on the radio – we docked and had dinner after sunset. Our neighbors brought around their chairs and we chatted it up.

And just as Mark observed, the sailors liked us trawler-owners. We are not hard-and-heavy power boaters; we only go 7 miles an hour at the most.

Late that night, the sailors confessed they had always wanted a trawler. Mark gave them the tour, and along the way, he’s telling them tales of what went wrong with each piece. “And here’s the engine room, the battery chargers…you know, I made an expensive mistake with those battery chargers. I thought they weren’t charging my batteries – I thought the batteries were dead – I went through three new batteries before I realized I had to turn the damn thing on….” (The story of owning a boat, truly, is narrated by all the things that have gone wrong with it.) They’re all laughing, and then they tell their own stories with battery chargers, leaving them off so the refrigerator is not powered, the sump pump not powered, the batteries drained so low they have to rush out and buy distilled water.

My mom, sitting beside me in her pajamas, waiting for them to leave as it was nearly midnight, turned to me and said, “I have no idea what they’re talking about, do you?”

“Yes,” I told her, “Because I lived through it.”

But I can only tell you certain things about it. I can’t tell you the power of the generator, or which wire goes where, or even where the battery charger is and which of the countless Where’s-Waldo items down there are the batteries. I’m just not that interested. But I can tell you what it was like to watch Mark try to coordinate getting three 80 lb batteries from Monroe Street into the tender boat and onto Mazurka in the pinpointing heat of late July.

It grates me, just a bit, that I fit into the gender stereotype of the wife who doesn’t know nothing about those li’l electronic thingys. My training in that area ended in junior high when I built a pencil holder and earned an A in shop class. I’m sure I could learn, if I got a manual and muddled my way through it. Which is exactly what Mark and all these other boaters do – you keep making mistakes till one of the mistakes is right, and then you learn how to do it. Then you can tell your friends about the time you turned the battery charger off and your wife was upset because she had no refrigeration on board.

“Oh, you mean your husband’s boat,” is what the Westrec guy said to me when I called about the money they were trying to squeeze out of us. I bristled but let it go, though I wanted to say something like, “No, MY boat – I live here, too.” And I suppose in some matrimonial sense it is my boat, but really, I would never live here were it not for Mark. I would never cruise across Lake Michigan on this terrific vacation, I’d never live downtown lakefront Chicago, I’d never do any of this.

It’s kind of weird to let somebody else be responsible for your good time. Maybe that’s a good question to consider about the person you want to marry. If you relinquished control and let them be responsible for your good time, would they make sure you had fun? And could you do the same?

Misery is a Choice

The night before we left on our epic Father’s Day fishing excursion, our crew (Mark, myself, my parents John and Pam) dropped anchor in front of the John Hancock Building, thinking it would be fun to sleep downtown and watch sunrise as we sailed for South Haven in the morning. We cleaned up the kitchen, turned out the lights, hunkered down, and then…

Slosh slosh slosh – a moment of calm – slosh slosh slosh – clang clang clang - clinking of glasses in the cupboards as they were thrown side to side – moment of calm – slosh slosh slosh –

I would fall asleep for the still moment, only to be jerked awake by the next hit. It wasn't the calm, soothing rocking of the rolling seas; it was a downright assault.

“I don’t think I can sleep like this,” I told Mark.

“Me neither.”

Slosh slosh slosh.

“Are my parents asleep?”

“I think so.”

Clang clang clang.

“We’re getting echo waves off shore,” Mark said.

Slosh slosh slosh.

“Do you want to go back to Belmont Harbor?” he asked.

“No. It’s too much trouble. If my parents are sleeping, I can get through it, too.”

“I’ll go start the engine. You stay here.”

I lay in bed – slosh slosh slosh – clang clang clang – calm – slosh slosh slosh – as Mark started up the engine. I heard Dad go up top and the two of them pulling up the anchor. I was so tired I didn’t even both to get up and help. We rocked our way back to Belmont Harbor, and the last thing I remember was the stillness of being tied to the dock, and then sleep.

The next morning, the sun was high over the horizon by the time we got up. “I’d never been so glad as when I heard Mark start that engine,” my Mom told us while the coffee brewed. “I thought for sure I was going to upchuck.” Mark and Dad relayed the madness that went on while the two of us stayed in bed; the coolers being thrown from side to side, and both of them crawling across the deck so as not to lose their balance.

