May 26 to June 21 Its Been A Long Time with Little Sailing But

Normally the summer time is the busiest blogging time, but after 146 days afloat this calendar year before May 27, this is a decompression time. I do not feel the urgent need to get out on the water every day, not that nothing water related has taken place.

I have gone on two of the Wednesday afternoon sails with the Old Salts, the new name for the revived Old Farts. First on PC Marks "Deuce of Hearts", a catamaran, and then on ILENE.  Mark has been instrumental in reviving this group this year. Four people came the first time and seven the second (me, Mark, Mike, Richie, Dave, Morty and Clara). And the G and Ts are just as good as ever. Both days we were graced with moderate light wind after lunch at the Club. The food at the Club is a bit pricier than last year, and the portions a bit smaller (which is good for our health). The food is simply much better quality and better prepared. On ILENE we cut through the channel behind Stepping Stones Light where there was very light wind and we were near a run, before heading to the Throggs Neck Bridge and back to Hart Island before heading for home. The wind changed direction with the result that we only did one jibe and one tack.

I also had a pleasant afternoon with Ilene, and Bennett and Harriet aboard their Beneteau, "Ohana". She moved nicely in very moderate air. Come to think of it, we have had a lot of very moderate air for June. The four of us had a good dinner at the Club after, trying out our new chef, Ann, who does good things to food.

And I crewed for PC Mark on Deuce of Hearts

with PC Erwin, visiting from Florida, and PC and Ms. Bob and Laura in the Clubs annual Rear Commodores Regatta, which was set up as a pursuit race of slightly less than five miles.
Lene and I had won this race on ILENE back in about 2008, on a pursuit-destination race to New Rochelle with, miraculously, only one jibe. In a pursuit race, the handicaps are computed for the given course in advance and each boat starts at a different time, reducing the collision-inducing madness when several boats want to be at the favored end of the starting line at precisely the same time. So, if everyone sails as projected, all of the boats should arrive at the finish line at the same time. ILENE had the biggest handicap back then and hence started last and passed every other boat in the fleet on the way to the win.
Alas, this year we came in tenth of twelve boats because we made two mistakes. The first was not getting to the starting line until almost a minute after our time. Stuff happens and this has happened to me. The second mistake was using the small jib until the third leg of the triangular course. Deuce of Hearts is set up like ILENE, with a larger headsail set forward of the jib; it has to be furled between tacks. With the smaller headsail we were just too slow. Another great feature of Deuce of Hearts is that the tack of the big headsail is mounted on a track and can be moved to port or starboard  from the cockpit to catch wind without messing up the wind in the main. We were untrained crew and the PCs figured out how to use this neat trick, but too late. I think Deuce of Hearts has a lot of potential to be a fast boat on the race track.

Part of the reason for relatively little sailing was the visit by Lenes niece, Barbie, her son Trevor (who we hung with in Amsterdam last June) and Anna, a 16 year old exchange student from Denmark who lived in Barbies home for the school year. So we had five folks in our apartment and they made it very clear that their jam packed week in NYC did not include sailing. But we did see sailboats  -- at the MOMA -- Seurats pointillist masterpiece.

And there were several days of planning for the Club cruise plus a Club weekend excursion to Sheepshead Bay in August, and Club participation in the July 4th parade up the Hudson with a full wooden replica of "Le Hermione", which brought LaFayette to these shores and participated in winning the battle against the British fleet that was intending to re supply and reinforce General Cornwallis at Yorktown. When deprived of such aid, Cornwallis surrendered to General Washington, thereby ending the military operations of our war of independence.

And four workdays, pickling the water maker, which we will not need this year, cleaning out the refrigerators and the bilge, putting up the new plastic enclosure to the cockpit for measurement for straps to tie it up out of the way in the rolled up position when needed and snaps to mate it with the sides of the dodger. Finally I did work on the solid cherry batten that holds up the ceiling in the salon, to accommodate the new hatch screen enclosure.

And arranging some sail dates, sending back the new stainless steel snubber line hook which was replaced with a smaller one that fits and holds onto the anchor line, reducing the cruising area of our insurance policy to save money and other boating related chores.

Read More..

Another Fun Filled Weekend But A Harrowing Problem At The End

Friday, Bob and Laura of our Club organized a fun sail down to The Battery and back in which about ten Club boats participated. We rendezvoused with Bob and Laura and their boat, "Thai Hot," when ILENE was in the West Indies (see Blog, Jan 22, 2012, Sint Maarten).  In addition to Witty and Alpha Girl, we enjoyed the company of Rhoda and Lloyd, Christine and Heather and Mendy. We left the mooring at 5:45 pm and had daylight all the way down, passing many memorable urban sights with a favorable tide. Actually, the timing of the turn of the tide was the key to the success of this voyage; Thanks, Bob!

