A November to Remember

Caution: Not much in this posting is about new boating related activities.

When I was in college my fantasy life was: professional work by day and enjoyment of some sort of theater or other cultural event once a week. Well it didn't work out that way for a long time; work and other responsibilities consumed all of the time and cultural recreation got lost in the muddle of life.

But retirement changed that calculus and I've been making up for lost time. While I still get up between five and six, post-retirement life means the first two hours of the day are spent with the New York Times; what a luxury. And then there is my correspondence, mostly by email these days; and Facebook.

But what a November! The first two days we were still in the dark following hurricane Sandy. Six were spent getting the boat prepared for the winter (as reported in my last posting). Three involved traveling to and spending time with my family in Atlanta. Three were used in planning, shopping for, cooking and eating Thanksgiving dinner. One dinner meeting of the Book Group. Three events, including services, at my Temple in New Jersey. Two doctors appointments, one work party at the Club to start cleaning up the damage the storm caused to the clubhouse and one Club membership meeting. Five afternoons in the Map Room of the New York Public Library working on my volunteer project, making sense of some 6000 nautical charts published by the United States Navy's Hydrographic Office from the 1850's the the 1950's. The map room is another water related project; about which you will hear more when I get it done, this winter.

And the rest: Three lectures, two concerts, three movies, and ten stage plays. Eighteen events altogether. We get tickets to some broadway and most off-broadway events from playbyplay.com at $4 per ticket or clubfreetime.org, for free. Not all of the events are great, a few are fantastic and all are well worth the money. To many of these cultural events we can walk!

I count my blessings; in fact, those from November are counted above. It sounds to me like bragging but it is actually a sharing of gratitude.

ILENE Is Under Wraps Until Spring

Yes, after six more work days (well, average of only 4-5 hours per day) ILENE is finally all trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey, under her blue canvas cover. (Starboard quarter look an starboard bow look)

Her oil and filter have been changed, her water systems winterized, her fuel tanks filled, her deck washed and she is ready for winter and winter projects.
Amidst those work days was a trip to Atlanta to visit my brother and my Mom, which provides the excuse for me to post a picture of my really cute grandniece and grandnephew.

No more sailing in 2012. Only 164 days up to and including our arrival back in New York on June 12 and 50 more sailing/living aboard days thereafter for a total of 164. Plus, with a month and a half to go,  19 "boat work" days so far and 16 "other boat" days. So it has been 189 days related to boating this year. I can no longer complain about being boating deprived.
As thanksgiving approaches, one is reminded how blessed we are in so many ways; we have so much to be thankful for.

I hope to have things to say on this blog during the winter, but of course the posts will be less frequent.

We And Our Boat Were Spared

My last post had a "Perils of Pauline" or "cliff-hanger" ending. So I began this post with the resolution right in the title because I dislike being kept in suspense.

The weathermen had predicted a 13 foot "storm surge" and I feared that 13 feet on top of the normal high tide would have "floated my boat," and its dock, off its pilings to their probable destruction. But it seems that I had an inaccurate definition of "storm surge" in mind.  The apparent definition is the height of the water from "mean low water", the normal level of the water at low tide, up to the crest at the top of the storm-caused high tide which was thirteen feet. This definition ignores the fact that the first six feet of the rise of the so called storm surge is unrelated to the storm itself but happens normally, about every twelve hours, every day, even on the most tranquil days. So the portion of the "storm surge" that I would have give that name, is only that portion the rise above mean high water. So the storm surge, the increment of additional tidal rise caused by the storm, above the normal high tide was only seven feet, not thirteen and not high enough to cause destruction.

Other docks at the Huguenot YC were not as fortunate as the remote one they assigned us to. Pilings bent over

and having floated part way off  the top because the diagonal shortened the height of the piling, crashed through the dock. The square of rollers in the lower right is what this piling used to come up through!

This dock, at which our friends' boats: "J-Erica" of Bruce and Linda, and "Windsong" of Jerry and Louise, had been tied, are rather wrecked, but those two boats and many others tied to it, were relocated to other docks where they apparently survived.

The club let me use a nice twin ended rowing boat to get out to the dock to inspect and load a few winter things aboard. One of the three fenders I had hung at ILENE's port side as cushions between boat and dock was lying on her deck and someone had hung a fourth small one at her side during my absence. The seven lines seemed a bit looser than I left them. A six foot branch of a tree was lying on the dock and what appears to be a large blue plastic port-a-potty booth was floating just beneath the surface of the water between the port quarter of the boat and the dock.

Meanwhile, at the Harlem, there was storm damage. Two boats, including Bennett's "Defiance", on which I enjoyed the Club Cruise during the summer of 2011, is lying on her side on a sandy beach of Rodman's Neck, awaiting the insurance company's appraiser to determine whether she shall be repaired or scrapped. [Note: Defiance was spared with only superficial damage!] At the Clubhouse, the steps and ramp from the lawn to the dock was ripped off from its proper place and moved about two feet inland. The patio deck had wrenched about two feet seaward, away from the clubhouse and one of the concrete pilings on which it is mounted was bent over; two ground level windows of the water-facing greenhouse-like restaurant were broken and the several inches of water that had warped the floorboards and the rug, had receded; there was debris throughout the parking lot; a ramp to the locker house had been ripped away from that house a few feet (The metal ramp and the wood platform used to abut the locker house).

One boat, Tom's "Odyssey", with a retracted swing keel, which consequently was sitting very low on its cradle had floated part way off this cradle and is hanging on but not my much, very near Jim's "Aria".  The blue carpeted wooden blocks in the foreground were holding the boat in place until it was washed about six feet backwards!

I will undoubtedly go to a work party to help clean the place up, but not until the insurance company gets a chance to assess the damage.

All told we all fared a lot better than the large square rigged "Bounty" replica, lost off Hatteras, and have lots to be thankful for.