Nobody was earning any badges for enduring unnecessary hardship on this excursion. By 10 o’clock, we were cruising across calm waters to South Haven.

The Sweet Sound of Success

Today, for the first time in more than nine months, Mark started up the generator…and it ran. And ran and ran and ran. My laptop is running on generator power even as I type this.

The culprit, at the end of this long epic battle to find the needle in the haystack? The fuel filter. In the filter, which cleans the diesel before it reaches the generator, a blockage had formed in the filter housing that was creating a vapor lock and preventing fuel from getting to the generator.

In other words, the fuel filter needed to be taken off, disassembled and put back together.

Cost of a Racor fuel filter: $80
Cost of figuring out this problem for nine months: $1300
Cost of a new generator: $15,000

Cost of telling previous repair guy that we didn’t actually have to shell out for a new generator? Yeah…exactly.

White Squall

One of the few movies Mark has on board (we don’t have a TV – we watch movies on our laptops) is White Squall, about a sailing ship with a crew of teenage boys captained by Jeff Bridges. They encounter a huge storm at sea and some of the crew die, including the captain’s wife. This movie is very vivid in my mind.

Lately – especially as we prepare to take my parents on a five-day fishing trip – I’ve been asking Mark questions like, “If we start to sink, how soon until we know? Would we have enough time to blow up the zodiac?”

My main concern is that, if an emergency happens, I will know what to do and what to tell everyone else on board – so I can remain calm, and the captain remains calm, and nobody freaks out as we’re putting on life vests and jumping into the zodiac and firing off flares. My other concern is that we save our feline crewmates, and putting them in the zodiac seems the best option.

Off the coast of Chicago, the concern is not so bad, as the playpen area in front of the John Hancock, for instance, is only about 12 feet deep. If we started to sink, we would just bring everybody up to the fly bridge and wait for the Coast Guard, who would probably arrive before the water even reached our feet.

The established emergency plans all include #1 – put on life jackets, #2 – call for help.

If the Coast Guard stops you, for instance, one of the first things they look for is a life preserver for each person on board. (We’ve actually had to stop and borrow lifejackets from fellow boaters when our guests exceeded our number of preservers.)

So we came up with a plan in case of emergency while underway: put on life preservers, radio the Coast Guard our coordinates, blow up the zodiac, hop in and fire off flares. And wait.

Last week on the way to work we were discussing our emergency plan options. Underway, the only way to tell that we’re sinking is if we actually run into something and start to take visibly take on water. “The real threat is that we would sink at the dock,” Mark said, describing the six places water can get into the boat, via the hull fittings at both toilets, the propeller drive shaft, heater intake, engine intake, and generator intake.

I found a recent study by an insurance company of 150 sinking claims the sites for every boat that sinks while underway, four boats sink at the dock in their slips. “Most recreational boats spend considerably more time at the dock unattended than they do underway. Silly problems like a bad bilge pump, or loss of shore power or a weak battery are sufficient to make a boat sink, even in waters that are only six feet deep.”

That afternoon about 2 pm, oddly enough, Mazurka’s alarm system called Mark’s phone. He called the Harbor office, and they did a quick check: there was water leaking inside. Mark sped home to find an inch of water in the salon. The drinking water filter beneath the sink (which he had just fixed the weekend prior with super-duper glue, “That’s not going to leak anymore,” he said) had burst, and the line was leaking water everywhere. He shut off the water, mopped it up, and returned to work, very upset.

It took a couple days to get the right piece to fix the line. In the meantime, I went outside to get water for coffee at a spigot. We kept the water off, except when washing dishes and showering, and then we kept a bucket under the sink to collect the runoff.

Adapt, overcome, improvise.

And just for fun, Mark bought a radio that will broadcast our GPS coordinates to the Coast Guard if we activate it.

Restaurant Hopping on the Water

My friend Betsy tagged me with a “meme” – a chain letter for blogs. The objective is to name the top 5 restaurants in your city. I immediately wrote my landlocked list (Café Blossom for sushi, Wishbone for Southern & soul food, Chicago Diner for vegetarian, Las Pinatas for Mexican, Angelina’s for dessert – chocolate pound cake…mmm…– and a tie between Hackney’s and Edgewater Tap for American bar food – okay, that’s six). But then I thought again. The theme of this blog is newlywed life on Mazurka…so I gotta go with restaurants you can reach by waterways when you’re in love.