Hells Gate with Triboro (now RFK) behind

59th St (Now Ed Koch) Bridge

Bright lights in the big city

We had the main up the whole way but the motor was on except for perhaps a bit more than an hour, near the destination and starting back up. I got yelled at by the captain of a tug with barges who thought I was too close when we were near the Statue. He hailed us over his loudspeaker: "Ilene, you are an idiot!"  Well we were not that near to him and in fact I did not hear his yell, though the others did. After the tide turned, we enjoyed favorable tide on the way back as well, arriving on the mooring six hours after starting, at 11:45 pm. Having misplaced the big flashlight (since found), finding our mooring in the dark was a challenge, but we saw it on the first try.

After sleeping aboard, we sailed on Saturday for about four hours with friends I know through Lene: Simone, who had sailed with us up at Mt. Desert Island last summer, and her wife, Alison. They are eager and avid sailors. Also, Susan and Andrew, who were newbies but took the helm and acquitted themselves well. Then dinner at the Club and a good nights sleep. The photos of this group are in my former cell phone which, alas, lies on the bottom of Eastchester Bay. Oops!

Sunday we were supposed to sail with a couple of attorneys who Lene had placed, but the husbands work got crazy at the last minute so they had to cancel. Hey, I was an attorney so I know such things happen. Lene made other plans, not including use of our car and I called Lenes cousin Judy, to find out if her twin sons, Jake and Jared, were available -- and they were.

The lads are about 17 years old. I have been wanting to sail with them for at least a decade and now they are old enough and we had a good sail. The wind had been forecast for only single digits but came up double that. So using the main, we furled the small jib and made plenty of speed with one sail. We were close hauled on a port tack from the mooring to Great Neck, on a starboard close reach to and through Hart Island Sound, reached deeply into Manhassett Bay, past the Clubs, the race in progress and the big anchored party yacht until the water got to ten feet before turning for home. Jake did most of the steering, cast off and picked up the mooring, hauled up the main, and trimmed the sails, giving my sore shoulder a rest. Jake is rapidly becoming a good sailor.

Jared felt a bit under the weather especially on the beating courses, but he hung on bravely. His face does not look as green as he felt.

The two cats stayed mostly below, in each end of a long narrow cabinet on the port side of the forward head, where we store towels. It is closed by two sliding panels and by pushing them toward the center, the cats have openings into two snug padded berths. They both briefly stuck their noses out of the companionway, on the way back, to look around. On the way out, during the port tack, two of the transverse drawers under the pullman berth slid out onto the cabin sole and I had put them back -- more securely.  Once on the mooring, sails and lines all secured and stowed, the wheel locked in place, the instruments turned off, and the next question before calling the launch was: "Wheres Alphie?"  The boys and I spent at least an hour looking in every conceivable place. All of the stuff in the aft cabin was removed and, not finding a cat there the stuff was replaced and its door closed. All of the towels were removed from the cats hiding hole. Compartment by compartment, we systematically but frantically searched, with no luck. Not in the fridge either. Nor topside. Knowing Alphies penchant for crawling into the stack pack (see prior post) we searched there too and raised that sail and felt for bulges on the sides of the lower sail. Many searches were repeated.

Finally the call to Lene that I dreaded ever having to make. Lets just say that she did not take the news that Alphie was missing calmly. I drove the twins back to NJ and returned to the boat; Lene took the number six subway and 29 bus, arriving two minutes before I did. We resumed the search. Within a few minutes she heard a faint mewl, not the MEEOWWW!!! that Alphie is capable of. Thank goodness! She was aboard!  What a relief!  But where?  We tried to localize the sound and concluded that it was coming from the compartment with the pullman berth, where we sleep. So we took off the huge mattress and bed clothes, and moved this into the salon and then I unscrewed the part of the plywood panel on which the mattress lies that covers, among other things, the six drawers, two of which had slid out. But these drawers slide in cubbies with 1/2 inch plywood on the top, the bottom and both sides. here is the front of the forward ones with the drawers out:

So how could Alfie have gotten into wherever she was through there? Oh, I did not know this but the cubbies have no backs and there is a narrow space, perhaps 2.5 inches wide, between the back of the cubbies and the longitudinal bulkhead behind which the water maker lives. She had squeezed through that gap!

Back of cubbies, from the top - where she had squeezed through

Next removal was a large tray about 2.5 by 3 and four inches deep, that fits over the drawers but under the plywood platform for the mattress and is held in place by a dozen screws. This tray opens through a covered cutout in the top and we store my wet suit in there. And then Alphies head was visible in the dry but dirty bilge under the drawers at the front end.

