The city's icebreaker boat, the James J. Versluis, has been shattering the lake since 1957

Before boarding the almost 70-year-old James J. Versluis, the passengers get a life jacket and a set of ear plugs.

The ear plugs, we are told, because things can get “loud and crunchy.”

As the Versluis sets off from its mooring at Navy Pier one morning in early February, the sound of its 126-ton steel hull shuddering through ice grates on the ear like a trash compactor chomping rocks.

“For the first couple of years, when you’re smacking up against ice, it’s really nerve-racking. You just feel like that ice is going to pop right through the hull,” said Eddie Popelas, who served as the tugboat’s engineer from 2002 to 2013 and whose father was at one time the boat’s captain.

For Capt. Billy Meilicke and Marine Engineer Rich Frizelis — in charge of the tugboat on this morning — the noise is just part of the daily soundtrack that includes the thrum of the 850-horsepower diesel engine and the single blast of the foghorn as we head east on a mission critical to every man, woman and child in Chicago and in many suburbs too.

Since 1957, when the Versluis first came into service, its primary job has been to clear the ice from around the city’s water intake “cribs,” each sitting two miles out into Lake Michigan. The massive cribs act like straws, sucking in water that then sloshes through tunnels — hand dug and dynamite blasted — beneath the lake bed to a water purification plant just north of Navy Pier and another at 79th and the lakefront. From there, the water is pumped to homes like yours and mine, about five million in all.

It is a near-constant winter battle to keep the ice from plugging up the crib openings some 20 feet below the surface of the lake. The water that deep doesn’t freeze, but the metal grates can get clogged with ice.

When there’s ice on the lake, the Versluis is out every day.

“I always tell people, ‘You’re welcome for your shower in the morning,’” Frizelis said.

The Versluis is also responsible for keeping a navigable channel around Navy Pier. In the spring and summer, the tugboat ferries electricians, plumbers and the like out to the cribs for maintenance. You might also find the boat just off the shore, as a visual reference point for pilots during the Chicago Air and Water Show.

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With Capt. Meilicke in the wheelhouse, the Versluis chugs east past the rust-streaked Chicago Harbor Lighthouse and out into the open lake. With our backs to the city skyline and civilization, we could, for all I can tell, be journeying across the Arctic Ocean. It is slow-going — the tugboat hitting a top speed of about 5 mph, as its half-inch-thick steel bow fractures and crunches ice, leaving seafoam-green water in our wake.

For the newcomer, there’s a bleak beauty to this crystalline landscape. For Meilicke, the Versluis’ captain since 2018, it’s just frozen water.

“We’ve seen it so many times, it’s just more ice,” said Meilicke, a barrel-chested father of three who hails from Marquette Park but now lives in a high rise within walking distance of his boat.

That’s not to say all ice is the same. It has been known to mass in boulders as big as bathtubs in the lake surf or slant against the shoreline like books on a shelf.

What worries ice breaker captains like Meilicke is the kind that is wind-driven and, if there’s enough of it, can pile up on a boat’s deck and sink it. But more on that later.

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The Versluis, named after the man who served as Chicago’s engineer of water works for 25 years, was built specifically to crush ice. It cost about $325,000, a city official said. A replacement today would run anywhere from $12 to 18 million, Frizelis said. The original engine was replaced 12 years ago, and there are no plans to scrap the Versluis any time soon.

The Versluis was built to work. It is squat, sits low in the water and has a blunt nose. Extra steel ribs in the front section of the boat stiffen the bow for the job.

“The vessel climbs up on the ice and uses its weight to break it,” Frizelis explained.

Built in Sturgeon Bay, Wisc., it was designed to break through 18 inches of solid ice. During the winter of 2011, famous for its “snowmageddon” blizzard, the ice lake crusted to three feet thick in some places.

“That year, you could have driven across it, it was so thick,” Frizelis said.

The Versluis chugged on. A trip to the Harrison-Dever crib off Navy Pier typically takes 20-25 minutes in the warmer months. It took six hours during the worst of that winter, Frizelis said.

Inside the wheelhouse, the boat is an odd blend of mid-20th century and state-of-the-art technology. A 1957 telephone (still working) with a Bakelite receiver hangs a few feet below a touch-screen satellite system. Some of the original brass doorknobs remain, along with a handsome glass-fronted barometer.

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Talk to the men who’ve captained the Versluis (there have been half a dozen of them), and they’ll tell you there’s no better life.

“I’ve been on everything that floats out there,” said Ed Popelas, 76, who captained the boat for about 10 years beginning in June 1992, and whose son Eddie was an engineer on the same vessel. “I wouldn’t trade [the life] for anything.”

Coyotes looking for food occasionally lope across the ice and get stranded when it breaks free from the shore.

“The other day, we saw a couple of bald eagles on the ice having lunch,” Frizelis said.

The crews have spotted waterspouts, distant tornadoes.

During the city’s cruelest winters, the crew might find themselves out on the boat for as long as two weeks straight. The below-deck quarters are tight, and there’s no room for fragile egos.

“If the s__t hits the fan, you better be a team,” said Bill Schmidt, who spent 28 years on the boat, including 12 as captain.

When winds blow hard from north and east, the waves fracture the ice, and it piles up against anything in its path.

Eddie Popelas recalled a time when the Versluis was on the north side of one of the water cribs.

“The wind shifted faster than we expected,” Popelas said. “The ice started coming at the boat. So we were pinned between [the crib] and the ice. … It sounds like you’re inside of a tin can and someone is crushing it.”

The boat was in real danger of capsizing, Popelas said.

“Once the water gets in, then the boat goes down,” he said. “We ended up over-running the engine to get a little more power out of it. We popped out of there kind of like a watermelon seed.”

Popelas’ dad, the former Versluis captain, remembers braving seas with 15-foot swells.

“She’s a good seat boat. … But you get some of them crazy waves out in Lake Michigan, and it will push you all over creation,” he said.

Crazy, but not enough to unnerve him.

“No, I made peace with it a long time ago,” he said.

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The Versluis has endured everything that a Chicago winter can throw at it; that doesn’t mean it is indestructible.

“There’s always a risk of having a fire on the boat. … The ultimate risk is your boat sinking,” Meilicke said. “The emergency services aren’t a minute away. You have to fend for yourself.”

On this day, a gentle, 15-mph wind ruffles the water where it is visible between the ice, now more of a slush after the Versluis has ploughed through.

Meilicke passes the unmanned candy-striped Harrison-Dever crib, plastered with “Danger, Keep Away” signs. He makes a wide turn toward the shore, where the city’s jagged skyline pierces a light fog — a sight both reassuring and thrilling.

A sight that, for these sailors, never gets old.

“I can’t tell you how many pictures I took of sunsets,” said Eddie Popelas. “To see the sun set behind Chicago is gorgeous.”

His father agrees.

“Coming back to the city, it pulled at my heartstrings. I love the city that much,” Ed Popelas said. “It’s always beautiful and something that needs to be appreciated.