1. Japonais, 600 W. Chicago, is really pricey sushi, with lots of shi-shi girls in swanky tank tops and fake tans posing with cosmos at the bar. But imagine you’re on a second date with a guy who owns a boat: he’s going to take you out on a Friday night. “There’s this sushi place up the river I’ve always wanted to go to,” he tells you. You’re game, ‘cause this guy fascinates you. You climb on board and he cruises up river to the wall outside a restaurant where a lot of young guys in overpriced suits are smoking cigars. This is not a dock or a port, but he pulls up anyway, ties up, and you two hop over the railing. The guys in cigars look impressed. You go right in, wearing sweatshirts and blue jeans, but they seat you anyway, at the very end of the sushi bar nearest the kitchen. At the end of the dinner, you prance right out to the boat, where cigar-smoking guys are admiring the ship. You hop the fence, untie, and push off.

Did it really matter what the food tasted like?

2. Dick’s Last Resort, 435 E. Illinois, is described by NFT (Not for Tourists Guide to Chicago) as “Tourists’ last memory of the night.” It no doubt is, nestled right into the magnificent mile in between conglomerate hotels and 8-floor shopping meccas. It’s also situated right on the Ogden Slip, a small inlet of water just west of Navy Pier, north of the Chicago River. Last year, on the first day we tore the shrinkwrap off Mazurka in cold, chilling April, we took a cruise down the river, up into the Ogden Slip, where we docked and walked around downtown. We decided to spend the night there, and since it was so early in the season, nobody said anything. In the morning, we went to Dick’s Last Resort for brunch, where you can throw things and write on the walls. It was a pretty good brunch buffet. Then we climbed onboard and cruised home.

3. The Green Dolphin, at Webster and Ashland, I have mixed feelings about. This is where we cruised to have dinner with our friends Jay and Lynn the night we spotted the South Loop coyotes. This is also where, two days later, we chose to dock and pick up Birthday Girl Kathy’s 27 friends. The owner – or whoever he was – was none too happy; he tromped down to the dock and gave mighty hell to our captain. “This isn’t a public dock – you better call somebody – we gotta private party here tonight.” He then went and locked the gate so that Kathy had to go up and sweet-talk him into letting in the last few party guests. But as far as dinner goes, the dock is easy and safe, they have a terrific chef (the tuna is excellent), a killer wine selection, and afterwards, you can go into the lounge and listen to awesome jazz.

4. Reza’s, 432 West Ontario, is an outstanding Middle Eastern place I’ve eaten at a hundred times, in the River North area, as well as its northern little brother in Andersonville. It’s terrific. We usually go by motorcycle. You can probably get there by boat. Or take a taxi. The food will be just as good. (Mark and I had our first fight here – he wanted me to tell him a story like the main character in Out of Africa and I went blank. I spent a half hour hiding in the bathroom, giving myself a pep talk in the mirror not to walk out on him. Ah, young love.)

5. Bob Chin’s – now defunct – it used to be right next to Mark's favorite Italian place Sorriso’s, also defunct. I’ll be honest – I’ve never eaten dinner here. But I feel compelled to list it as a place on water to fall in love, because four years ago my best friend Jill had her first date with Scott here, aboard his brother Mark’s boat, which at that time was Mazurka’s predecessor, the Escape Hatch. They docked and ordered mounds of crab legs, which Jill hadn’t a clue how to eat. “I look around and everybody’s just opening them up like they know what they’re doing…I had no idea.” Scott ended up cracking the crab legs for her. “There was nothing pretentious about her,” he says, “She just was who she was. It was refreshing.” Two years later, they got married in Michigan. I stood up for Jill, Mark stood up for Scott. That’s how we met. (At their wedding, Jill’s Aunt Karen suggested perhaps I date the best man. “They’re good people,” she said, “They’re water people.”) A year after that, Mark and I got married. Jill stood up for me; Scott stood up for Mark. They had just learned they were pregnant. On May 3rd, 2007, their daughter Sophia was born.


Mark, Jill, Scott, Felicia, August 2005


(Part of the meme game is to tag other bloggers. I tag Mary, Kristin, Jenny.