Fiberglass stringer seen from above

 But the next couple of hours of trying to coax her out were unavailing. She had jumped over a strong longitudinal fiberglass stringer into the lowest part of this bilge, below where my arm could reach. We tried coaxing her out with hands containing a few kibbles but she reached this food with her head without providing a way to grab the scruff of her neck. The same with a line: she loves chasing strings and put out paws to play, but did not come out far enough to be grabbed. I sawed a six inch square hole in the bottom of the forward lower cubbie with the Dremel tool, using up three carborundum discs, but there was still a ply of the plywood that was not cut and hammering down with the rubber mallet did not create the hole I sought. The sawing and hammering probably scared the poor kittie half to death, though.  Lene called friends, including Bob, of  "Pandora", another Saga 43. He is a master woodworker. He advised against tearing the boat further apart; I agreed, not being able to see what was connected to what - how to do it. It appears that glue was use in addition to screws. So we sat and waited and in a half an hour -- out crawled Alphie. It was after ten oclock; we called the launch and went home, leaving ILENE a wreck.

Next day I spent three hours cleaning, putting her back together, making the bed, and putting a thinned coat of  new varnish on one side of the cafe doors, using the newspaper covered salon table as the work bench. Here they can dry without cats footprints. Several of the books I have read about the exploits of cruisers have chapters entitled to the effect: "The Night [insert name of cat] Went Missing." Most people would say that sailing with cats is not worth the trouble. We love them though.

Read More..

Deember 8 24 Slow Steady Progress But There Is a Lot Left To Do

Three visits to ILENE for a total of 14 hours during this period.  I lowered the chain from the boat to the ground, loaded it into a yard cart, and from there to a cardboard box in the cargo area of our mini SUV. An estimated 200 pounds, but easily movable, a few feet of links at a time. A few days later I drove to Jersey City and located Nicholas Galvanizing, in a thoroughly industrial area by the Hackensack River. Its staff slid the box off the back of my vehicle onto a wooden pallet to be moved by fork lift. The chain should be nice and shiny and protected for another 16 years soon after 2016 starts. While in Jersey I enjoyed a delicious, leisurely, Thai lunch in Berkely Heights with Jim, formerly of s/v "Aria", who is now sadly too disabled to sail. He gave me three excellent sailing books including Nigel Calders maintenance bible.
On the first of my three boat visits I also took most of the three bladed feathering propeller off its shaft, to be sent to its manufacturer, PYI, on the west coast, for refurbishment. Before going, I watched PYIs how-to video -- four times -- took notes and called the company to speak to the demonstrator, three times. But he demonstrated the disassembly of a shiny new prop and the video left out some pre and post steps. The parts are held together with ten Allen Head bolts. These are locked in place with tiny cut-off half length cotter pins inserted through holes in the sides of their heads, which pins were encrusted in place with layers of paint. By use of the scraper, ice pick and needle nose pliers, the pins came out. Also, I knew that unlike his model, my prop was loaded with heavy grease because I had pumped it in each year through zirc fittings. So I had a lot of rags and paper towels and Fantastic to get the grease off and into a plastic bag. And after the end of the video, the props central hub has to be removed by first removing two rods that hold a locking bolt on the tail end of the shaft in place, unscrewing that bolt, which required no tools, and then sliding the hub aft, off the shaft. The bolt removal was accomplished during my second visit, and that is when I ran into a problem for want of a tool that costs several hundred dollars but that I needed to use only once: a prop puller. But I met with Fernando at the boat to plan a big job that he will do with me: sanding off and spraying on primer and two coats of Awlgrip paint to renew the dark blue decorative boot stripes around the boat, just above the water line. Fernando did excellent work in repairing ILENEs stainless steel and fiberglass which were damaged by a hit and run at the mooring one night in the fall of 2013. In addition to telling me that the bottom is not ready for barrier coating but requires thorough sanding, a lot of sanding, he put me onto the man who does the diving work and other work for many folks at the Huguenot, Brian McCauley, who was present and who has a prop puller. The job will take only ten minutes and of course I was prepared to pay for his services, but he said he would just leave the tool under ILENE, so I could do the job myself and would pick up his tool later -- at no cost! Thanks Brian!
On my third trip the tool was there but I had to loosen the Spurs line cutter to fit the forward end of this tool at the forward end of the hub. This required a spraying of penetrant and then heat from the heat gun, but was accomplished and then the puller did its job, easily. Here are the pieces of the prop, except the bolt, at home, awaiting shipping.

I have also taken out four of the smallest pieces of the cabin sole, and done two of them, the ones that collar the mast. I sanded them down on the sides to make them a bit smaller so they will fit better, let them dry thoroughly and applied two coats of spray-on low-gloss polyurethane to their sides and bottoms, to seal out water, which drips from the mast boot, making this a damp area, and finally, lightly sanded their top surfaces, and applied the plastic paint. It looks good, so I can now do the rest of the cabin sole, piece by piece.
Also, the new teak flagpole, to which I had previously applied many coats of varnish, is finally complete: I got a 5/16th inch Phillips head bolt and after first using the Dremel tool to grind a flat spot on the side of the chrome plated brass base into which that bolt goes to hold the pole in it, I drilled a hole through the base at that flat spot,  and into the wood. A snug fit resulted, but removable, so that the new flag will not get torn to shreds in storms. And pole and flag will not be blown away again, as the combination did during a windstorm in Fort Lauderdale last winter.