And how about the home front? We do have a land base, seven floors (six flights of stairs) above the streets of Manhattan, but near Broadway, "high" on the island's north-south spine. No water, salty or otherwise, entered our apartment. Fresh water was cut off as a consequence of loss of electricity (which powers the pumps that bring the water up).  Power went out below a non-straight line that crossed Manhattan from east to west somewhere in the 30's and 40's. This started in the height of the storm's fury at about 8:30 Monday night and was not restored until about about 5:30 pm Friday, about 93 hours later. A Ginko tree planted outside our window, its branches having been cropped off at about our level, was whipping back and forth during the high wind but the tall remaining branches neither broke off not broke our windows. Another tree, planted in a small piece of unpaved ground at the curb, had a huge limb torn off which blocked the street but was quickly pulled to the side of the street where it lies, awaiting final removal in due course.

Many huge old trees went down in parks, which were closed to all but parks employees.

It was eerie to walk on a deserted Broadway in broad daylight. Usually it is crowded with cars and people even at night. Here are view north and south from Tenth Street on the morning after the storm.

We had an old battery powered portable radio and the NY Times was delivered after the first day, (not to our door as normal, but to the lobby). The corridors and stairways have no windows and were completely black. We had one not very strong flashlight (plus a detachable Kindle reading light) and no way to charge phones or other devices, which did not work from home anyway, probably because power to our local cell phone tower was out. Until Thursday, our refrigerator retained its cool and we used matches to light the stove to make tea; no coffee because our brewer here is electric.  We had set out two huge multi-gallon pots of water for washing, but it was not enough to flush the toilets, except once, so we used a bit of bleach to retard odor, but the place was a bit stinky for a while. Each morning we went out and headed north to get coffee and from Wednesday on we visited friends and restaurants and theaters north of the no-power zone. We brought towels and were permitted to take showers -- just like on the boat when we frequently go ashore for showers. My objective was to stay out well past 7 pm, at which hour we would have gone to bed and listened to the radio had we stayed home. We are young and fit enough to handle the six flights of stairs. Many older people in the building, especially those who would have had to climb as many as 19 flights of stairs, were more stuck. Our large and friendly building staff performed heroically in helping them. We got to know the busses that serve our city even though until the last night, they terminated at 23rd Street after dark because of lack of street lights below there, out of safety concerns. So we had to walk the last 13 blocks in darkness. The fare during this period was zero -- a free ride -- and folks were friendly.

We had an available more comfortable alternative to our apartment, one with light, water and heat: ILENE, but Lene could not be persuaded to go there. I believe that her months of living aboard had accustomed Lene to the more rugged life style we enjoyed for four days.

We are so blessed to have been spared and think of friends and strangers in New Jersey and elsewhere who are still without power, and some of who were killed.

End Of The 2012 Sailing Season - Hurricane Sandy

The Club's annual Going Out of Commission dinner dance was held last week. Here are all the flags at the top of the flagpole, and then after the ceremony of our Flag officers backed up by all of the past Commodores and the firing of the cannon, the same flags after being lowered.

Good food and less excessive than in prior years. I commended the Club's cruisers and got a pewter thing thing announcing ILENE's third place finish in the "Sprint to Louie's" race. Met up with Richard and Rosemary, who having sold their boat, will continue to commute between New Jersey and Florida, but no longer by sea. They sailed to Nova Scotia a few years ago and have promised to help me plan a route.

I sailed five more days during the second half of October, mostly with men and women of the Old F__ts, though not necessarily on Wednesdays. Some with more wind and others with less. One memorable sail was under the Throggs Neck and Whitestone Bridges in good wind beating and against the strong tidal current, followed by a quick return with the wind and tide at our back. Because ILENE was one of the few boats still operational, I had little difficulty finding companions.

A sixth sail, with Cynthia, was prevented by lack of wind; overcast grey skies but no wind. We ate our lunches aboard and were talking when I asked if she minded if I did some work in the cockpit while we continued our conversation. I removed the dodger and bimini. This was made difficult by the fact that these blue canvas covers had not been put up last October. Normally they are not up for more than six months. The metal parts of their plastic zippers has corroded somewhat and liberal application of lubricant was required to get them off. Cynthia was happy with a day out on the water despite the absence of sailing and, noticing some rust on the stainless, asked if she could help remove it. I broke out the Never Dull (cotton padding impregnated with an anti-oxidant solvent) and she did a good job.

The last passage of the season was with Rhoda and Lloyd, from the Harlem to the Huguenot Yacht Club, where ILENE will be hauled this winter. I had planned to move to the Huguenot next week but the imminent arrival of Hurricane Sandy sped up the time table. We motored the five miles, except I put out the small jib on the longest stretch, a starboard beat from Hart Island to the channel into New Rochelle Harbor, which heeled us a bit and gave us an extra knot. The only disappointment on this passage was the thwarting of my plan to fill ILENE's  diesel tanks, en route, for the winter (to prevent condensation of water on their empty insides which means water in the fuel tanks). Both of the fuel docks in New Rochelle had been rented out to boats trying to find a safe place during the coming storm, preventing access to the docks. So several trips between local gas stations and the boat with jerry cans are in my near future. I had helped Lloyd and Rhoda bend on and remove their two smaller sails from "Jazz Sail" several times and they eagerly helped me remove ILENE's.  But while I can do their sails alone in 20 minutes, it took 3.5 hours with their help to remove and fold ILENE's three large sails.   So again, as with Cynthia the day before, I was the grateful recipient of several hours of unexpected free labor.

ILENE is currently on a floating dock at the Huguenot in a narrow strait, protected from the winds by the mainland to the north and Glen Island to the south. None of the huge waves that the Hurricane will kick up will bother her. She is tied to this dock with seven dock lines. All of her canvas has been removed as well as blocks, and lines -- thus further reducing windage.