Nicole (Sydney, Australia)
velverse (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
LB (San Giovanni in Marignano, Italy)
Selba (Jakarta, Indonesia)
Olivia (London, England)
ML (Utah, United States)
Lotus (Toronto, Canada)
tanabata (Saitama, Japan)
Andi (Dallas [ish], Texas, United States)
Lulu (Chicago, Illinois, United States)
Chris (Boyne City,
Michigan, United States)
AB (Cave Creek, Arizona,
United States)
Johnny Yen (Chicago,
Illinois, United States)
Bubs (Mt Prospect,
Illinois, United States)
Mob (Midland, Texas United States)
Yas (Ahwatukee, Arizona USA)
Alicia(Idaho Falls, Idaho, USA)
Tug(Hell, Colorado,
USA)
BondMemphis, TN, USA)
TopChamp
(Glasgow, UK)
Kailani
(Honolulu, HI, USA)
Amber
(Henderson, TN, USA)
the weirdgirl (San Francisco Bay Area, CA,  USA (I'm still pretending to be an anonymous blogger))
CoffeeBetsy
(Moline, IL USA)
Life Aboard Mazurka
(Chicago, Illinois, USA)

Our Weekend Itinerary

My friends are passing around emails about the hundreds of fun, free things happening this weekend in Chicago. Like the Chicago Blues Festival, the Old Town Arts Fair, and the Printer's Row Book Fair.

I love this itinerary. I would love it even more if my itinerary for the weekend weren't the following:

Fill up fuel tank
Fix generator
Change transmission oil
Finish touching up varnish
Change generator oil
Clean out office/bow of boat so my parents have a place to sleep
Clean the front bathroom so they can have some privacy
Clean the stateroom
Take everything extraneous to storage
Scrub everything in site
Vacuum the cats

Can you tell my parents are coming to visit? We’re taking them on a five-day Father’s Day fishing trip across Lake Michigan and down the coast of Michigan back to Chicago.

The View from Our Front Door

“I have to tell Mark he’s not a bachelor and he can’t do this anymore,” was my first thought Sunday morning, awaking at 4 AM to pouring rain and my husband and our friend Carl discussing the air conditioner.

I called out to them, “You guys aren’t seriously fixing the air conditioner now, are you?”

No, not fixing the air conditioner, but preparing to go fishing, which I had agreed to as well. Not because I like getting up that early, or because I’m wild about fishing. But I liked the crew (Jeff and Carl) and if you don’t go out early-morning fishing while you live on a boat, what’s the point?

We had gotten home late that Saturday night, after attending Carl’s annual crawfish boil/margatini extravaganza. When we invited him to go fishing with us, he stopped the tequila and switched to beer, but we honestly didn’t know if he’d show up or not. Sure enough, 4 AM, he’s at the door in the pouring rain.

Mark was already up, trying to figure out what is wrong with the air conditioner, which keeps freezing. Carl hadn’t even been to sleep – he cleaned up his party and came straight to ours. Jeff arrived shortly, telling tales of the strange activity you see in Chicago alleys at 4:30 in the morning.


We set sail at 5:30 and headed out at 60 degrees, watching the city skyline disappear behind us.



In an hour or so we hit a depth of 75 feet – a ledge that drops off to 100’ depth, and they cast their lines. Half the sky was rainy, the other half sunny. We had calm waters. And not much happening.
























I have little patience for fishing, unless they’re biting. As a kid I would bring a book with me when I went out in the boat with my dad, or ice skates along in the winter. But when you’re fishing from your house, things are different. I made everybody breakfast, did some work, cleaned up. I took a chair out to the bow with a book and a blanket. It was the first time I had ever been surrounded by 360 degrees of water.

It was awesome.

Did we just come from a city? I couldn’t recall.

Only Carl caught a fish that made it into the boat: a coho salmon.



















But we arrived back at Belmont exhilarated. When you free yourself from the constraints of land, you free yourself from all the land-locked worries: bills and work and obligations and all the other daily worries that weigh us down. When you’re surrounded by water, you’re alone, and also acutely aware that you’re part of something much bigger.

There’s still so much about this boat that I don’t know. It’s full of surprises, and changes all of a sudden, depending on the environment.

Like the view from our front door.

I Spy

When Mark is working on Mazurka, the boat starts to look like one of those children’s puzzles where you have to find things.


Find the power drill. Find the broccoli. Find the clown.

Find the captain.

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!

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.

