Recent Events

Youth & Blue United Inc. works with young men ages 13–17 from Chicago's underserved communities. Carmichael Lewis leads the organization, which has reached more than 12,000 youth since its founding. Their Waves of Change event is built around a direct premise: change your perception while you're literally on the waves. The setting is the mechanism.

The SeaQuest II is a 47-foot vessel out of Hammond Marina operated by Double Action Dive Charters. On June 29, she had a different kind of crew aboard.

The event wasn't just a boat ride. The format was structured — conversations about perspective, about what shifts when the ground disappears beneath you and you're out on open water for the first time. For young men from the South and West sides of Chicago, that's often exactly what it is: the first time. The lake is 20 minutes from their neighborhoods and most of them have never been on it.

That's the work. Not just access — but the question of what access does to a person when the setting is right.

Sail Shop Chicago is built to support this kind of partnership. A USCG-licensed captain, a vessel that can hold a group, and a mission that understands what the water can do — that's the infrastructure that makes Waves of Change possible on the lake instead of in a conference room.

If your organization works with young people and you want to put them on the water — reach out.

Two ships. One lake. Over a century of history sitting 25 feet down.

The J.D. Marshall was built in 1891 as an open-hulled wooden steamer working the Great Lakes lumber trade. Refitted for the gravel business in 1910, she took on water June 9, 1911 and went down less than 300 yards from shore — just off the Indiana Dunes State Park pavilion. In 2013 she became part of Indiana's inaugural underwater nature preserve. The Muskegon — christened the Peerless in 1872 — served as a passenger freighter, lumber-hooker, and sandsucker before being abandoned in 1911. She was the first shipwreck in Indiana accepted to the National Register of Historic Places, recognized for her significance in late 19th and early 20th century Great Lakes naval history. IU's Center for Underwater Science has been conducting diver and photogrammetric surveys on both sites since 2016, building 3D models to document the wrecks and support long-term baseline monitoring.

Doing that work means getting out there.

Before anyone goes in the water, the site has to be set. The IU team drove auger anchors into the lake bed to secure the marker buoys that hold position directly over both wrecks — the white buoys and stainless poles you see on the surface are the only visible sign of what's below. It's methodical, physical work, and it's how scientific dive sites get maintained season after season.

Then the students went in. Multiple dives, multiple tanks — the boat was loaded with a full rack of scuba cylinders including specialty gas for extended bottom time. Divers descended to the wrecks with cameras and survey equipment, documenting structure and conducting the fieldwork that feeds IU's photogrammetric models. One diver surfaced with a full underwater camera housing; another shot footage of the wreck frame from the lake floor. The clarity in Indiana's shallow offshore waters is remarkable — the wrecks read clearly at 25 feet.

IU's motto for these sites is printed on the Muskegon preserve sign: "Take only photos and leave only bubbles." The students held to it.

This is what the platform is built to fund. A charter partner that understands what the work is — and can get a scientific dive team on site and off safely — makes this research possible. Sail Shop Chicago was on the water that day because the mission lined up exactly with ours.

If you're an academic program, research institution, or community organization that needs a vessel and crew that takes the work seriously, reach out.