If you saw the last video of Kevin's painting fail hopefully this installment will redeem his skills in some of your eyes. As we continue to work through Shelter in Place we've been working on lots of little things. Right now it's a bit harder to do anything around here since we haven't had power or water for 12 days.
On Sunday May 17 we had what can only be described as a deluge of rain. We'd had big storms a few days prior and everything was pretty saturated and the river was a bit up but not too bad. But when it started raining Sunday it was serious. We've seen River City Marina flood before with water over the docks but it went another couple feet above that and the Chicago River spilled over the wall and into the River City Apartments building. This knocked out power to the entire building and marina, flooded the parking garage including about 25 cars, and they were forced to evacuate the building around 10PM Sunday night.
We fared better, as they say a rising tide lifts all boats. But along with a couple other boaters we spent most of the day managing ropes and keeping other boats from being damaged. Docks were stretched to the max and we spent the day walking in knee deep river water.
As for our marina management. We hate them. I'm going to spare you the details but Property Management Techniques and the head Brian Pregler are incompetent and are now on top of my list of worst people ever. Hate that guy. For real, like hate hate.
But as the water receded we saw some issues around the marina too and tried our best to fix the problems that improper management of a marina caused and we spent another day fixing things that shouldn't have been an issue. It was a mess, and still is here. No word on when power, water, internet, or pumpout will be restored. We've been running our generator to keep the little bit of water we have in the hot water heater warm as well as charge our electronic devices. We're using our iPhones as hotspots for internet. Mostly relying on paper plates and Solo cups for meals. It's not as bad as it sounds, we're enjoying the no TV aspect now that the weather has finally warmed.
Photos of the flood below video.
Cygnet has a 30-ish year old refrigerator that we want to keep going as long as possible. So Kevin decided to clean it up a bit and give it the best chance of survival. But it worked out a bit differently. Check out the video to see what we did.
The Great Flood of 2020. I hear Locusts are coming this year too.
It was raining hard and fast most of the day.
This dock doesn't move. We've seen it underwater before but not this much.
The floating docks reached their maximum height and it was still raining.
We were worried that as the water subsided the Windy would get hung up.
This is about 7 feet higher than normal.
And it's still raining.
We put our power cords up but it didn't matter after the power went out.
Even the dock box started floating away, we moved it to safety.
On the other side of the marina, saving boats.
Where does the river begin and end?
The Chicago River taking over to park next door.
Yep, this is fun!
Powerless River City. The Willis Tower also went dark that night due to flooding.
Wow. Just wow! I had no idea when I was texting you how bad it had gotten, and how much you had already done to save so many boats. Can't believe how long you've fared without power. But hey -- at least you have proof that your dock box floats?
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 the cold. T
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 politen
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
Wow. Just wow! I had no idea when I was texting you how bad it had gotten, and how much you had already done to save so many boats. Can't believe how long you've fared without power. But hey -- at least you have proof that your dock box floats?
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