The Pin Test

The war against the geese has not been going well. Mrs. Cheney decided to nest right beneath the owl; Cheney is attacking anyone who comes within a thirty-foot radius. We have to walk right through his territory to get to Mazurka.

This year he’s more aggressive than the last – he comes back repeatedly, and will hover mid-air, attacking you as if he’s a hot air balloon. No, hot air balloon is too friendly – think more Nazi zeppelin. Sunday afternoon, Mark’s out there boxing with airborne Cheney, while the Mrs. stands beside her nest, not leaving it for a second. They are steadfast parents, to be sure. Once we get to the other side, we find an audience of three teenagers hanging out in the warm spring afternoon. “Looks like an attack bird,” one of them says to us. They're laughing; they’ve been watching Cheney attack people all afternoon.

It’s hard to describe how much this bothers me. I’m not afraid of animals – I like spiders, I can tolerate snakes, and unless it’s a bear, I won’t carry mace. But I don’t like the idea of being repeatedly attacked every time I walk to or from my home.

So I came up with an alternative plan: “I’m going to row the dinghy to the other dock,” I told Mark, "and avoid them altogether."

My husband thinks this is unneccessary, and keeps trying to convince me it isn’t that bad. Monday morning, leaving for work, he says, “I’m going to use the pin test.” He puts a safety pin between his fingers and out we go. The Cheneys are grazing, away from their nest, and as soon as we get near them, they start squawking and running for their homestead (apparently Mrs. Cheney hasn’t laid eggs yet, or she’d never leave it for a second). She gets up by her nest, while Cheney keeps sweeping down on us, and eventually gets close enough for Mark to stick him with the pin. Cheney lands beside us, stunned, and for a second the four of us all stare at each other – what just happened? Then Cheney squawks and flies down into the water, but he’s no longer hissing, and we go on our way out to the street.

“The pin test worked,” Mark says, exuberant. “I got the idea from when I was a kid.”

“Why don’t you start carrying the pen knife you did in kindergarten,” I say. I don’t find this all that funny.

“I don’t want to draw blood. The pin hurts just enough, but it won’t draw blood – it will heal before a cut would. I figure a couple more times of the pin test, and he’ll learn to stay away from us. It’s good security, too – nobody in their right mind is going to pass by that goose.”

“Exactly,” I say. “I’m going to start taking the dinghy.”

“Don’t you think that’s extreme?” Mark says.

“As extreme as being attacked every time you leave your boat, and sticking a goose with a pin?”

“Okay,” he agrees, “I’ll get the boat out for you tonight.”

So now, instead of simply walking off the dock to the parking lot, I'm going to pile my stuff into the dinghy and row twenty feet to the opposite dock, tie up, and walk around.

I've lived on Mazurka for six months now. I've weathered bad plumbing, frozen pipes, inclimate weather. I can't believe it's a goose named Cheney who's going to bring me down.

A Snit in the Stern, A Spat in the Aft

My friend the great white-haired photographer is harassing me to write about the fights on board Mazurka. “C’mon, you gotta write about life on Mazurka. You gotta tell us how you fight on board – get to the real stuff – you gotta dig deep!”

The thing is, Mark and I don’t really fight. There are no broken dishes, no screaming, no raising ones voice. Maybe it’s because we’re still newlyweds, or maybe ‘cause we’re both a little older than the 25 year-old just marrieds and we’re still (and hopefully always) invested in seeing each others’ points of view, or maybe it’s because this is a really small space and we pretty much have to get along. But our disagreements – small as they are – are few and far between.

We do have our occasional tiffs, though. The first one happened on board his boat, around midnight, when we were just dating. He was uncharacteristically quiet and cold. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. “I just thought we should slow down a bit,” he said. “Okay,” I fumed, “We’ll slow down.” And I stormed out. It was late, downtown Chicago, and as I walked to the el by myself to go back to my apartment, I kept thinking, “He’ll come after me…he’ll come after me….” I was so mad I got on the train going the wrong way, and had to turn around on the west side to catch a train going up to Wicker Park. I kept thinking, “He’ll be waiting for me at my place.” He wasn’t. The next day, we exchanged a series of emails till we figured out the whole thing was just stupid.

That’s pretty much how our fights go. I feel like he’s not giving me the attention I think I so rightly deserve; I act cold and angry, like I really don’t want his attention, anyway, while of course I’m dying for him to fawn all over me. And then I break down or he breaks down and we’re happy newlyweds again.