But unfortunately she is not safe as of this writing. The floating dock to which she is tied is held in place by pilings -- telephone poles driven as piles into the earth beneath the water. Reinforced holes through the dock's surface surround the pilings. Thus the dock slides up these poles when the tide rises and falls when the tide goes out, and the boats tied to it rise and fall with the dock so that adjustments in the lengths of the dock lines are not necessary.  The problem is that these pilings stick up about eight feet above the surface of the water at normal high tide. The problem/risk is that the water could rise A LOT MORE than eight feet above normal high tide. If this happens, the dock will slide off over the top of the pilings and, with ILENE attached, and her keel sticking down 5' 8", the combined unit will go where the winds blow it, onto rocks or other boats or docks. The largest cause of an abnormal high tide is the hurricane's winds which have been blowing from the northeast for several days and will intensify as the storm's center gets nearer. These winds blow ocean water into the Sound's eastern end, and with no place to go (Hell's Gate is too narrow), causes the water level to rise several feet above the normal tidal level. Three other factors aggravate the problem. (1) low atmospheric pressure (they call them tropical depressions or troughs) cause higher tides; (2) the full moon was only two days ago and full and new moons cause higher highs and lower lows; (3) all of the heavy rain falling into the Sound itself and on adjacent land and flowing from the rivers will further raise the water level in the Sound.

Our friends, Dean and Susan, of "Autumn Borne" are also on a floating dock in Portsmouth Virginia. They are living aboard during the storm and we are praying for each other. Our boats are insured, but that is not a claim anyone wishes to make. The highs of the tidal cycles in New York will be between 1 and 2 AM and PM these stormy days and nights. There is nothing else we can do for ILENE until the storm passes. We can't get to her by foot or by boat. Yesterday afternoon I joined with many other members in hauling several boats and finally hauling the launch itself. We also took the ground floor furniture upstairs. A six foot above normal tide will flood the ground floor.

We are home, on the seventh floor, far from the edge of Manhattan, with food, water, flashlights, portable radios and phones. Let's read a good book. Will let you know how it ends.

Donnie Cahn, Rest In Peace

Donnie Kahn died last week at 87, from the cancer that had attacked her body. She was a member of the Harlem Yacht Club for 40 years and though I met her when I joined, 22 years ago, I didn’t get to know her until 2006 when I retired and joined the “Club Within The Club” (See Blog, 7/26/12), of which she was a charter member. 

Donnie was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia and escaped when the Nazis were invading. She continued to sail her boat, a lovely and well built and very well maintained Bristol 36’, “Dido,” after her husband died, before I joined the Harlem, and up to and including 2011, after which her illness sapped her strength this summer. 

I attended her funeral service on Manhattan’s upper west side, her burial in Mt. Carmel Cemetery near the Brooklyn-Queens border, a Shiva call in her apartment overlooking the Hudson River and a small informal dinner in her memory at the Harlem. She was always cheerful and always game. She will be missed.

Rendezvous with "Autumn Borne"

We met up with Dean and Susan of "Autumn Borne" in South Carolina and Maryland. They are live aboards, this being their sixth year without a land base. I had hoped to visit with them by auto in Hop-O-Nose Marina in Catskill NY where they spent this summer during a projected trip to the Berkshires, nearby. But best laid plans ....  We're having too much fun so the Berkshire weekend hasn't come off yet and they are headed south. They are holed up at the Atlantic Highlands YC on a mooring behind the seawall, on their way south, waiting for a good weather window So I drove to Atlantic Highlands (just a bit over an hour) to spend  a few hours telling stories and what else, oh yes, eating. And having a car, I was able to take them to West Marine (for a fresh water pump -- and how could I resist picking up a few little useful things for ILENE?) and later to the supermarket -- the two sites that cruisers sometimes need a car to get to. Their plans this winter, past Florida, are up in the air. I guess the obvious meaning of that idiom would be wind related -- important for sailors, but in their case it also depends largely on what the friends who they plan to meet there will decide to do. Dean and Susan have promised to stop by at the Harlem on their way north next summer. Fair winds, AB!
OK I admit it. With this visit and reading the blog of our friends on Pandora (southbound and currently in the Dismal Swamp canal -- sailpandora.com),  I am a bit jealous of my southbound friends. Even Lene has expressed a longing to be back afloat!

A Fun-Filled Non-Sailing Weekend

Saturday was "work weekend" at the Harlem. This event is held each spring and fall to get a lot of projects done at the Club with free labor -- except that a delicious "free" lunch is served. "Will work for food" is what my sign reads. If you don't show up you are encouraged to pay $25, but this "rule" is not enforced and I do work on other days for the Club so I did not pay when we missed the event the last few years. But I like work weekends because they are a great way to meet our members - working alongside them and talking. Such members, co-workers really, become friends in the process.

 I was assigned first to pull weeds on the north side of the clubhouse. This was a solo job and damned hard work. The last stage was pulling little ground weeds like the ones a person would find in a garden. These did not become visible until the huge vines, growing through the chain link fence, were cut away. The vines blocked the narrow passage between the property fence and the refrigeration equipment hidden away near it and removal of this thicket was the purpose of the project. I would have been well served by a pair of pruning shears; lacking such, wearing work gloves, I ripped the damn things out. All except one vine that looked to me like poison ivy.  Then, before and after lunch, I worked with two others on scraping, priming and painting the wrought iron outdoor deck furniture. After washing all the green paint off my hands (when will I learn to wear rubber gloves?), I helped Rhoda and Lloyd remove their sails, it being such a windless day.

Finally a Club membership meeting from 5 to 7. I rather enjoyed the civility of it all, especially compared to the past, when ad hominem attacks were regrettably common.

Sunday I worked from 6 am to 6:30 pm, cooking a “gourmet dinner for six”  that I had offered to the Club in a "Goods and Services Auction". The auction was held last winter while we were away. In the past, for other organizations, I have offered a ride on our boat, perhaps a dozen times, but such an offering would not work at the Club because we all have boats.  This dinner had been "won" by three of our past commodores, Ernie, Stu and Mark, and their wives. The guests were all friends who we have sailed with and hence people who I would have liked to have invited to a dinner party even absent the auction. 


Today's work (may I call it a labor of love) was after more than a day of planning the menu, shopping for ingredients and doing the cookie baking beforehand. But the folks came and enjoyed so the challenge was worth it. Lene helped with preparing some of the ingredients, printing out the menu, setting the table and serving and clearing, tasks which would have been quite difficult for me without her. Unfortunately for Lene, her current dining plan precluded her from joining in the eating part of the evening  -- enjoying the fruits of her labors. 

