Old Friends-By Captain Eric Loss

The next leg of the One Water Story has begun! Captain Loss, along with first mate Shanley McEntee, deckhand Mitch McLean, and a brand new guest crew have begun their sail from Cleveland Ohio to Chicago, Illinois. Captain Loss captured his mixed feelings towards Sea Dragon’s re-entry and exit from city life in his eloquent blog post, entitled “Old Friends.”

Cleveland was starting to feel positively homely after a week ashore.  In our nomadic lifestyle, we rarely stay in the same port for more than a few days, so it is with a mixed sense of regret and relief that we watched the skyline of Cleveland sink into the Eastern Horizon this afternoon, taking with it the waitress at the coffee shop who had learned Mitch’s order, the ticket-taker at the parking lot in which we were docked who hadn’t quite outgrown his frustration at letting cars in and out to visit us without making them pay for parking, the police officers who went out of their way to stop and chat with our Canadian crewmembers whenever they saw them about town.

Gone too is the hail of trash blowing across the parking lot at all hours of the day and night, the constant inane inquiries of passers-by “Will you take me out on the lake today?”, the harsh glare of streetlights through the cabin lights at night.  The water has become a cleaner, deeper green, away from the silt and dirt and grime of the city, but even out here, in the middle of the lake, we still see evidence of our neighbors all around a straw caught in the trawl net, a slime-covered plastic lawn chair floating by, abandoned to the lake by some weekend warrior.
Out here in the lake we meet some of our old friends, the gulls, the cormorants, teeming in great clouds over the water as we pass lighthouses and buoys.  Here too we see the “Algoma Progress,”  A lake bulk carrier headed our way, once a minor irritant in our day as the Progress delayed ours through the Welland Canal, now merely another traveler on these waters.  We are bound West, North and West, through the bowels of the Detroit River and into the sparkling waters of Lake Huron as we wend our way onwards through the lakes, facing their fickle moods and ever changing face on our way to Chicago.

-Eric