Last night was a little different – he was starting in on the generator again, and how the last “mechanic” we’d had out had taken a couple parts off the boat and had yet to return them or return our phone calls. This guy has been the bane of our existence for two weeks, and I was sick of hearing about it. “Just let it go,” I said.

Mark bristled. “I’ll let it go when the generator is fixed.”

So I let it go. I went to the bow and read for a bit, took a six minute shower, was about to climb into bed to read, when I heard him on the phone to someone in his family, complaining about the generator. I heard him say, “Do you want to talk to Felicia? She’s right here,” and he handed me the phone. It was his brother Scott. Scott is married to Jill, who has been my best friend since we were 12 years old, and is the reason I met Mark. Jill is six months pregnant with their first child, and that day had gone for her second round of chemo for a 9 cm tumor they discovered in her breast on Valentine’s Day.

I took the phone and forgot about our tiff, forgot we were getting screwed on the generator, forgot an editor declined the article I’d worked on all weekend, forgot I had gotten another damn parking ticket, forgot that outside Mazurka geese were preparing to dive bomb me. None of that stuff was worth anything, anyway.

You want to get to the real stuff? Life is short. Don’t waste time arguing about stupid shit.

Turf Wars

When I was in graduate school, I lived on Farwell and Ashland in the north side neighborhood of Roger’s Park. Parts of Roger’s Park, right on the lake, are really beautiful – the other parts are run by drugs and gangs. In the four years I lived there, somebody was killed on the Morse el platform every year. Guys would post on every corner, claiming their territory. On my three block walk to the el, I could follow the running of drugs as it passed from somebody’s girlfriend to a young gang member to the car and the buyer (any white guy in a nice car in my neighborhood was only looking for one thing). Once, my best girlfriend was propositioned by a prostitute – we couldn’t figure out if she was joking or not. My boyfriend at the time, who was leaving before dawn for morning shifts at a radio station, was stopped more than once for having his hands in his pockets, and made to prove he wasn’t carrying a gun. I was taking late-night classes downtown and would return home on the el at 11:30 or midnight, bracing myself for the walk home. I reasoned I had as much right to live there as any of the gang members. Nobody ever gave me a hard time.

I was preparing to move anyway when one day, around noon, a kid in red was shot outside my apartment. Within minutes, a whole crowd of more kids dressed in red gathered around him. It took 20 minutes for the ambulance.

In all that time, I never carried mace, never carried pepper spray, never carried any weapon at all. I didn’t want to fight potential violence with more potential violence. I didn’t want to play the role of the scared white girl, even though I was.

Yesterday, however, when I passed by Cheney and his wife, and that damn goose followed me a good thirty feet, hissing and charging and dive bombing me…I called Mark. “Bring the hard stuff.”

He brought home pepper powder, and spread it all over their turf.

I respect Cheney for taking care of his own, protecting his wife and the eggs she’s about to lay. But I refused to be intimidated by gang members and I refuse to be intimidated now by a damn goose, even if he has nested here for twenty years. I will not lose this turf war.

The Geese Are Winning

The owls might as well be sticks wearing flannel fabric for all their power to scare away the geese.

I’ve been watching Mr. Goose with his wife. He has staked out a territory with a 30-foot radius from last year’s nest. When other geese swim into the marina, he comes flying, squawking, dives in, arches his neck, head close to the water, and swims toward them like a shark. The other geese get the hell out of his way. He then goes back to the dock where his wife sits, preening herself, getting ready for the big day with her nest. I don’t know where we get the idea that springtime is all baby bunnies and pastel clouds; it seems more about staking out your territory and attacking anyone who reaches a beak over your border. I’ve nicknamed the goose “Cheney.”

A few afternoons ago I was walking along the dock when Cheney, grazing with his wife on the brown grass beneath the owls, starts hissing at me. Stan comes out and laughs. “I know somebody who uses fake snakes,” he tells me. “Works every year.”

So I trek to the Field Museum and buy three fake water snakes. I tell the cashiers what I intend to do with them; they’re used to selling overpriced seeds and stuffed animals and amethyst; they look at me like I’m crazy. I decorate Mrs. Cheney’s nesting area so that it looks like a snake pit. I’m very pleased with myself. I don’t see the geese out there the rest of the day.

This morning, they’re grazing right alongside the snakes.

Short of a BB gun, this is getting serious.