The menu:

 Dinner for Three Past Commodores and Their Commodorables

                                          October 14, 2012

                                            Theme:  Circles

     Wines:

         Shiraz  --  Nine Stones --  Mclarenvale, Australia – 2008

         Pinot Grigio – Bollini – Fruili Grave, Italy – 2008

     Before:

          Green olives, Dates with edible pits, Pate of truffled livers

     Bread, home baked, with butter

     Soup:   Peach and Pumpkin

     Salad:  Beet, Orange, Fennel and Calamata, vinaigrette

     Entrée:

          Pork Loin stuffed with Drunken Prunes

          Garlicky Mashed Potatoes

          Stir Fried Snow Peas, Scallion, Ginger, w/ Pecans and black and white Sesame Seeds

     Desert:

         Roasted spiced pineapple a la mode (pineapple and Vanilla) over Strawberry Coulis

         Rugelach and Biscotti

     Coffee or Tea

     After:  La Grenade Liqueur -- product of Grenada

I always search for themes for our dinner parties. This time the theme of "Circles" came into my mind 

when I realized that many of the dishes were round: olives, dates stuffed with almonds, soup (in 

bowls), beet and orange slices, pork and pineapple. So I cut little circles of the pate with an apple 

corer and portioned the mashed potatoes in a half-cup measure to form timbales, to augment the theme.

The salad:

Altogether a very fun filled weekend, without being aboard a boat, other than a boat on the hard in removing sails.

Warm Feelings About a Good Deed

 Enjoyed a very pleasant day with Nick and others. Nick is a member of the Harlem who has been placed in a nursing home, probably for the rest of his life, as a result of memory issues.  But his non-recent memory is fine. While visiting a while ago, he expressed a keen desire to go sailing again. I thought: Why not?!  And the nurse said "Sure, you can take him out for a ride as long as you do not keep him out overnight." I am a member of a group who is trying to look after Nick's interests. The leader of this group, Alan, "cleared" me with the authorities there, viewing the need for such a clearance to prevent strangers from "taking Nick for a ride,"  in the slangy sense of that phrase

On the day in question, after several adjournments due to questionable weather days, Harry, a long time friend who is not from the Harlem, joined me in picking up Nick before 11 am. He was crying, literally,  when we arrived and complaining about his “prison”. We said: “Well not today; you're going sailing today!” and that was the end of tears for the day.  He drove with us to the Harlem YC where we all got sandwiches from the local IGA because the Club dining room is closed on weekdays for the remainder of the season. We ate aboard after getting underway. There had been some fear about Nick’s ability to walk the length of the dock, climb into the launch and from the launch onto the boat, but he handled these tasks as well as the six others of us. There were seven men altogether. The four in addition to Nick, Harry and me were fellow members of the Harlem: Brian, Al,  Mike and Howard, of "The Club Within The Club." Every man enjoyed the day. Both before and after the sail, Nick went over to his boat, on its cradle, at the side of the Club parking lot, and admired her lines. 

We were underway from shortly after noon until just before six pm.  The winds were moderate and we used the full main and small, self-tacking jib. Nick took his turn at the helm and handled the boat well and conservatively. We went out to close by Rye, NY and then tacked on the way back and used the motor for the final hour because our launch closes at six these pre-winter evenings so we had to hurry. Nick and all the rest of us amused each other by telling each other stories. After returning to shore, Harry, Nick and I had dinner at Artie’s Italian restaurant (Thanks Harry) and we drove Nick back to the nursing facility, arriving at about 7:30. 

I will definitely be looking forward to a repeat sail with Nick, et al.,  next season.

Nice News Today

I was at the funeral today of a good guy, who died without pain at age 83, surrounded by three daughters, their husbands and his six grand kids. But the good news is that there I met a woman who told me that eight years ago I had taken a group of Temple Youth Group kids out for a day sail. Her son, then in the fifth grade, was among them. Now he is on the sailing team of his university. It's nice to think that our little positive gestures can have such good results.

218 Days and 218 nights

OK, I confess. Yes, I am a bit compulsive about counting things. By recording facts in a log one gains the ability to see patterns that are interesting to me -- and perhaps to some of you. Actually the "log" is more of a diary than a traditional sailing log. It is the source from which the posts to this Blog are drawn, but has a lot more detail. Many have asked where we went and what we did on a daily basis or on a typical day, etc..  So here goes. No photos this time.

The on-board portion of last winter’s return trip adds up to 218 days and nights.  This began with ILENE’s splashdown into the brownish waters of St. David Harbor, on the SE coast of Grenada on November 7, 2011.
And it ended with our arrival at the Harlem Yacht Club, City Island, New York, on June 12, 2012. The 218 exclude our thirteen days in a hotel at St. David's while preparing the boat for her voyage after her summer on land in Grenada.

Where did we go? We visited 17 nations aboard ILENE, which are listed below in the order we visited them. Following each is a parenthesis with numbers in it.The first number represents the number of separate ports, anchorages or marinas at which we stopped for at least one night in each nation. Then, following a dash, the second number shows the total number of nights spent in that nation. Seven of the seventeen nations, those with an asterisk following the parentheses, are nations we did not visit on our way south the winter before  -- “new” nations to us.  An 18^th nation, also with asterisk, would be Saba, Dutch West Indies, but we visited this nation by ferry from Sint Maarten rather than aboard ILENE and we did not spend a night there.

          Grenada                                            (4-20)

          St. Vincent and the Grenadines         (4-8)

          St. Lucia                                            (2-3)

          Martinique                                        (4-9)

          Domenica                                         (1-1)

          Guadeloupe                                      (5-10)

          Antigua                                             (3-7)

          Nevis                                                (1-8)*

          St. Barts                                            (2-2)*  

          Sint Maarten  (Dutch)                       (1-10)*  (ILENE was in French Saint Martin last year)

          Anguilla                                            (1-3)* 

          The British Virgin Islands                (6-9)

          The US Virgin Islands                      (5-9) 

          Puerto Rico                                      (8-25)*

          Turks and Caicos                             (5-10)*

          The Bahamas                                   (14-34)*

          USA                                                (19-45)

We spent six nights “nowhere,” that is, underway, at sea.  (Two nights during which we got underway in the dark of the early morning hours are counted as if we “stayed” that night.)  All of the eight total and partial at sea nights were in the final 43 percent of the days of the trip. We stopped in 84 ports, but Lene spent 19 days in 18 of those 84 ports without going ashore. I had only 18 "stay aboard" anchorages because I went exploring at St. Louis on Marie Galante Island in Guadeloupe while Lene remained aboard there. Most of these stay aboard places were either due to high winds which would have made dinghy rides problematic, or because there was simply no nearby attractions ashore; and one was due to customs and immigration. You don't have to check in and out if you stay only one night and do not go ashore which we did in Domenica.   218 nights divided by 18 nations means an average of twelve days per nation; median - nine.    There are many other places that we would have liked to stay longer and many others that we had to skip, and any return trip would surely also include a return to some of our favorites.

