One of my favorite things to do on vacation is to take a boat ride.
I remember visiting my parents one winter in Florida many years ago. When they asked me what I wanted to do while I was there, I said that I wanted to take a boat ride.
I’m not fond of hot, humid weather, but one week and four boat rides later—a sunset cruise, going out to a remote beach via a rented motor boat to go shelling, an airboat trip among the alligators in the Everglades and a river cruise where I “wrestled an alligator” (as in volunteered to hold the baby alligator when the captain asked for volunteers)—I decided Florida wasn’t so bad after all.
So when Tim and I found ourselves out on Chicago’s Navy Pier one hot and humid July day, the first thing I started considering doing was taking a boat ride.
The pirate schooner ride looked like fun, if a little bit kitschy with its costumed pirate and cannon that they shot off as they approached the dock at the end of the cruise.
And we felt definitely underdressed in our jeans and T-shirts for a fancy dinner on one of the big yachts anchored at the pier.
We saw some cool yellow speedboats and decided to check out the Seadog Cruises booth to find out about times and prices for a quick tour of the lakefront.
Then I saw it.
I spotted a flash of red just past the line of cheery yellow boats and the listing for a Seadog Extreme speedboat tour.
Tim reminded me that we had our pricey DSLR cameras with us.
I just as quickly reminded him that he had two 2-gallon zipper-lock bags in the camera pouch where he carried our extra batteries and memory cards (we always carry a few of these 2-gallon bags with us when we travel and found them useful several times when we’ve been caught in a downpour with our cameras).
And so we soon found ourselves clutching our plastic-wrapped cameras and waiting to board the big red speedboat.
It became apparent that this wasn’t going to be your grandma’s boat ride. In fact, I think we skewed the demo of their crowd a bit higher that day. But who cared?
I was going on a boat ride. A fast boat ride!
The extreme trip, billed as being 30 percent faster than the still speedy yellow boats, promised a trip with 180- and 360-degree spins with full-out slalom runs at 45 mph on the open water of Lake Michigan courtesy of the 135-passenger boat’s two 1400 horsepower engines and an experienced hotdogger of a captain.
Our young tour guide greeted the crowd with a semi-serious admonition that we didn’t belong on the trip if we had a bad back or other aches and pains. We puttered through the no-wake zone as he explained the thrills to come once we hit the open lake water.
Then, they cranked up the high-powered rock and rap music and let the engines rip!
Yup, this was definitely my idea of a great boat ride. I picked a seat by the rail, so we got plenty wet (while our cameras stayed safely dry in their oversized plastic bags).
We caught a fairly close-up glimpse of the lighthouse near Navy Pier (yes, expect to see a separate blog post about that lighthouse here in coming months) and stopped briefly near the Adler Planetarium before zipping away for yet another round of speed and spins.
It was over all too quickly, but there’s still time this year to take a ride with Seadog as, weather permitting, they offer rides into October.
© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved
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