Delay

Hurricane Tomas is interfering with my life...my plans! If this isn't a great window on my self absorption I don't know what is. I want to get home. I need to get home. I was supposed to be driving our car home very early tomorrow AM as our NY crew would be driving to Hampton today arriving later tonight. With the uncertainty of when Ilene the Boat will actually be leaving Hampton for the BVI's up in the air, crew has delayed their arrival in Hampton by at least a day. The truth is I am not in charge. I am not in charge of when they get here...I am certainly not in charge of hurricanes, and the world does not revolve around my needs.
These humbling experiences are wonderful tools by which to grow and I pray for the willingness to learn from them. And, the bottom line is that once I stop feeding on my anxiety and recognize I can't control things, the better I feel. Why I need to learn and re-learn this simple lesson over and over is beyond me...but that's the way it is. Did someone say Acceptance is the key?
Dave, our crew member (pictured above) who Roger found from asking on the Corinthian web site, arrived yesterday. He is a big, strong very experienced sailor who has been SO, SO helpful. We have been blessed with great help. Dennis on the way down, and now Dave and the rest of the crew...whenever they get here!
Today at 2 Pm we will have another Womens Roundtable. They have been so illuminating. Boy, the older I get the more I realize how important having women in my life is. Talk about wisdom! Todays womens meeting will focus more on life in the Caribbean rather than the journey down...Perfect!

Anticipating and Preparing

Roger here. The Carib 1500 (rally) organizers have begun their website to track boats and assigned the boats to classes -- those who will race against each other. Except that ILENE, and a large percentage of the other boats, are sailing in the cruising classes. The rally organizers have gone to great lengths to prevent insurance companies from considering the cruising boats as racers, which could void some insurance policies. We don't have a fixed start time and will be listed, at the end, as having finished, sort of like a pass-fail course, which we hope to pass.
In any event, we are one of 19 boats entered in Cruising Class 6, and have some very classy "competitors": Oyster, Hallberg-Rassy, Hylas, Tayana and Moody, as well as four catamarans. We are one of the smallest boats in our class, with one other 43, one 40; all the rest are larger, up to a 68 footer. Median size is 49 feet. The point is that smaller boats are slower so don't be surprised if we are lagging the fleet as you track us across the ocean.
Today, with the help of Rick Palm (who sails a Saga 48 -- our boat's bigger sister -- and who is an organizer of the rally and two time circumnavigator) we got good fresh water pressure back by tightening up some connections and cleaning the filter, making Lene, the lady, very happy. Lene is a good organizer and put the papers relating to the boat and its equipment in order and became ecstatic when she was able to persuade me to throw some of them out. Another sailor lent me his wire snake with which I was able to fish out the aft end of the first reefing line, which was caught in the boom. We spent some time at Costco getting non perishable provisions and I rigged up side sheets on snatch blocks to try to get better performance from the jib. If this contraption works (an open question) I will post pictures. We also attended lectures on medical and safety issues, weather and the gulf stream, and a demonstration of the inflation of a life raft and ignition of a hand held flare. I sat in the inflated "six man" ocean life raft (on land), the size of ours, with four other people -- it is crowded. But of 1200 rally boats over the last 2o years, no one has had to use their life raft and I hope to pass the test and not become the first.

Barefoot Dave

Characters abound, and I'm sure not only in Hampton, Va. All one has to do is be out in the world and one will meet new and interesting people. My tendency is to want to stay home...don't meet new people...stay with the familiar. Thank the universe I have a husband who is so different from me. He loves to meet new people and experience new situations. This leads me to Barefoot Davis. He has participated in every one of the 21 consecutive Caribbean 1500 rallies. He gave a talk today (the official start of the rally) about fishing, and a very funny one at that. He sang tonight at a local club with his band. That's him above performing at the local hangout (in person you would see that he is, indeed, barefoot). He lives on the island of St. Thomas. What an interesting guy, who I never would have heard sing (he was good!) if I had stayed behind on the boat. Roger says I should ALWAYS follow him...that I will always have a good time.
We first met Dave when he inspected our boat and helped Roger tune the mast. He is an extremely knowledgeable sailor.
Today was another day of errands and socializing. Tomorrow will be chock full of workshops, mainly for the people here who are making the ocean journey south. I plan on walking the docks here which are filled with beautiful boats that I haven't seen yet.

