Levi and Hugh

Last time these two gentlemen appeared in this blog was in late June 2013 aboard ILENE at the end of a lovely daysail amid the many islands of Boston Harbor.

Levi is Hugh's grandson. Hugh and I, as junior officers, served together on the USS Hammerberg, DE-1015, back in 1967.
     They came to New York, Memorial Day weekend, for sightseeing and largely to explore New York's harbor islands. On Saturday they did the USS Intrepid and The High Line before coming to our house to rest up before dinner. When offered his choice of Vietnamese, Polish, Persian, Chinese, Deli, Italian, Indian or Ukranian, Levi asked for German, also within about half a mile of our house. I enjoyed Schnitzel, Red Cabbage and Spaetzele with them at Rolf's.
Next day I met them at Bowling Green after they had toured Liberty and Ellis Islands, to take the ferry to Governor's Island, recently turned into a park after centuries of military use. As many as 5000 people worked on the island during wartime, and 60 percent of them lived on the island in various structures built during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many of which have been re-purposed for tourism.
     I had visited the island only once before, in 1968, when it was a major Coast Guard base. I took my division of men assigned to the Navy Reserve "surface training division" (no boat) at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where I was assigned to complete my military reserve duty after two years of active duty. The reserve unit was sadly a joke and a waste of taxpayer money: men who were not motivated to train were supposed to be taught by Chief Petty Officers who were getting out and did not want to teach. So I looked for opportunities to avoid the boredom and the Governor's Island visit, along with ones to the nearby South Street Seaport Museum and the Hayden Planetarium (to study navigation, of course), were our escape hatch to sanity. After a year of monthly weekend meetings during my first year of law school, we were all offered the opportunity to resign and I never looked back until my visit to the Governor's Island with Hugh and Levi.
       A stream of visitors is debarking from the ferry. ($2 for the round trip passage, seniors half price, kids free -- a bargain!) and a view north up the mighty Hudson River is to the left.

The ferry is a small one compared to the Staten Island ferry and is seen behind the tree to the left, with its other terminal, on Manhattan, at the extreme left. To the extreme right can be seen the tall ships of the South Street Seaport Museum, to which my friends walked next.

They have done a great job of making the island into a city/national park. Tours are available of the two forts, the pentagonal one in the center of the island and one with a curved outer wall in the extreme northwest corner. The island's size was near doubled with landfill excavated a century ago from the tunnels through which subways now rush. There was lots of activity on the island with a gift shop an arts center, many food kiosks, several performances for kids, pop up galleries for art, clothing, and the Math Museum, and to the west, large fields for soccer with Lady Liberty as a spectator.

They also have a "grove" of hammocks, bicycle rentals (or you can bring your own) and bike paths.

Manhattan's skyline  from above the carefully and diversely planted new trees on the island, with the new Freedom Tower to the left.
Governor's Island is a fun place to visit for city dwellers and tourists alike. Hmm .... all they need here is a group of moorings and a dinghy dock!

But meanwhile progress in getting ILENE ready for her upcoming 17 month "season" (June '14 through October '15) is proceeding, but she is not quite ready to sail yet and other events keep interceding.

Maintenance

So, I figured that you guys were so thrilled by the earlier post about heads and bottom paint that you crave more. Bottom near the the propeller (lower left) with a black splotch, not yet done, a dirty blueish area that has been scraped but not sanded and almost white areas, mostly sanded.

The sanding rig: At bottom, the ridiculously expensive Fein random orbital sander. Its grey hose leads to the side of the conical top of the "Dust Deputy". The boat's mini shop vac is off to the right with its black suction hose from the top of the dust deputy. It sucks the paint dust through holes in the sanding disc to the top of the cone at which point it swirls down the sides of the cone into the five gallon bottom, thereby saving the vacuum cleaner's life.

A selfie in my uniform: white tyvek overalls, dust mask and goggles over eye glasses, and holding the scraper. I have learned that using half of the width of the blade of this tool is best for scraping paint from the bottom. It is a game of square inches.

A study in black and white of the bottom near the starboard quarter: The black is untouched and the white ready for washing, five coats of grey barrier coat paint and then two coats of new blue bottom paint. The top is the canvas winter cover. The thin yellowish stripe will be gone, sanded and covered with paint.

ILENE is wearing her new blue bottom paint, except for the keel. The grey barrier coat keeps seawater away from the plastic gelcoat that covers the fiberglass and resin. We want this barrier because seawater has this nasty habit of entering tiny holes and eating the boat in the spots where it enters. This is called blistering and can ruin the boat. But as I understand it, seawater does not enter lead and ILENE's keel is lead, covered only in bottom paint. That paint is designed to keep barnacles at bay so the keel, which does not need to be sanded down to bare for barrier coat, is black -- because I have left over black bottom paint, which costs about $250 per gallon. So  ILENE will have a two tone bottom, and hopefully no will will notice once she is in the water --unless we heel VERY far over indeed.