Bring the Owl

There are two kinds of geese in Chicago – the majority are migratory, and spend their winters in the south, returning each year to hatch the next batch of goslings. They return to the places they’ve had reproductive success in the past, much like we humans return to our honeymoon spots years later. We like the place where love lies – we think it brings us luck.

Unfortunately, Mazurka is surrounded by honeymoon nests.

Now, I had run through geese often enough at the lakefront, and they had dispersed in a friendly, non-aggressive manner, as I figured was due to their understanding that I, as a human runner, was atop the food chain and they would do best to look out.

I learned last spring this was not true.

On the last Sunday in March, I picked up Mark from Midway Airport, where he was returning after spending ten days away. As we rounded the first bend in the dock, a goose came at us, hissing. Mark started after it aggressively. The goose flew off, into the water, where I thought he’d land, but no – he swooped around and came back after us. I covered my head with the stack of mail and newspapers and began to run for the boat, with Mark just behind me. I could hear the flapping of the goose’s wings, and then he was down upon me, the gross and kind of terrifying weight of his large, feathered round body resting down on my head before he swooped off. He didn’t have time to come back for another pass before we were out of his territory, away from the nest, but we kept running, laughing, Mark’s phone ringing - “We’ve just been attacked by a goose!” he announced to the caller.

Thus began the daily fight with Mr. Goose. As we rounded the bend where his wife sat atop her nest, he would charge us on land, or fly off into the water, turn around and come after us. Mark started to charge the goose – not fast, and not violent, just an assertive walking towards him – and the goose hissed but flew off into the water.

One rainy afternoon Mark went ahead, but I found I could not move. The dock was L-shaped, with the nest raised up on the other side of the short leg, overlooking the river. As Mark rounded the corner, I watched the goose come around the short leg, straight for him, and shuddered, unable to watch. But Mark had the right idea, and charged ahead, so that the goose, despite its hissing and ruffling feathers, had no choice but to fly into the water, lest he be run over by a man. After Mark passed through, the goose returned to his post, watching me, halted at the top of the L. I sat down with the umbrella over my head, trying to look casual as I studied the goose, trying to figure out its mindset – can you reason with a goose? Do they learn? After a while, would he grow used to us? Could we ply him with food? Throw sardines at it? What does a goose eat? Mark called me on his cell phone, and though I hated being the scaredy-cat girlfriend, he returned like the ferryman Charon, taking me over the River Styx.

I did some research on goose gestation – an average of 25-30 days. I wondered if maybe the goose would keep me from seeing Mark for a whole month, or that the matter would become violent. I called my Dad. “They’re not that far above fish,” he said. “If it comes after you, just snap its neck.” I imagined crossing the dock, the goose attaching itself to me, fearing that I would have no choice but to grab its neck and kill it, that I would have my first goose like the Babel story.

Instead, I started carrying an umbrella.

I learned it was important not to startle him, so I would make gruff stomping noises. It was best not to look him in the eye, not to acknowledge his presence at all, and never, ever, look at his wife, sitting atop the nest. The goose was always on duty, and often would dive bomb me (so that I raised my umbrella above my head, keeping him a clear distance), or would only hiss meanly, often at night, when he was tired.

One night I passed by without much turmoil, arrived at Mark’s boat, and while standing in the salon, casually looked out the window towards the river and there was the goose, circling in the river, watching me. I ventured out on the dock and stood tall; he circled closer. We stared each other down, the river’s reflection of the Sears Tower lighting our showdown. In the quiet pulse of the central post office late-night business, the quiet din of sleeping factories, this huge tower overlooking us – this was an ancient standoff, irrelevant of the massive city of shoulders enclosing us – this was man against beast.

I researched possible deterrents – plastic or live swans (which people say don’t work), fake alligators for ponds (also said not to work), bright streamers, flags, and balloons, whose color and flapping-in-the-wind noise annoys geese, and my favorite – specially trained dogs.

Border collies are taken out in the morning and afternoons during migration to clear away the geese. And if a flock of geese flying over what looks to be a great area and sees it’s empty of their kind, they’ll think there’s a reason and move on. There’s even a story about a blind and deaf great horned owl who successfully scared away two flocks of geese from the Winnipeg Airport property just by hooting.