I had two other ashore days in addition to the day of the drive to New Jersey. One consisted of about six hours at home on the computer and phone. In addition to learning from PYI about the prop disassembly, I called three potential sites for this winters Harlem winter excursion. The US Merchant Marine Academys Museum at Kings Point, directly across Long Island Sound is not available this year. The other two candidates were the National Lighthouse Museum, a short walk from the ferry terminal, and the Noble Maritime Collection at the Sailors Snug Harbor, about a ten minute bus ride from that terminal on Staten Island. After reading as much as I could and talking with all three places, I spent a day on Staten Island checking out both sites for that I have now called "The Harlem Yacht Clubs Fifth Annual-ish Dead-of-Winter, Out-of-Clubhouse, Salt Watery/Maritime Learning/Social/Dining Excursion".  The Lighthouse Museum is planning a major expansion over the next couple of years so I decided to wait until it is complete. For 2016 The Noble Maritime Collection is the winner and the event is being offered with an additional attraction -- two optional free boat rides -- on the Staten Island Ferry! For those who prefer to drive, it requires getting to Long Island and then crossing the Verranzano Bridge with its $15 toll, though parking is free.
The Noble Maritime Collection is a little gem of a museum located on the site of the Sailors Snug Harbor, formerly an old age home for destitute, family-less, worn-out seamen. The Snugs, as residents were called, were offered a comfortable somewhat spartan free ride. I have characterized it as a way station on their route from their life at sea to Fiddlers Green. Ciro, the Associate Director, opened the place for me on a weekday, when it is normally closed, so I could scope it out to describe it to the Harlemites. More on this place after Sunday, February 21, when the excursion is now scheduled. Ciro also put me onto Blue, a nice waterside (to the Kill van Kull) restaurant less than a quarter mile away, where the dining portion of our excursion will take place, at prices that are comparable to those at the Clubs dining room.
I checked out my friend Bobs blog: SailPandora. When I left him in Hampton, VA he was excitedly planning his cruise to the Caribbean. But a delayed start due to weather and then possible mechanical problems early on the route to Tortola forced him to divert to Beaufort NC; he had lost the availability of his crew and the good weather and was compelled to change his destination to Florida and the Bahamas, where he has been the past two seasons. He did find friends to help him jump the boat from Beaufort to Florida and is now back in CT with Brenda and family before rejoining Pandora in the first days of 2016. As a man of my own passions, he likes to have new horizons in his sights. Currently he has an application pending with the US Government for a permit to visit Cuba. He is applying under the journalism category and has submitted his blog as the journal in question with the hope that the government reviewer of his application has a sense of humor, because he injects a lot of humor in his postings; would that I could be so witty. He also hopes that the reviewer is a sailor who can understand the difference between beating into the wind and letting it push you from behind; due to the prevailing winds being almost always from the east, he prefers a clockwise circumnavigation of Cuba, departing from the Bahamas and returning to Key West. However, the regulations seem to suggest that at a U.S. registered boat he can only visit Cuba leaving directly from a U.S. port, without a stop in another nation. I sure hope Bobs plans work out.

And speaking of plans, I also spent some time learning more about ILENEs proposed summer cruise to the Bras Dor Lakes at the NE end of Nova Scotia. The SCCAs journals include one account of a voyage to Nova Scotia from Mount Desert Island, Maine, in 2002. Old, but while the shoreside amenities may have changed, the waters and rocks do not change that fast. The 18 foot tides of the Bay of Fundy, which we experienced on our voyage to Eastport, Maine in 2013, do not extend to the ocean or Atlantic side of that Province, where six foot tides, comparable to those at the Harlem, prevail, I am told. And  the distance from Northeast Harbor in Mt. Desert Island to the check-in town in Nova Scotia is 165 nautical miles, which I compute as about 24 hours at 6.5 knots. So an overnight sail is in order. With tidal currents running swiftly around Nova Scotias SE cape, its a passage that has to be carefully timed and on a good weather day. I think we can get nearly a month in Nova Scotia between our scheduled arrival in Maine in late June and the beginning of the Corinthian cruise in Mt. Desert Island starting July 25. My mate is not yet totally committed to this summer float plan

(the other two crew members do not have votes) but I am continuing to plan for Nova Scotia and my gal usually comes around once she can see the fully thought out plan with enough safety lay days to avoid problems. Wish us luck, both Pandora and ILENE.

Read More..