12 Oct Day 27,28,29 – The Windy City

It has been my experience while cruising on Nautoncall that a lot of places are aptly named.  In this case nicknamed aptly.  Chicago is the Windy City!  We stayed on a mooring ball in Munroe Harbor for  3 more days and it was one of the roughest anchorages we have ever experienced.  At times there were 3 foot swells inside the Harbour.  The boat creaked and groaned the entire time.  It is hard to sleep when you need to lay spread eagle just to keep from rolling out of bed.  But, we managed and enjoyed our time here.  Chicago is an awesome city, at least downtown.  Very clean and we felt very safe walking around, even at night downtown.

On Thursday the 10th. We went for a walking tour. We started out walking toward he Handcock building. The skyscrapers are so big they create their own weather. Here is the Lake Point Tower making a cloud as the wind blows over the top’
 

I couldn’t stop looking up and taking pictures. Chicago is really a City of Skyscrapers. We climbed (elevator) the 94 stories of the Handcock Building to the 360 Chicago deck.

The view was amazing, it was cool looking down on all the huge skyscrapers. The only downside was that our boats were behind some buildings and we couldn’t get a picture of the boats at anchor.
After that we walked along the “Cement Beach” to the Navy Pier.

Then we took an Architectural Boat tour of the rive. I couldn’t believe we were paying $42 to go for a boat ride but it was worth every penny. The guide was very informative and entertaining. I took a thousand pictures. Too many to post here but someday I will make a slideshow.

The next day Janet and I toured the Shedd Aquarium. We got the water taxi for the Harbour to drop is off right at the Aquarium I didn’t take my camera because it was pouring rain when we left, but trust me it was awesome. They have fish from all over the world displayed very well. It was well worth the visit.

Saturday was the “Running of the Sailboats”, every spring and fall they open all the bridges to let the boats travel to or from their winter storage facilities. It was quite a process as they only open one bridge at a time, all the boats clear one bridge then mull around until they open the next. it can take upward of 8 hours to get through the city.

It was also provision day, with one of Janet’s favourite activities, a trip to a grocery store, and an Uber ride through downtown to find propane. That night the winds picked up and it was a washing machine in the harbour, it was an interesting adventure to catch the warter taxi to Knot Diggin and back in 3′ swells.

Time to move on…

We were supposed to wait until Monday morning to leave with Group 2 from the AGLCA. We decided with our new friends from Bella Donna and Two Loons to start our own new “Group 1.5” and start out on Sunday morning. We had all had enough of rolling 24/7 in Munroe Harbor.