Browsing: Chicago

Destinations
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Chicago’s Navy Pier Adding Transient Docks

There’s good news for anyone cruising in the Midwest or on the Great Loop. A new five-star transient marina is scheduled to open early in the summer of 2025 on Chicago’s iconic Navy Pier. The new Navy Pier Marina will be the only all-transient marina in Chicago, and it will have 6,400 liner feet of side-to docking for boats up to 130 feet. There’s no minimum boat size, and you can stay for hourly, daily or weekly docking on a mix of floating and fixed piers. The marina will have three gangways leading to Navy Pier itself, and it’s within…

Destinations
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New Chicago Transient Marina To Open at Iconic Navy Pier

Here’s some very good news for anyone cruising on the Great Loop or anywhere on Lake Michigan. Starting next year, a new transient marina will open on the north side of Chicago’s iconic Navy Pier, right in the heart of town, with access to all the city’s restaurants, museums, stores and parks. You can tie up there for a few hours, a few days, or even a week, and then enjoy everything that Chicago, one of the most vibrant cities in the U.S., has to offer. (Full disclosure: My very first journalism job, many years ago, was working for a…

Cruising Life
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Chicago Marinas: Where Have the Boats Gone?

In 2007, there were 980 moorings in Monroe Harbor on Chicago’s south side, and they were all occupied. But then, after the recession the next year, people started staying away. The city eliminated more than half the moorings, to 390, and now only 368 of them are occupied. It’s running a youth sailing program on an empty end where boats used to be moored. As the Chicago Tribune asks in this detailed story, where have the boats gone? The real story is more nuanced than what the numbers suggest at Monroe Harbor, which is owned by the city but operated by…