After our summer of sailing around Lake Michigan we had a much better idea about what work needed to be done on the boat. We knew from the beginning that we needed to have the bottom repainted in a paint that was good for saltwater, and that we needed to do some work on the plumbing. Yet, it was only by sailing it that we learned that we needed a new chart plotter, and some other electrical upgrades. We also needed a post installed to mount our radar and radar reflector as well as an anchor light. We sat down and made a detailed plan with Racine Riverside Marine about the work schedule. Then we decided to spend a month visiting our families.
First we spent 2 weeks with Doug’s mom in Olympia, WA. During that time we visited a lot of family and friends, attended Doug’s junior high reunion and went to an amazing concert with a close group of friends. Then we flew out to Cape Breton and caught up with all our people, had an amazing sail and a raft up party with our sailing gang and went to some of our favorite restaurants. It was a super fun month, and we were a little sad leaving both places, but also excited to be going on a huge adventure!
To get the boat from Racine Wisconsin to the Gulf of Mexico will require us to travel over 1300 miles and go through 26 sets of locks. We expected the trip to take between one and two months to complete. We were also hoping that we would get to do a few side trips by car and see more of the middle part of the country.
In between getting back from visiting family and leaving we had a ton to do and a ton of people to see. We had to make sure all the work was done on the boat and that we had an inventory of spare parts of board for the inevitable break downs. We also had to make arrangements for our mast to be shipped. We realized that our anchor chain order had not been filled, nor had our anchor light been removed from our mast, but the owner of the marina found us both of those things and got us straightened out.
Our new friends in Racine stepped up to help us provision, and it did take several trips to finally feel like we had everything we needed. They also gave us some needed supplies like a step stool and an anchor light! We went out to dinner, played crib and took pictures with our new gang, knowing that we will miss them a lot! On the day before we left Douglas and I barbequed for the staff at Racine Riverside Marine and presented them with a nice framed picture of the Blue Nose for their clubhouse. They all feel like family now that we have been living there for almost 4 months!
We left Racine on September 23rd, we had to motor to Chicago without the benefit of sails to settle down the boat in waves, so our weather window was pretty narrow. It had looked like we could leave at 8 AM, but then the evening before the weather predictions changed so all the experienced sailors at the marina decided we had to leave at 5AM despite the fact that the fuel dock wouldn’t open until 8AM on the way down. We thought nothing of it with 3/4 of a tank and a bunch of fuel places in Chicago and all the way down the Illinois river.
It was slow going the 55 miles to Chicago with big waves on our nose the whole way. It was not pleasant but we were very happy with the way the boat handled and with the way the temporary radar post performed for us, hardly swaying a bit! By the time we reached Chicago we were exhausted. We found the mooring field we had reserved at and soon realized that the mooring balls themselves had no lines on them. We had never encountered them without painters before. I caught it with the boat hook and tried pulling it up but it didn’t budge. I continued wrestling with it, and Douglas came to help. We managed to bring it down to midship and then hanging off the boat we got some lines on it. Very soon after that I realized that I no longer had my cell phone… We called it and couldn’t hear it ring, searched the boat and nothing…. Shoot!!!
The waves were coming into Munroe harbor at just the wrong angle and it was rough! The skyline of Chicago was beautiful though. We were totally exhausted and went to bed instead of heading into the city for the night. We were excited to get started in the morning and decided to wake up early. Of course the waves really picked up over night and there was basically no sleeping as things crashed throughout the boat and we kept falling on top of eachother… off to a rough start one might say!