Progress and friends

Roger here. Lots of progress the last two days, except in learning how to get photos labeled and put in the right location. As discussed below, left is ILENE's starboard turnbuckles and right is Jim and Robin with Ilene at lunch.

Propane: It seems we suffered without coffee on the way down needlessly. The propane tank took only $2.02 worth of gas after sixteen days of use on the Club Cruise back in July and August. The attendant told me that the valve was "frozen" and tapped the tank on the curb. Voila! But his scale was broken. So to double check, when we visited our friends, Stan and Carol Hoegerman in Williamsburg VA, we brought the tank along and weighed it on their scale; it's full! The Hoegermans have moved to a large (compared to our NYC apartment) home in a newly being built community decorated with the magnificent quilts that Carol makes. And they fed us a delicious dinner.

Inspection: ILENE was inspected by Davis (Barefoot Dave to his friends), the spitting image of a beach bum with long wild blond hair, but quite knowledgeable about boating. ILENE passed the inspection with one exception to be corrected. The type of life jackets we use, Type 3, are worn comfortably and get inflated if one falls in the water, via a cylinder of compressed CO2. But the rally is required by some rules of the sea to require us to have Type 1 preservers -- the bulky orange "Mae West" style. An email to the crew who are going on the rally procured agreement by two of them to bring the required five Type 1s with the only remaining problem being where to put them on this increasingly crowded boat.

The Rig: Not part of the required inspection, but Dave also noted that the nut on the bolt that holds the horizontal boom to the vertical mast had almost come off. Now it is quite tight. He also helped me tune the rig (the wires that hold up the mast by running from it to chain plates (strong points) at the sides of the deck. I had known that they were too loose, but now they are tight through tightening of the turnbuckles, reinserting cotter pins and taping over those pins so no one, and no lines, get caught on their jagged ends.

Single Side Band (SSB) radio: This expensive toy was installed last summer by Chris Berger, back in New York. It is the means by which we will be in communication with the rest of the rally boats and receive weather information, so it has to work. But I had had some doubts about that status. Enter Tim Hassan, a marine electronics technician who is affiliated with the rally. We had heard him speak at the seminar we attended in Annapolis last winter and he tested the SSB by calling a station in mobile Alabama who replied "I hear you loud and clear!" The rest of the hour of Tim's time was a tutorial on how to use the SSB radio, a much better explanation than in any of the books I had read.

Old new friends: The announcement of our blog was emailed to Roy Smith of the Harlem Yacht Club, who forwarded it out to all of the other members. The Club's alums are also on the mailing list and we received an email from Robin and Jim Roberts, long standing members who became alums about a year ago. Robin's father and grandfather were members of the Harlem and she showed us trophies and medals he won in 1916 and 1917, with the club's pennant enameled onto the metal. They have lived aboard their LeFever 49 trawler, a Cadillac among trawlers, for about six years now and traveled extensively. Their boat is quite large and luxurious with every device one might want to have and lots of electric power to run them all. They filled our heads with useful information and one of the bits was a reference to a book about a voyage similar to ours from Toronto called An Embarrassment of Mangoes. Carol Hoegerman had given the book to Ilene just two days before.

Finally, our new insurance company, Pantaenius, has finally approved our policy.
Lots of progress and the benefit of good friends

The Rogue

That is the name of the wi fi booster bought to ensure and enhance wi fi access when in different harbors and marinas. Good name, no? Well, I have probably spent a total of 5 hours both yesterday and today working with the company we bought it from to get this thing to work. I have to say they have been "marvelous" in their efforts to help. I know more about how a router works than I ever thought possible. But, even though we are closer to having it fully functional, absolute success still eludes.
On the other hand, what a great opportunity to be patient and allow things to be worked on gradually. For me not to have immediate gratification...to bear frustration, is actually a sign of growth. I am grateful to be able to see the shortcomings in my personality, recognize them with the help of loving friends who don't judge...and see the change, however slight it may be, in my ability to tolerate what was once intolerable.
Thank you, HP.
I'm signing off now...going to try and watch Obama on the Jon Stewart show on the computer. More anon!