How often and how far did we move?  ILENE made 83 passages which, with overnight passages taking more than one day, means she moved during 89 of the 218 days or 41 percent of the days --about two of five. So three of five days were "lay days."  When I was younger I would have despised such a lazy plan but now  ....  we had lots of sailing, thank you.
Our stays in any one spot ranged from one day, e.g. in Prince Rupert Bay, Domenica to ten days in the lagoon in Sint Maartin. Average duration in each port: 2.6 nights. Interspersed with longer stays in some ports were periods in which we made a new passage each of  four or five consecutive days, as in the lower Bahamas and approaching home.
The length of each passage (excluding the overnight passages such as 300 miles during all or parts of three consecutive days (from Boqueron, Puerto Rico to Big Sand Cay in the Turks and Caicos) ranged from 88 miles -- from Anguilla to Virgin Gorda in the BVIs -- to as little as two miles when we transited from Gustavia to Anse de Columbier, both in St. Barts.
Total mileage (measured by the shortest logical safe route from port to port (excluding additional miles spent tacking,  and searching through an anchorage for a good spot, and rounding each day’s voyage up or down to the nearest whole nautical mile) aggregated 3281 nautical miles. Not so very far – just a bit more than 1/8 of the earth’s circumference as a straight line. Our course, however, was quite jagged and generally was a gentle "S"-- shaped curve northbound up the Windward and Leewards, then west curving to WNW from Anguilla to Florida, followed by a curve to NE and North up the coast of the States. And we averaged 37 miles per day for the 89 days of travel, with a lower median because some long days skew the average.

How did we secure ILENE at night?

Six nights we were underway.              Three percent  

38 nights we were on docks.                 Seventeen percent

43 nights we were on moorings.           Twenty percent

131 nights we were on our anchor.       Sixty percent

We used docks more as we got closer to home:
First 81 nights, zero docks.              Zero percent
Middle 84 nights, twelve docks.      Fourteen percent
Final 53 nights, 26 docks.                Forty nine percent

Where did we eat our 218 breakfasts, lunches and dinners?

We ate three breakfasts off the boat, 52.5 lunches (a half is used when one of us ate out and the other stayed aboard) and  60.5 dinners (11 of the 60.5 dinners were on other people’s boats or their land homes rather than in restaurants. And we had 16 meals aboard ILENE with people from other boats: mango pancake breakfasts or dinners, in addition to many meals aboard with others during the 14 days that three sets of guests voyaged with us during the trip. These “social meals” aboard with others are simply accounted for as meals eaten aboard.)  So 26 percent of all lunches and dinners were off  ILENE, mostly in restaurants. Figure about one lunch or dinner "out" each two days.

So there you have our great adventure, statisticalized. I would be happy to try to answer any questions. 

Sixteen Out Of Thirty

It has been a long time since my last post. Amazing to me, in the 23 months since this blog began on October 18, 2010, readership has gotten to more than 20,800 page views, for which I am grateful; though I am not sure what a "page" or a "pageview" is. Anyone know?

The period from August 25 to and including September 23, inclusive, was a period of 30 days,  sixteen of which included boating activities. 

Five of the sixteen were work days, actually not whole days but days on which a few hours of work were done such as: visiting various places at which I might keep ILENE this winter; working on the boat of a laid up friend to charge her batteries, check if her engine would still start (it did) and pumping fresh pink antifreeze (propelene glycol) into her engine to protect against the winter; replacing the impeller in ILENE’s waste oil pump I had broken back in Boqueron; and flushing her watermaker to protect it for the winter. An abler mechanic would have gotten a lot more done but ….

And one of these "work" days involved a visit to our home for a few hours one evening by a young couple, Paul and Tami, who live near us in Greenwich Village and who are planning to head south this winter on their canoe-stern 37 footer. They were given our name by our vet, Jill, who visited us during the "Welcome Home ILENE" party; she gave them our name because they are bringing their dog. What fun to be able to recount our adventures as a way to help others. Next day I learned from another Saga owner, who I have never met, that he plans to visit Nova Scotia next summer -- and promptly asked for the benefit of what he learns about charts, cruising guides and routing there.  Subtracting the five work days from the sixteen leaves eleven sailing days.

Three of these were with the O_d Fa_ts club, on two different Catalinas and lastly on ILENE. Our Yacht Club’s restaurant, what with the waning of the boating season, has closed the restaurant on Wednesdays. So we convened at a local diner one time and brown bagged it to the Club’s sundeck for the most recent of these sessions. Mike and Sandy on "Pas de Deux":

Regrettably, the last meeting was the day after a brief but punishing storm had hit Eastchester Bay on Tuesday, September 18. None of our boats broke off from their moorings, but a boat from a club upwind did break off and careened through our mooring fleet, damaging half a dozen of out boats, including two Catalina’s. So the last O.F. session involved a sail with Richie and Mike, on ILENE, during which we stopped off at Consolidated Boatyard to pick up Howard and Morty, who had driven Howard’s boat, "Power of Two" there, so that the damage (extensive) could be repaired. Power of Two is not an expensive boat, but one I had greatly enjoyed sailing; the cost of the repairs may exceed the value of the repaired boat. If so, the insurance company will declare it “totaled”. A sad day, but the O.F.s plan to continue to meet, weather permitting, through October, probably mostly on ILENE.

