Thunder

Holiday Letter 2008

Between the demise of my hospital, initiating and completing a job search, and my mothers worsening dementia our cruising plans were put on hold for another year. I did this reluctantly. You see, since passing fifty I have begun to feel a certain urgency to life: summers pass quickly and spring arrives reluctantly.

In a sudden urge to burn diesel, Charlotte and I hatched a plan to take Carrie Rose, our 32-foot Nordic Tug, forty nautical miles north to Winthrop Harbor on the border of Illinois and Wisconsin. Now in the annals of cruising literature this is hardly an epic voyage and Winthrop Harbor, though nice, is not a place where dreams are made, but in the truncated world of cruising around Chicago, it's not bad.

Winthrop Harbor was created in 1990 out of the last pristine wetlands of Northern Illinois. Upon viewing the plans of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources for the new harbor some years before it was built, we surely thought a hue and cry would surface and prevent the thousand-boat marina from ever being realized. None did and so there it sits, quietly isolated from the real world, surrounded by an incongruously green space in the company of toxic waste sites and a decommissioned nuclear power plant.

Charlotte has a connection to Winthrop Harbor in the form a retired colleague and a commuting buddy. Both have large powerboats: one enjoyed with two big lovable dogs and the other maintained in a state of Purr-fection, as its name implies.

A more tenuous thread to the harbor exists for me. I garnered from the Nordic Tug chat room that several tugs spend their summers there, so before we left Chicago I announced via email that Carrie Rose would be in Winthrop Harbor and left my cell phone number as a contact.

We had an uneventful ride north. In boating circles “uneventful” is much preferred. This is contrary to what most yachting literature purports. Of course sailors and power boaters will differ on what constitutes an adventure, but I believe most would opt for a beautiful day with steady winds, calm seas and billowy clouds to hellfire and damnation. Maybe this is just my middle-aged bias speaking, but so be it.

From the moment we secured our lines at slip B-3 we were surrounded by our new made friends. We invited them aboard and gave them a mandatory tour. They reciprocated and by the end of the weekend we had inspected five other boats ranging from twenty-six feet to over forty.

Carrie Rose was moored next to the main walkway and whenever I looked up from the pages of a book or from the task at hand, people stopping in cars, bikes or on foot would just be staring at us. Several even asked to see the boat. I strode up to the locked gate and ushered them into our world, but not before warning Charlotte of our latest intruder.

When we first investigated our boat, the couple we bought her from cautioned us that if we were not gregarious types we should look elsewhere for another little ship. They had spent two years living aboard her while traveling over six thousand miles around the Eastern United States, all the while feeling like an exotic bird on display.

Now, having assumed responsibility for Carrie Rose I can attest that they spoke truth. Because of her we had breakfast, drinks and dinner with different groups of the Winthrop Harbor boating fraternity all weekend.

Sunday afternoon came and suddenly we had the harbor to ourselves. After a quiet dinner and a glass of wine we were finally able to settle in and read one of the hitherto ignored books we brought with us.

Monday awoke with a literal bang. The sky opened up with rain, hail and thunder. This did not bode well for our trip home. We had had three beautiful days and that is really all you can expect from the Midwest’s tumultuous weather. When the rain lightened we scurried to the wi-fi of the yacht club with my ancient Apple laptop. There amongst the flags of local yacht clubs we reviewed the radar and seeing only red, determined to stay another day.

At times like this I try to fight the urge to get home. I understand, through hard won experience that worse awaits you on the water than whatever the repercussions a missed day at work might bring. That said we had gotten as far as standing by the boat with dock lines in hand and engine running before calling the trip off.

This tie to home must be why it is so hard to leave on a protracted voyage, but that is a topic for another time. With the quiet patter of rain on the deck we ate lunch and tried hard to read, but alas mostly napped. At about three o’clock the clouds cleared and I managed enough energy to check the radar again. I saw an opening in the weather large enough for the four hours it would take us to get home, so we left.

Nine miles south of Winthrop Harbor with Waukegan three miles off our starboard bow we listened to the weather radio again. The updated report sounded grim. The horizon ahead was clear. Simultaneously we turned and saw a darkening sky behind. Charlotte yelped, "Go faster!" and I obeyed.

Pushing the throttle to 2400-RPM Carrie Rose answered with a knot and a half more, and this shortened our time of arrival by twenty minutes. The sky was getting more biblical as we bounded towards Chicago; the overtaking clouds created shafts of light that radiated down, illuminating us with an eerie glow. Noticing I was grinding my teeth, I took a deep breath and concentrated on the path before us.

With what turned out to be twenty minutes to spare we roared around the east breakwater and into Montrose Harbor. After retrieving the dinghy we elected to head for our mooring and as Charlotte grabbed the first of its two lines the wind veered, rain started to pelt and bizarre sirens began to blare.

Again we turned the weather radio on only to hear more alarms and reports of 80 MPH “cyclonic” winds sweeping through downtown Chicago and coming our way. We closed the boat up tight and for the first time in my boating career donned life preservers while below deck. Being forever curious, and against Charlotte’s advice, I opened the door and looked south. There at the harbor mouth was a boiling ragged horizontal cloud that looked like it had our name on it.

Lets just say this was getting a bit out of control. I caught a glimpse of the chaos around us as the wind hit: sailboats swinging every which way with their bare mast severely heeling in the gusting wind. The rain hit, the water boiled as lightening struck all about us, and then it was over.

We had made it, but just barely. I know that you get in the most trouble heading for home, so I find it hard to comprehend why I did not heed my own advice. Lesson learned. . .I promise.