Working out the Kinks

I'm still learning how to use the blog and how to post different types of entries...links, pictures, videos. This is my attempt to post a video taken during the summer of 2008 on the boat.

How to Leave Comments on our Blog

We would love to read your comments and, of course, anyone reading our blog will be able to read them as well. Just click on the "comments" link beneath the particular entry. There is a drop down menu and you can choose google. You'll enter your email address and then a password. You can then write a post...edit...preview and publish. It takes a few seconds to sign in that way but it is really simple.

About our boat

Roger here. This posting should have come first, but a lot was happening the last few days before we left.

ILENE, the boat, is a Saga 43. She was built by Saga Yachts in St. Catherine's Canada in 1999.

She is hull number 23 of only 53 built before bankruptcy, but a new company has acquired the molds and is waiting for the economy to turn around and hoping to build more of them. Details and photos are available on the company's website, http://sagayachts.com/intro_43.html . Saga also built smaller numbers of 35, 40 and 49 foot long models. The boats' owners have an active internet forum so when I have a problem I can ask and get several prompt, thoughtful replies.

She is 43 feet long with a plumb vertical bow rather than the graceful overhanging bow of most boats. This vertical feature maximizes her length at the waterline, which permits a greater theoretical maximum speed. Like clipper ships of old, also built for speed: she is narrow and tall, with only 12 feet of beam (width) and a mast topping out at 63.5 feet above the water line (just short enough to pass under the fixed bridges of the Intercoastal Waterway which are 65 feet above the waterline at high tide). Her lines include a concave curve forward gradually converting to a convex curve about a quarter of the way back. She was designed by Robert Perry, a well regarded designer of many boats. Her keel is lead, dips 5' 8 " down into the water and comprises about a third of her 20,000 pound weight. But she currently weighs several tons more because of all of the water, diesel fuel, people, tools, personal effects, food, repair parts, etc. loaded aboard.

She is an "old man's boat", having zero exterior teak with its high maintenance, an electric windlass to raise her anchor and its 300 feet of chain and an electric winch to haul up her mainsail.

She has a solent rig, presumably named after the body of water by the Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England where the first Americas Cup race was won by the America. She has two head (front) sails, jibs, each mounted on a roller furler, one almost directly behind the other, that run from the front of the deck to the top of the mast. The forward one is a big genoa which is used in lighter winds. The smaller jib behind the genoa is to be used in heavier wind. It's bottom rear corner (clew) is attached by its single sheet (control line) to a block on a track that runs athwartships from port to starboard, so that tacking (changing course to put the wind from one side of the bow to the other) is easy: the sheet slides from one side to the other -- it is called "self tacking". Tacking while using the big frontal Genoa sail, however, requires planning and effort: the sail has to be furled, and then unfurled on the other side after the boat's direction has been changed.

We acquired ILENE in Annapolis in November 2005, from her original owner who had maintained her well and sailed her little. We have used her quite a bit during the last five summers including two months in the Chesapeake in 2006, living aboard her for almost five months in 2007 while our apartment was renovated and 79 days in Maine in 2008, in addition to day sailing, weekend sails, and shorter cruises of two to five weeks. But this is the big one!

The Clamors of Everyday Life

Boy, how the clamors of everyday life interferes with being present for myself and others. I spent so much time trying to make sure everything got fixed TODAY. The hot water..the internet connection...the single sideband radio...you name it, I wanted it to work NOW. I spent hours on the computer and on the phone working with the company we bought our wifi booster from trying to get it to work NOW. I forgot that I am not in charge and I can't make things happen as I want them when I want them. All this trying to control really interferes with the human and spiritual connections I want in my life. It just isn't worth it.
I heard someone say tonight that the difference between God and me is that God isn't trying to be me. How true!
And, btw, the internet connection is coming along. It will work. The single sideband is working. The hot water will be fixed. All will be fine, and I know that.
I miss little Alpha and Whitty but I know they will soon be frolicking on the boat with us as we cruise in our second home among the islands of the Caribbean. All will be very, very well. I end my day here in Hampton, Virginia in a state of near gratitude. It is where I want to be and I'm getting there.

