Is It Summer Yet? Some People Think So!

We've tried to give you all a peek behind the curtain to see what it's like to live aboard a boat in Chicago. Many of the posts we've written have been about our troubles, and since there is no shortage of work to do on Cygnet there have been many posts like that. Overall we are still enjoying living aboard, and now that the weather is getting warm we are realizing how great it really is to be on a boat in Chicago all the time. Well, now it's time to brag a bit.

We had the first party of the year on Cygnet and it was great. We decided that the Kentucky Derby was a great excuse to have some friends over for a some mint juleps and conversation. Kevin had a procedure done the day before so most of the prep work was done days before since he was pretty well out of commission the days of the surgery and the party. We didn't realize just how dirty Cygnet had gotten through the winter. We cleaned, wiped, scrubbed, and polished almost every inch of the aft deck, flybridge, and exterior. It was a lot of work, but we got Cygnet looking pretty good. Unfortunately there is still a lot of pre-summer work to do, like polishing and waxing the entire exterior above the rub rail. We'll get to it eventually. Since Kevin was useless after surgery we decided to have food catered, and had a nice selection from Jason's Deli and some things brought by attendees. Many people dressed up and it was a lot of fun. Colette made a gallon of mint julep (basically bourbon, sugar, and mint) and we had lots of beer and wine available. The weather was ideal and we all enjoyed a great time on Cygnet without going anywhere.

Where is your hat Stephen?

Indiana Jones and Short Round play Captain and First Mate

To cap it off, we had a beautiful campfire at night.

So water we thinking about our first party of the year? It was a great time and we are happy everyone made it out. We look forward to many more to come soon!

Comments

You Live On a Boat? You Must Be RICH! Nope. Here is how to live aboard for cheap.

We've written before about how many people ask us private things just because we live on a boat. Since our lifestyle is a bit different than most people there seems to be an idea that we want everyone knowing about our financial lives and personal habits. Here are some questions we get: How much does it cost? What do you do in the winter? How do you heat/cool the boat? Do you ever leave the marina? Why are you doing this? Do you miss your house? How do you shower? How do you poop? Those last two come up a lot more often than you'd think. Let's face it, most of us are a bit crude. Kevin has spent a lot of time with "proper" people, businesspersons, met many CEOs of large global companies or other folks you might think are high class. Most of them turn into 14 year olds after a few cocktails. That's when the real questions come out. A lot of people are just curious, and their curiosity can overwhelm their sense of society, privacy, and poli...

Welcome TV viewers! Yes, it's cold today.

Thanks for making the trip over to the blog today after watching the story on TV or online. If you take a look around the blog there are lots of answers to some of the questions I'm sure a lot of you have. We wrote a post about all the costs and I'm sure many of you will start there. Here is the video link in case you missed it. Knowing how cold it is outside this morning you may also want to know how we are doing. Yesterday when Marcus and cameraman Carlos came out it was 63 degrees inside the boat. Well with the wind we had last night and the brutally cold temperatures it's a bit cooler inside now, about 54. We have an alarm set if the temperature in the engine room goes below 40, which it did at 5AM. We took one of the space heaters out of the living area and moved it down to the engine room to keep things comfortable down there. Inside the engine room you obviously have the engines, which don't use antifreeze like a car, and can be damaged by...

A Floating Trailer Park...kinda.

There are many aspects of living on a boat that people are curious about. We've tried to write about many of them here but in all the time we've lived aboard we have never gotten one question that we think is actually an important one. "What is it like to live at a marina?" Maybe there is a reason nobody asks, they just don't really care, or maybe they don't know that they should be asking that question. You don't know what you don't know. So in this post we want to give you an idea of what it's like to live at a marina. Sunrise at 31st St. Harbor. River City Let's face it, a marina is a floating trailer park. Some folks may argue with this since you have the freedom to take your boat anywhere, boats are more of a recreational object than a trailer, some boats cost more than the collection of trailers in most parks, and boats are just cooler than a single-wide mobile home. Maybe the analogy would be better to compare a marina...

Water We Thinking

Search This Blog