So there were eight other day sails:

One was on Bob and Jeanette’s “Sea Leaf”, a huge 72’ Ocean Alexander powerboat that I helped bring up from Florida (reported in May 2011 blog). This time we were about 15 folks including Ilene and her brother, Ken, and lots of food and drink. We motored out from New Rochelle to Oyster Bay for lunch on the hook, and then went back. Having steered her up from Florida, I was appointed and gladly accepted the appointment as Second Mate, to bring the boat back if both Bob and his paid crew member were incapacitated. Neither of them were, fortunately, but this "appointment" gave me an excuse to stay up on the flybridge.

A trip with Ilene and her friend, CarolAnn, in 8 to 15 knots, was fun and uneventful except that somehow in dropping the mooring we managed to run over the pickup stick and were moored by the rudder on its line. By the time I changed into swim trunks and was about to jump in to the water to clear her, the problem resolved itself and the rest of the trip was fun.

I sailed with Howard and Dave on Power of Two one beautiful Monday. These are OFs but it was not a Wednesday so we were just out enjoying. Dave, a fellow retiree, is embarking on a great adventure of his own next week, with three other guys: bicycling from San Diego to St. Augustine.

A day sail with Ellen, the racer, so she could see how we cruisers live. We went out past Execution Rocks, over to off New Rochelle and back – further from the mooring than Ellen, who races a lot, in Eastchester Bay had gotten this season.

We sailed with Jane, a friend of Lene’s from the same place where she met Judy and Medidel (who joined us in Turks and Caicos), and her husband Jack, who had done a lot of small boat racing on Long Island’s southern shore in his youth. 

We picked up Bennett as well.  A good time of schmoosing and noshing was had by all, but very light wind made the sailing that day very underwhelmingly exciting.

For the Vice Commodore’s Regatta, the Club’s rules require that each sailboat crew of two have two non-sailing members along. It is designed for fun and to comingle our sailing and non-sailing members as well. We were fortunate enough to get our Commodore and his wife, Art and Carolyn, who have a big power boat, to join us. Art said all they hoped for was “a nice sunny day sail” and from my viewpoint, it was unfortunate that this was all they got. ILENE is a fast boat with a strong handicap to overcome.In moderate wind and due to mistakes (I left the binoculars home and we were passed by the winning boat while looking for the third and last mark while going in not the right direction) we finished second across the finish line and fourth after application of handicaps – of five boats. Not ILENE’s best day, but a pleasant day on the water with good food that our crew provided.  On our last boat, ILENE I, a Tartan 34, we won the first two of these annual races.

We had a group of friends out for another day sail. This is mostly Ilene’s friends and their husbands, who have all become my friends too. Here are Ricky and Joel while the next has Linda, Ellen and Lene:

Rudy was also with us for a fun day.  We enjoyed so much noshing afloat that we had to cancel our dinner reservations: no one was hungry. Ricky was one of the four guys who helped me bring ILENE up from Baltimore in June 2006. He was not a sailor but cheerfully did everything he was told, and did it well. And here is the saddest news ever to appear in this blog: On September 21, at 11 a.m., having recently arrived at the gym in his building after an AOK stress test from his cardiologist about a week before, Ricky collapsed and died of a heart attack without regaining consciousness. Rest in peace Ricky; you will be greatly missed by all who knew you.

The last of the sails in this period was with my daughter, Devra 

and two of her friends. Jen goes back a long ways with Dev, was at Sharyn’s wedding, does IT for the NY branch of a big Chicago law firm and has sailed to Bermuda. (Her photo did not come out.) Ashley is renting a room in Dev’s new apartment, sells cosmetics to spas up and down the East Coast and enjoyed her first sail. 

I got to ILENE at ten and had two hours to set her up for sailing and clean her, take off the barbecue and bag it for transport home for cleaning, etc. We left the mooring at 12:15 and were back 4.5 hours later, having sailed out to Matinicock and then into Manhassett Bay to a good view of Louie’s.

I no longer have the same burning urge to go sailing every available minute of every available day. But I enjoy every day that I do sail; a gift from God. 

A Bit Of Racing On The Side

I have previously told the people at the Harlem Yacht Club that racers and cruisers are different breeds of sailing cats (and again distinct from the feline sailing cats).

For racers speed is the thing and competition. There are defensive moves in racing -- techniques to slow down the opposition.  And racers spend a lot of money on high tech racing sails which cost quite a bit more than our dacron non-racing ones but do not last as long. Why? Because until racing sails useful lives expire (at which point they will literally fall apart) they maintain their near perfect shape to utilize the wind and make the boat go faster. Non racing sails last longer but get stretched out of shape a bit when they get older and as a result, become less effective in maximizing the propulsive power of the wind to the optimal extent. Racers have also been known to motor to the area of the race, rather than sail there, so as to not be "using up" their sails. They also strictly control weight, which slows a boat down, by leaving gear ashore, emptying water tanks, and taking minimal fuel, etc. Legend has it that the crew of one raceboat was ordered to cut off the bottom half of the handles of their toothbrushes to save weight. Serious racers also use a much more expensive and slicker bottom point than we use to reduce friction.

Cruisers like to go fast too, but endurance is the thing and the joy is in the journey. Lene and I are definitely cruisers, not racers. And yet, there is fun in seeing how the other half live and enjoying their sport. In fact we have raced ILENE a few times and have even won a race back in 2010. But ILENE is better for ocean racing than for "around the buoy" style racing here in Long Island Sound, in which the ability to make numerous tacks and gybes quickly and efficiently is a key to success. Our big genoa  must be furled before tacking, and then unfurled again after the tack, which takes a few minutes, during which the rest of the boats will have pulled away.

But I have recently engaged in three racing activities in one way or another and they reminded me how much fun racing can be.

