Houseboat Delivery - April 1st. by Ronan

On April fools day bright and early the Chicago Sailing Team met to take our houseboat/ summer office down the river. We were very lucky that it was quite a warm day all be it a bit windy and even more lucky that the engines started (and kept running) thanks to some hard work by Alan.

We had a crew of eager sailors for the first river trip of the summer, and even a few pirates joined us.

We departed at about 11am and started making our way down the river and through the city. The views from the river are truly amazing, you get a completely different perspective of city life.















We motored down the river and through the Chicago Lock and got through without any problems.

It was when we exited the lock that things got a little hairy due to a lot of wind blowing up some short steep waves that were bouncing back from the Navy Pier breakwater.

While we did not lose anyone we all had a bit of a scare and rocked and rolled around for a couple of minutes before we were able to turn north and have the seas behind us.

Once we got past Navy Pier it was wonderful, cool beers, good company and a fun boat. Some more pics are below.







Here you see Captain Scott multi- tasking, he is able to eat, drink a beer and even steer the boat..... truly a credit to Chicago Sailing.









On the right you can see Alan and his son Jack. This was Jack's first river trip and from the smiles on his face that day we are sure there will be many more.










We have a suspicion that Jack may have even had his first real crush on a girl...
Here he is with Crystel who was delighted to mind the Junior Veenstra.




As we neared Belmont we could see some 420's that were doing some sailing in the harbor as the wind was gusting up to about 25 knots so it was a little blustery for them to be going out to the lake at this time of the year.

Once we pulled into Belmont we saw one of the 420's capsize with the crew hitting the frigid 39 degree water..... we felt sorry for them, but not so sorry that we were able to take a couple of shots of the boat and its precarious position.

Here you can see the view from the bridge of the houseboat. There is one boat capsized with the crew holding on to the daggerboard.

They were not long in the water, soon the boat turned back up they hopped in and sailed off.... only the pride was injured.

You have to give it to the hardy souls that do the frostbiting at Chicago Yacht Club, it is not unusual to see them out there in bitter cold conditions in early April.


Our delivery of Squid was a great success with everyone enjoying the trip, the boat being safely delivered and secured ready for her stint as a floating office from now until the end of October.


Thanks to all that made the trip!! We are already looking forward to the return trip.



Next on the agenda for this week is the launching of our bigger boats from Great Lakes Naval base on the Wisconsin/ Illinois boarder. This promises to be a fun (and cold) trip down on Tuesday.

http://chicagosailing.com/events.html