The newly straightened and reattached bow pulpit also shows in the above pic. Actually, Fernando did not straighten the bent pieces but cut them away and welded in new straight pieces and then polished and polished and polished until you can't see the weld, which is stronger than the original. Fernando also replaced the fiberglass and gelcoat at the stern and helped me install a replacement swim platform ladder, restoring the boat to the way she was before getting whacked one night last fall by a hit and run boater.

The freeboard (side of the boat above the waterline) shines, thanks to a day of help from our friend, Nicholas (and our expert personal trainer) -- wipe on; wipe off -- but we use a pair of power buffers.
     One of the big suppliers, Defender Marine, generally a low price vendor, had a big sale up in Connecticut and I went with Dave, of our Club, to buy paint, the ladder and a new VHF radio, among other things. Lets just say "north" of a thousand dollars.
        The existing ICOM radio was top of the line when the boat was built in 1999, but it does not permit a remote microphone in the cockpit and it is neatly embedded in nice looking cherry wood at the navigation station in the cabin. The problem has been that when we want to use it, someone had to run down into the cabin. When underway, Lene was the runner, but our mutual disabilities require both of us: I have mild hearing difficulties and when they say "north" or south",  Lene's brain clicks off. So the new radio is now attached at the helm in the cockpit electrically and to its own the antenna atop the radar arch. We now have two redundant high powered VHF radios.

The one in the cockpit, because its antenna is much lower, has a range of only about eight miles and will be used 99.99% of the time. The old radio's masthead antenna will give it a range of 20 miles and it will be used if we need to call the Coast Guard, which will likely be only when the black paint of the keel is above water. Thanks, Ed, for your three days of help on this project and several others. Yes, installation cost, primarily fitting wires into awkward spots using slippery lube, elbow grease and ingenuity, cost more than the radio and antenna.
Another project has been to replace the internal parts of the plumbing fixtures in the heads, as described in a prior post. While I was at it, I completely detached, removed and sanded the base of the aft head which had become corroded green and repainted it with several coats of Rustoleum primer and then white paint.

 And while in the heads, I have pulled out about 100 feet of the plastic hoses that carry fresh water in the boat. The original owner did not have deck fills: fixtures with a plate in the side decks connecting a hose from there to the water tanks. I installed them a few years ago before we left for Grenada. Now we can add water to the tanks by opening a deck fill fitting, sticking in a hose and turning on the fresh water hose from the dock. The prior owner did not sail the boat much but kept her at the dock and entertained his grandkids on her. So he had fixtures at the bow and stern into which one could screw the same shore side water hose. City water entering through either of these orifices would go through a pressure reduction valve and then run to near the back of the boat to pass through either a one stage or a three stage water filtering system and then to a "Y" valve which directed the incoming water to either the port or starboard water tanks.  All ripped out at last except some pieces that are so buried under other hoses that in those portions of the boat they just lie there harmlessly, open at both ends. Soon to arrive from Headsync and to be installed by me are the parts needed to permit the fresh water from the watermaker to be sent to the starboard water tank (as well as the port one where it goes now).
The former owner also had two Lectrasan sewage treatment units which use very salty water, electricity and a stirring function to allegedly turn sewage into water that is as pure as sea water. But they never really worked  well and several states have outlawed their use. So I took the units and their discharge hoses out a few years ago. I mentioned that they needed very salty water. So fresh water was pumped to five gallon pails filled with rock salt to make water that was salty enough to work the Lectrasans. The pails have been gone for a while (storage space for cat food) and now the hoses carrying the water from the fresh water pump to them are also gone.
Also new shutters (on the left)  were purchased from Zarcor to keep out sun and provide privacy if needed. One of the old horizontal pleated ones is to the right:

The sticky bearing at the bottom of the small jib roller furler was replaced by our rigger, Jeff of Performance Yacht Management, who is also repairing the boom vang's spring, replacing an allen head set screw at the top of the genoa roller furler and installing a new clutch so that the outhaul line, which controls the tension of the foot (bottom) of the mainsail, can be adjusted from the cockpit, avoiding the need to go forward to the base of the mast. Some tears in the mainsail and its stackpack were fixed by Doyle Sailmakers.

As of May 23 this calendar year I have spent 46 days working on the boat. And 15 more last fall after the season makes a total of 61 work days. I must confess that whatever joy such work held for me previously has been getting old.
But the end of the drudgery and high dollar days is nearing, after which the fun days of sailing can resume.

And  it wasn't all work this winter. We had Michelle and Manu of Teepee as house guests for a few days while they were traveling from the Bahamas, where Teepee lay, to Australia, where a grandchild was born. We had met them in the Caribbean several times and at Hop-O-Nose marina. Here they are at an ice skating exhibition.