Another method of goose reproduction control which is often endorsed by animal rights organization as a humane alternative to slaughter and gassing is “egg addling,” in which the nest is interrupted, eggs are shaken (by humans) and coated with corn oil. Geese do not know the babies in their eggs have been destroyed and they continue incubation. “GeesePeace,” Canadian Wildlife Services, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services all use this practice.

After watching the geese sit on their nests all day and all night, through pouring cold rain, steaming hot sunny afternoons, wind, sleet, and all the while, bracing themselves and settling over their young, this method seems the cruelest torture of all. Can you mentally abuse a goose? If they’re not that far above fish, probably not. But what agony to sit for over a month on a carefully-tended nest, only to see that all your efforts are in vain, and once again, you are without your offspring.

This year, we started planning early. I considered covering the whole area with barbed wire, but Mark said that was a bit extreme. We asked around. Mark’s sister Heidi had the solution: “Get a fake owl.” My Dad gave me one for Christmas. We bought two more, plus dowels to stand them on. They sat in Mark’s trunk until one early March morning, when Mazurka was surrounded by squawking geese, staking out their territory. I called my husband on the phone and gave the code phrase for spring:

“Bring the owl.”

And now, with Mazurka surrounded by three ominous great horned owls, turning on their stands, eyes following you…so far so good. So far.

Amiable, Lovely Death

You don’t expect to see sky burials in the city – but they’re all around. Burials when the ground is too hard to bury a body, so the culture ceremoniously leaves the deceased out for vultures to pick away at it. It’s the natural order of things, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Except there is no ceremony in the city.

On Saturday Mark and I came home late, crossing through the alley on a cold night, making some noise as we usually do to scare away any rats. We’ve both had the experience of sneaking up on one, catching him by surprise – once, in the parking lot, I had three little ones race towards me in their game of tag before I screamed and they quickly veered off to the right. Another time, Mark had a big fat one nearly run square into him before it saw a person standing there and took off the other way. This night, coming down the alley, we came up on a big one, a foot from head to butt, lying on its side. It looked to have just died. His fur was clean and brownish grey, his belly white. He was well-fed and strong, and probably poisoned. We rounded it respectfully, though I wanted to take a closer look. It felt disrespectful somehow, to gawk. The next morning he was gone, presumably swept away by maintenance workers.

Yesterday morning while making coffee I looked out to watch the ducks in their precarious premating rituals: one brown female surrounded by five green-headed males, all of them vying for her attention, and as they bathed themselves in the icy water, a dead carp floated by, unnoticed.

This morning I was awoken by the loud screams of sea gulls – a group had gathered on the ice over the river and were pulling apart a dead fish. They have been out there for hours, pulling out sections of its gut, two or three standing guard while one takes its turn at the carcass.

We cannot bury our dead with so much concrete. We go out to the expressway-rimmed suburbs, we cremate and sprinkle the lake. For some reason I am glad to know that sky burials are still a viable option.

When All Else Fails...

…Suspend a ceramic space heater down the sewage area and melt the proverbial rat in the snake’s belly.

Mark had the pump-out working in less than an hour, and we had good plumbing again.

Ah, the wonders of outsourcing.

Peeing in a Bucket

Word on the marina was that the pump out was broken. It had been a good two weeks since we pumped out, but when we heard the news from Stan on Sunday, we didn’t take it too seriously. J---, another boater, had tried to pump out to no avail. “Too bad, ‘cause he’s full, too,” Stan said. We agreed. Too bad. And we went on our way.

Monday, we noticed some overflow in the bilge. Probably from the condensation that had formed ice inside the boat and was now melting. It wasn’t very dark. But by evening, it was dark. And smelly. And Tuesday morning, the toilet was resisting when we tried to flush it. Yep – time to pump out.

If pump out was a two-person job before, it’s now even more complicated. While Mark stands on one side of the marina, separated from our boat by water, I toss him one end of a yellow rope, which he ties to the pump out hose, and I drag across the marina to our side. It just reaches the opening to our tank, and I attach it tightly while Mark flips the switch. We communicate by yelling across the marina; if it’s windy, we use cell phones.

But it was still questionable whether the pump out was working. After shoveling a foot of blowing snow off our deck, I tromped over across the marina to the pump out, which was duct-taped and had a sign: “Out of Order Management Called.” When Mark came home, he thought he could still get it to work; he couldn’t. We had a full tank, a nonfunctioning pump out, and a snowstorm so bad that they