Waking up in Hampton, Virginia

We slept for 8 solid hours. Waking up at 7:30, we loaded Dennis in the car (oh yes, Roger's college roommate and his beautiful bride loaned us their car for the duration of our stay here. They live in Williamsburg, an hour away, and drove here last night with two cars and left us one. Friends indeed!) and after fumbling our way around, found the Amtrak station in Newport News. We are now on our own. It feels like Daddy has left us kids to fend for ourselves...because he was SO helpful and wise and kind. We will miss him, but I feel excited to be on our own.
Roger wrote yesterday that a bird...a flicker, landed on our boat but he had left the cable to upload photos home. well, we found it and here is the flicker.

We made it to Virginia

Roger here.
Friday was a glorious sunny windy day We left the dock at 10:45. We put up our main sail shortened by two reefs and the small jib just after passing under the Verrazano Bridge. With the wind from the west, across our starboard side (think: passenger seat side) we blitzed down the coast of New Jersey to Atlantic City. But then the wind turned to the southwest and we had to go southwest and I made the mistake of excess caution: not putting up enough sail so were spent Saturday going rather too slowly. Sunday we continued tacking down the Delmarva Peninsula but we put up full sails and picked up a lot of speed. When we finally got south to the latitude of Chesapeake Bay, however, we were about 58 miles off shore and sailed west to the mouth of the Bay. However, we were able to calculate that if we continued, we would be entering the bay and the marina in the dark, fighting an adverse tide. So we decided to kill time for a few hours going nowhere as slowly as possible until we were able to calculate that it was time to head in. And we got tied up at the Bluewater Yachting Center in Hampton VA at about 8:30 Monday morning.
Highlights of the trip:
Ilene standing night watches in the ocean all bundled up against the severe cold on Friday night in six layers of clothing under her heavy insulated foul weather gear, mittens, hat, life preserver and harness; I won't say that she never griped but she was a good sport overall.
A flicker, a land bird with a red band around the back of his neck who landed a foot from my head and hitchhiked with us for about an hour; he seemed exhausted. (Pictures will have to await Lene's return to NY where I accidentally left the cable that permits transfer of photos to the computer.)
Some rather close encounters with large container ships who did not respond to my radio message: "Merchant vessel approaching the Virginia Coast: This is the sailing vessel ILENE, off your starboard bow; do you see me." We had the right of way, but altered course to pass astern of such unresponsive behemoths.
We can't thank Dennis Groves enough for coming with us on this journey; he was a great help, very knowledgeable and never complained, even over the fact that because I forgot to load the propane tank we had cold food the entire trip; no coffee, cocoa or soup to warm cold bodies.
A school of dolphins who accompanied us for the ten miles or so from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge tunnel to the mouth of the Hampton River, surfacing at our sides and under our bow, in the early morning, with their smiley faces.

Tomorrow starts six days of preparations and training and parties and made more pleasant by my college roommate, Stan Hoegerman, who will lend us his car! This evening, he and his wife Carol with join Lene and me and dennis for dinner: all three of the men being Cornellians!

Today's the Day!

OK...so off we go! Roger and I were at the boat yesterday for HOURS!!! Now I know his secret of staying thin. he doesn't eat all day because he is totally occupied with getting the boat ready for her sail south. It is a neat trick and I may try and do more of what he does...work. I found that being involved with something other than TV keeps ones mind off of ones stomach. There are multiple benefits to getting out of ones own head!
So, enough about me. Ilene the boat is floating. She doesn't have her head sails up yet but that will be done this morning and if you head down to the East River at about 10 or 11 am you will see us heading out past Lady Liberty (I'll take a photo!) and into the ocean.
It's our grand adventure beginning.