On  Monday nights the J24 fleet engages in training races. The J24 is the most popular raceboat, at least in the Northeast; small, light and fast. http://www.jboats.com/j24/  There are seven of them in our club. They were teaching a group of young architects how to sail and I was invited to join for the night and assigned to "Panic Attack" owned by Ellen and Roy. Ellen, pictured below on ILENE, was captain and Roy was elsewhere but Robin had the helm. Robin sailed on a 48 foot Saga during the Caribbean 1500 Rally with which I sailed ILENE to Tortola. But that rally involves so many boats with so many people that I had not met him them. He is an excellent helmsman, sensed every puff of wind before it arrived and continually talked about what each crew member was to do so they would be ready for the next move. The wind was light but J24s are so light that we moved at a nice speed. The two architects, under Ellen's expert tutelage, were on the foredeck handling the spinnaker pole and sail. I sat in the tiny cockpit with Robin and was the genoa trimmer and also handled one of the spinnaker control lines, called the spinnaker guy, which runs from the outboard end of the pole back to the cockpit -- with the objective to keep the pole at a 90 degree angle to the wind. This being practice, we did not have a committee boat. Rather one of the boats used a horn to count down the time to the start. No handicaps were necessary because all of the boats are ostensibly identical. And was not an official race so there were no losers or winners.

For my next racing adventure I went to the Club to race on somebody's boat in the annual Treat regatta.  The Treat family donated the perpetual trophies for this annual race and it is divided into two classes for faster and slower boats. I was invited to join Vince and his never-been-on-a-sailboat-before friend, Phil, on Vince's "Adagio" a 35 foot Beneteau. An adagio, in music, is a slow and stately movement; and Adagio is a cruiser, not a racer; but with an appropriate handicap she could be competitive.
During the pre-race Captains' meeting someone asked how long the race would be and the answer was given that a course would be selected of such length that with the predicted wind, the race, which would start about 1:30 would be end about 1 - 2 hours later. I made a mistake at the start. The wind was light to moderate during the 45 minutes that we were sailing before the start to get our roles down and give Phil some practice, but it died at the start. I steered close to the start line and parallel to it for almost its entire length on starboard tack during the four minute period before the start. The plan was then to trim in the sails and then head upwind, across the line. And it almost worked. But the wind totally died and we drifted a few feet past the end of the line without crossing it and had to make a 360 degree turn to come back at the line. The next time we touched the plastic buoy at the end of the line and accordingly had to make another 360 degree turn as a penalty. On our third attempt to start, we touched the mark again, but by now we were so far behind that I did not do another circle. We tried to find tiny patches of wind and get to them and actually were catching up on some of the other boats which were sitting in windless holes. But at 4:15 we had completed only about two thirds of the first one of the five legs of the race course and, all of us having evening plans, we radioed in that we were dropping out of the race and would be recorded as DNF: "Did Not Finish". The winners were those who stuck it out and finished in the 5:30 to 6:30 time frame. So it was frustrating, but still a nice day out on the water, though Phil has yet to experience the true "joys" of sailing.

My third racing experience was not as a racer but as volunteer captain of ILENE as the Race Committee boat. This was for the last of the series of Friday evening races that the Club ran this summer. The photos below were taken during that experience. Fortunately, Ellen was aboard because I would never have gotten the job done correctly by myself.  The first trick is to get the Committee Boat anchored in such a place that an imaginary line, the start/finish line (between an orange flag tied to ILENE's shroud and fixed a racing buoy) is perpendicular to the direction of the wind so that the start will be an upwind leg. Ellen also tied up a big flag with "RC" on it and lettered flags indicating the course, see photo below. Then I held aloft various flags, mounted on the ends of sticks, that got raised and lowered at specific fixed intervals, 5, 4, and 1 minute before the start, and at the start, for each of two divisions. At those instants, Ellen also announced the time via VHF radio.

Five of the eight boats of the slower division, pulling away from the starting line. The nearest one has racing sails.

"L", "C", "2". This means to go from the starting line to buoy L (which was southeast) then to  buoy "C" (which was northwest) and then repeat a second time (back to L and then to C) before coming back to the finish line. The buoys are all marked with their letter designations on a little chartlet so the racers can know where to go.

Ellen listing the boats so we would know when they had all completed the course

The Rear Commodore's boat, "Deuce of Heart", a catamaran, which alas, got a five minute late start and finished last; better luck next  time, Mark.

We ended up anchoring three times. Shortly before the race the wind came in from the south so we had to reset ILENE to draw a different start line to be perpendicular to the new wind direction. And after the race started the wind died down quite a bit so we moved ILENE to near mark "C" to shorten the racecourse by one of its five legs and end the race closer to home. As each boat crossed the finish line, I tried to identify it by its shape and or sail number and tooted the horn when Ellen, seated under the orange pennant on the shroud, saw the first part of it cross the line and recorded its time.  The bottom line: all boats finished, no one hurt or damaged, but it was not until well after dark that the Committee Boat got back to its mooring.

Conclusion: racing is fun too.

Sailing With The Game Night Group

Lene and I belong to a Game Night Group. we meet in each others homes perhaps once every couple of months. We'd meet more often but its tough to coordinate peoples schedules! We eat talk and well....  play games. This has been going on for perhaps ten years now.  Games include anagrams, charades, fictionary, electronic versions played on a wide screen TV, trivial pursuit, card games, truth telling, and even once a jig saw puzzle contest. In my mind, the games are the least of our fellowship but I play along with the games part. We have gone through each other's life cycle events together and when I had my craniotomy, the gamers visited me in the hospital.  That's when it dawned upon he how important they are in my life.

And they have sailed on ILENE about once a season. Indeed, Ricky and Bruce were part of ILENE's crew on her voyage from Baltimore to the Harlem YC in 2006. And they and Joel and I have a men's division, with Bruce, which gets together for a dinner out a few times a year.

Only seven of us were aboard for this day sail. We got underway at about 1:30 and were back on the mooring at about 6:30, having noshed so extensively that we decided not to have dinner together after all. The wind was strong from the east at first so we headed into Little Neck Bay and made speed of up to 7.5 knots with full main and small jib. This was the exciting part of the trip and Ellen was able to learn how to steer. Then the wind moderated and came from the south so we went east, almost to Execution Rocks, then to the Long Island side of the Throggs Neck Bridge, back to Hart Island and back to the mooring, with Auto doing most of the steering. A quiet peaceful day of making grooves in the water.
From left to right: Ricky, Joel, Linda, Ellen, Lene and Rudy.

Sailing with Israeli Youth

Two pleasant sails recently were with Israeli youth. Both of our nephews, Mendy, who readers of this blog met during the Club Cruise, and his older brother, Ariel, a veteran of the Israeli Army and now a student at Ariel university, attended the second sail.








