Adventure from Chicago

Good times!  Last night I took out 14 of my sisters friends – they are so fun.  What a perfect night on the water.  We met up about six, my sis and I went out early and we are both stress cases when it comes to throwing a party so we were nervous getting the boat ready, cleaning up, but still had a great time.  Even though she live in the city I’ll sometimes go a month or more without seeing her.   It was great to have some one on one time with her – she’s super fun and hilarious. 

So a good ‘energy’ or ‘law of attraction’ story – last time I was on the boat the piece we use to tie off the buoy broke.  I was going to fix and told Michelle that on the way out.  It would take some time and the floater buoy thing is really old.  Well the tender driver (the tender drives you out to your boat) is a cool guy and good friend.  Sitting in the front of the tender was a floater thinger.  I’m like, “Whose is that?”.  PAt said nobody’s, it’s just sitting here.  I asked if I could have it and he said sure.  Then later he said bring the old one to the dock and somebody might want to fix it.  Fair enough, that’s what we did.  How cool is that?

So we drove to the dock and my sis was great, we pulled up to land, tied off, and everybody got on board.  A little panic happened on the way out on the tender – that we wern’t going to have enough alcohol.  Michelle put out the word and bam, we had like 10 bottles of wine, 4 cases of beer – plenty for sure. 

 We sailed around, everbody loved it, looking at the city from out on the lake.  Then we decided to go to the ‘playpen’ and anchor out.  This we did, and my bro-in-law pushed to do this halyard swing, where you get up on the front pulpit, grab a halyard, and leap off.  Really fun, you swing way back towards the back of the boat if you do it right.  It’s crazy and somewhat dangerous, but I’d say 8 people tried it.  So much fun.  One thing I noticed is all my sister’s friends from college smoke – how weird is that?  all very professional, but smokers.  I counted 7 smoking – that’a s very high percentage.  Anyways, what a great night.  Sis brought Potbelly’s for everybody – how generous of her.  And yummy.   Her and Lisa fixed them up in the cockpit with mayo, mustard, giardinera, pickles, etc and passed them up.  The Imjatse held up great and everybody loved her.  (That’s my boat’s name)  She’s got these prayer flags flying from the mast – from Tibet.  I think they’re cool, as she’s named after a Himalayan mountain.

Chicago in the summer on a sailboat – good times!!