The Day Before

It is so interesting to see the EXTREME stress I am feeling as I get ready to leave my home...my life...for six months. It's not that I actually "feel" it. I just exhibit it. So, I can see it. I can see it in my lack of patience, my temper and my total self absorption. NO-ONE has anything going on in their life but me! This better go away quickly or I might lose myself totally, or lose my friends and family as they flee from the tempest that seems to be me. This post probably belongs in a journal more than a blog about sailing but I'm not sure I can keep the personal stuff out. So, it will be what it will be.
Today we head for the boat for the survey. Hopefully, the surveyor shows up and the boat passes. If so, it gets "launched" this afternoon (put into the water as she {boats are ALWAYS a she} has been in dry dock for about a month) and we set sail tomorrow.
At least I get to come home on or about November 1st while Roger heads out to sea for the 1500 mile journey to the British Virgin Islands. He appears so calm next to me but I know he can't be that calm. We each have our temperment. Are we born with it?

Fixed Schedules. Ha!

Our new departure date is Friday, October 22nd. It all makes perfect sense to me. Now, our sail to Virginia will be on the weekend. This is a perfect time for me as I have more time at home and more availability to my candidates during the work week. We do have cell and internet coverage on the boat but I am unsure if that coverage is readily available 5 miles off the coast of the U. S. All in all, I am happy that our journey has been delayed by a few days. Originally we were to set sails on Wednesday...Today!
I am fairly certain this happiness at the delay doesn't mean I really don't want to go. I do. I really, really do!

Roger's First Post

I'm Roger, husband of Ilene, the woman, as contrasted to ILENE The Boat. I will be adding my typically verbose musings from time to time. Ilene tends to write about her impressions and emotions while I tend to stick to the facts about the sailing. She is my sails; I am her keel.



This blog is intended to chronicle our planned voyage to and in the Caribbean, now scheduled to commence on Thursday, October 21, and end in late May. I will share our plans, though I have recently learned, the hard way (running the boat onto rocks is the hard way) that the most dangerous item to carry on a sailboat is a fixed schedule. In fact our plans are so undetermined that as of May 2011 we may have sailed home to the New York area, ending this planned adventure of a lifetime, or, if (1) we can arrange insurance coverage and (2) Ilene tolerates and indeed comes to love Island Living as much as I hope and think she will, we will leave the boat in drydock in Trinidad in May 2011, fly north, spend the summer boatless, fly back this time next year, and spend the winter of 2011-12 sailing back home. (The reason for Trinidad is that it is south of the official summer hurricane belt, just as New York is north of it.)

Our first leg is from City Island, in Long Island Sound, New York, to Hampton, Virginia, near Norfolk, about 300 miles. We plan to exit New York Harbor into the Atlantic and hug the coast until we enter the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. Ilene and Dennis, a new friend who is an excellent sailor and a retired physician and who has this week helped doing the myriad things needed to get the boat ready will join me for this leg. In Hampton we plan to join the Caribbean 1500 -- a flotilla of over 50 boats going from Virginia to Tortola, British Virgin Islands, keeping in radio contact, though we may not see each other because it is a wide ocean. In Hampton there is a plan for inspection of the boat by the event organizers to assure that all safety equipment is in tip top shape, lectures, demonstrations, parties, repairs, and provisioning the boat with food for the next leg, which is the longest leg -- ten days in the ocean, from Virginia to Tortola.

That leg is scheduled to begin in the first good weather window on or after November 1 and to last about ten days. For this leg, I will be accompanied by four male friends while Ilene will drive our car home and then fly down to Tortola with our cats, and the guys will fly home. After Tortola, we are rather footloose and fancy free. I am excited with anticipation -- high as a kite!

Tuesday, October 19th

Of course, if I stay in the moment, I won't be able to relive yesterday when I saw my picture (in a sea of other faces but definitely me) on page A23 of the NY Times. It was so fun! I had attended a screening at Fordham Law School of "Twelve Angry Men" (genius) on Sunday and then heard a conversation with Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Very impressive Woman. And seemingly so nice! I will miss moments like that.... what NYC offers. But, it will be very nice to miss winter. I have today and tomorrow to get my act together because even though I'll be home for about 10 days starting November 1st...I want to take all of the clothing I'll need with me for 6 months in the Caribbean on this sail to Virginia. When I fly to Tortola to meet with Roger, I'll be schlepping cat food!

Anticipation!

Today I learned how to blog! I am so excited. Keep checking back for updates. Our plan is to leave on Thursday, October 21st for Virginia. This will be my first real offshore cruise. I will be open to instruction and suggestion.