 So did Cynthia

and her granddaughter, Shoshana.

The earlier sail date was with Cynthia and her other granddaughter, Shira.

The US and Israel were tied at the Olympics this year in the medal race in sailing competitions.  Neither nation won even so much as a single bronze medal (I refuse to verbify the noun “medal”, as the TV does), though both have won medals in sailing in the past.

On Shira’s day, the wind was rather light so a bit of swimming was enjoyed.  On Shosana's day , however, we started with less than the predicted light wind, but for most of the afternoon the wind was in the teens and we were able to furl the genoa, fly the small jib and visit deeply into Little Neck Bay, drive through the channel behind Stepping Stones and up through Hart Island Sound, and enter Manhassett Bay before beating back to the mooring.

I am pleased to report that all four of the youths, dual US and Israel citizens, seemed to pick up steering the boat quite well.

A Blast From the Distant Past

One benefit of saving old papers is that you may someday find them. Below is a letter I wrote for the signature of the Captain of the USS Hammerberg (DE-1015). My primary job on that ship was Anti Submarine Warfare Officer; but all the officers had secondary assignments as well. One of mine was PR man for the Captain (and the Navy in general). I must admit I rather enjoyed the task.  Rereading this letter, dated more than 45 years ago, both its content and style may remind you of the postings to this blog these last two years. In those days it was typed by a Yeoman (secretary), mimeographed and sent out in envelopes that every man (there were no women serving aboard in those days) had addressed to those of his friends and family who he wanted to receive such letters. This posting covered the last part of UNITAS VII, a good will tour through the Panama Canal and around South America during the fall (up here) of 1966. 

Hammerberg was (past tense because she was scrapped in the early 70's) 314.5 feet long with a beam of 36.9 feet and drew 18 feet. She had  a single screw, powered by either or both of two boilers.

“Dear Families and Friends of HAMMERBERG,

“Much has happened since my last letter. I am glad to have time this afternoon to sit down and write to you about what we have been doing, and plan to do in the near future.

“The remainder of UNITAS was much like the first part described in my last letter. Rio de Janeiro, our last major liberty port, marked a midpoint between two weeks of operations with the Brazilian Navy. As the most modern and richest city we visited, Rio had a lot to offer. We tied up at the tourist piers with the Uruguayan Navy, and were also joined by the French Cruiser-Helicopter Carrier, Jeann De Arc which was escorted by a destroyer. Most of us went swimming at Copacabana or Ipanema beaches. Others went on an excellent bus tour all around the city, or purchased souvenirs such as trays made of butterfly wings under glass.   Our second Brazilian city, Recife, was a short stop of only two days. There was little organized activity there.

“Enroute from Recife to our last port, Trinidad, we conducted exercises with the Venezuelan Navy. During our final two day stop in Trinidad, we were detached from UNITAS VII operations and steamed back for Newport [RI – our home port] with the USS Van Voorhis (DE-1028). Stopping only in St. Thomas Virgin Islands for a few hours, we arrived in Newport on the 15^th of December and commenced a well deserved leave period.  Almost every man who wanted it was sent on leave either over Christmas or New Years. I was very happy that your friends and loved ones could be home with you this year, and not, like some of our friends on other ships, patrolling off the coast of Viet Nam.

“The second week in January we started a much needed tender [repair ship] availability. During the next two weeks extensive work beyond the capacity of the crew was accomplished with the assistance of the technicians on the … USS Yosemite (AD-19).

“On January 23 we departed on “Springboard ‘67”, our first exercise of the year. It was conducted in the waters around the eastern end of Puerto Rico. The first two weekends were spent in San Juan, the last in St. Thomas VI. During each week we had a full schedule of operations culminating in an operational readiness inspection the last week. 

“I wonder how many of you realize how hard your friends and loved ones really work. On one typical Wednesday morning Reveille went at 0500 in order that everyone could be up and have breakfast by 0600, at which time the Refueling Detail was stationed. Refueling is really an amazing operation. Every man is required either to control the ship and carry on all of its normal functions, or to pull the heavy fuel hose over to the ship from the oiler, control its insertion in the ship's fueling trunk, or control the flow of fuel into the ship's tanks. This operation was completed by 0800. While cleaning up from refueling, we made a top speed transit to another operations area for an anti-submarine exercise. The rest of the morning was consumed in the pursuit of the elusive submarine.  Attacks were made with exercise torpedoes from the DASH helicopter as well as from the ship's torpedo tubes.

"After a hasty lunch the ship again went to General Quarters, this time for a surface to air gunnery shoot. Our target was a 15 foot long nylon sleeve towed by an airplane at the end of a mile long wire. Those not involved in the shooting were busy as members of repair parties. They constantly practice during General Quarters to increase their efficiency. In the event of war damage their job is to shore up the holes, put out the fires and maintain communications throughout the ship. Others practice how to keep the ship moving and the electrical power flowing when simulated casualties to the boilers, turbines, generators or associated equipments are imposed. 

"General Quarters was secured at 1630 (4:30 pm), just in time to conduct a small boat transfer of personnel, official mail and repair parts with other ships in our Squadron. After the boat transfer we took part in a maneuvering drill. This drill really taxes our watch standers. They must figure out where we are ordered to maneuver and then quickly and precisely answer all ordered course and speed changes, monitoring the ships progress as we proceed to the assigned station. Sometimes we have other general exercises such as ASW in the evening. This particular day we had only a radio frequency shifting drill which did not require the whole crew. At the end of such a day almost every man on the ship can look forward to a four hour watch sometime during the night. So if your sponsor seems tired when he comes home, you now know why.

[skipping some paragraphs about plans and how to write to the Captain]

" Finally I want to say how proud and pleased I am to be serving with your friend or loved one. My crew is one of the finest in the fleet; they are proud of their ship and its accomplishments. Their skills and leadership coupled with your encouragement and understanding, will safely and successfully see your HAMMERBERG man through his present tour of duty. .... If you are in Newport please come and visit the ship. You will be given a grand tour.

"Sincerely yours,      [Lt. Cdr.] S. D. Browning"