As planned we left Holland at 11:00 PM to make the 80-mile crossing to Chicago. It was pitch black in the harbour and none of us could see a damn thing. Harley and I were talking to each other on the headsets as we raised the anchor. Harley, on the anchor, was giving me instructions back at the helm to go this way or that. I could see from the chart plotter (only) that we were getting dangerously close to a steel wall so I turned, against his advise, to avoid a collision. Thankfully we were ok.
All three boats were leaving at the same time. One of the other boats reported that they missed a massive pylon by about 12 inches. The other boat was not as fortunate and hit the steel wall sustaining enough damage to abort the passage. We felt sick about leaving them in that predicament but it was truly to dangerous to turn around and go back so Adamant 1 and Folly continued to Chicago. The three amigos were now two.
The night crossing was uneventful but the sea state was surprisingly lumpier than we expected and the wind was stronger. This isn’t saying it was terrible; just that it wasn’t what we expected. It was a great night with a zillion stars and we even saw the Northern Lights! The night went quickly mostly due to our hourly check-ins with Pat and Lynn on Adamant 1. By daybreak we could see Chicago in the distance. For a couple of country bumpkins like ourselves this was a sight to behold.
We are now on a mooring ball at Jackson’s Outer Harbour Yacht Club in Chicago. Today we have taken off the sails and, hopefully, tomorrow the mast will come down in preparation for the...as David Wilcox would say...the "Riverboat Fantasy". Once that’s taken care of we plan to check out this amazing city
Today Sea Mist will be joining us again and we will get all the details of what happened.
Fingers crossed all goes well tomorrow taking down the mast....but....more about that....next time.
Whoa! Thank God you turned Janice! Sending love, N,x
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