As Close As We Got To The Water This Weekend

We visited Lianne in Great Barrington Mass this weekend.

We got to the newly rebuilt, expanded Clark Art Museum in Williamstown, with its lovely impressionist works. This one is of a small gaff rigged sloop in the upper right, heading away from the rocks to ride out a storm (very dark grey in both upper corners) off the coast of Maine. It's by Winslow Homer. We had a good time.

Now back to the water!

Another Fun Filled Weekend But A Harrowing Problem At The End

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

Hells Gate with Triboro (now RFK) behind

59th St (Now Ed Koch) Bridge

Bright lights in the big city

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fiberglass stringer seen from above

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

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

July 2 to 13 Six Days of Sailing and First Two Nights Aboard

Yes, twelve fun filled active boating days (and two nights) for Lene and me. Six were sailing days which averaged only about 3.35 hours per day, plus a work day and two overnights. Before that, a fireworks party on the 37th floor of Dev's apartment, which was great, including the fact that due to the distance from the event, the fireworks were like children should be: seen but not heard.

The first sail in this period was with two of the men from my Book group, Arthur

and Gary, Arthur's wife, Marie Genevieve (the photographer) and Rafael, their son, on his dad's lap. This pic, like many others are taken on the launch because your correspondent is too busy sailing the boat to perform his photographic responsibilities, and because the bimini and dodger do too good a job of providing shade, which makes it hard to get good pictures.

So we had the Chief Librarian of a prestigious New York university, an Emmy Award winning Film Editor and a practicing Psychiatrist. They were my friends who have became Lene's friends as well. Marie is the sailor in the bunch, with lots of experience with her father in Europe, and took the helm most of the time, but her husband and son took stints. Rafa steered like a Navy Helmsman, taking orders such as "a little to the right" -- because at eight, he can not yet see over the binnacle.

Next up were four of Lene's friends who have become mine as well. Sheila, MJ, Christine and Heather, all repeat sailors whose pictures are in other posts. We put up less sail than normal and went at a slow stately pace that the guests appreciated. We started with reefed main and small jib but finished without the jib.

Then came Ilene's first sail on Bennett and Harriett's new Beneteau. Lene, as I had been, was quite impressed with the boat. I was able to whip the ends of all of her lines that terminate in the cockpit. Another day, not underway, will be needed to get the other ends of these lines. She has a lot less lines than On Eagles Wings.

A work day to get the top of the Genoa working and mostly sanding the cafe doors for another coat of varnish, which could not be applied because the varnish I had had jelled to a solid. I also got two spare fuel filters - expensive little buggers, which, in their boxes are now aboard in zip lock bags to prevent rust.

For the final three days and two nights of sailing, in addition to the human guests, Whitty and Alpha Girl got reacclimated to the boat. That process was hardly an event; they walked about like they owned the place and tried to get into the cabinet where their food is stored. Cats are smart, especially when their dinner is concerned. Alfie is quite at home inside the aft end of the stack pack, atop the boom, when ILENE is on a mooring. The red and black lines are the first and second reefing lines, respectively.

It is warm and quiet in there. But we have to remember always to make sure we see the little devils before we hoist the sails to avoid crushing them. Our human guests during the first of these three days were Jill and Ken, her boyfriend. She is the kitties' Vet and he is a family therapist and soon to be published memoirist. Neither of their expert services were required for this voyage, just the pleasure of their company.

The most remarkable thing about this daysail was the tidal effect of the so called "Super Moon" -- which was full and at the point in its orbit closest to the earth, increasing its magnetic effect on the water. Coming north back toward the mooring we passed what is usually safely east of  Stepping Stones Light. The depth sounder's beeping alerted us to the fact that the rocky seabed was only seven feet deep -- 16 inches below the bottom of our keel. I veered sharply to starboard to get further away -- toward deeper water. At high hide that day, the water would have been another eight feet deep. The same low tide problem almost prevented us from getting back to our mooring. Other members of our Club, who had intended to race that Friday evening, had to wait for the tide to rise a bit, being stuck in the mud.  We made a groove in the soft mud bottom for about ten yards of our approach to the mooring; inertia carried us through. Our keel is 5.66 feet deep and the water was only 5.6 feet deep. After dinner at the Club, I took our guests to the subway so they could get home and listened to our Club's mostly amateur but great sounding six piece rock band playing. But it was already 9:30 and my bed time. A calm cool night.
Next day, after breakfast, our guest was Christine, a frequent sailor with us, here with Whitty.

We had the best sailing of the summer so far. We beat deeply into the south end of Little Neck Bay on eight tacks using Main and small jib, then ran out and through the passage behind Stepping Stones off Kings Point, which required three gybes, and finally turned south into Manhassett Bay to the M.B.Y.C. on a single starboard close reach. Lene had the helm most of the way and has mastered the art of taking advantage of puffs that round us up slightly. Our speed rarely dipped under six knots and on the broad reach we were making eight.
MBYC charges $60 for a mooring and has a lovely big pool. We got there late in the afternoon and lounged on the pool's deck. It was not at all crowded and we just read. Later the pool attendant told us that our guest mooring fee did not include use of the pool. Apparently this rule resulted from an experience a few years ago when a boater with twelve souls aboard took a mooring and his guests clogged the swimming lanes. But MBCY has a great guest shower which we did use before an excellent dinner in their restaurant. From the restaurant deck, you see the pool in the foreground, their mooring field in mid ground and a wee bit of the east side of City Island under the setting sun.

Another good night's sleep and a good breakfast aboard before sailing back to the Harlem.









Before casting off, however, I finished the improvements that I had been working on. I hung the wool (or maybe cotton) wall hanging of a stylized sailboat that we got in Finland (dare I call it a tapestry?).  (Sorry about the color and underlined nature of this next paragraph; I didn't intend it and cant get out of it!)  I installed a new block at the base of the mast and a new fifth clutch on the starboard side of the coach roof, next to the other four of them there, so the winch there can handle the outhaul. From now on I can change the tension of the foot of the main sail and thereby trim it better without having to go forward to the mast, laying on my back there, having Lene steer up into the wind and hauling on the outhaul line manually. My only mistake was caused by Lewmar, which provided absolutely zero instructions on how to install their clutch. To release the four existing ones, I lift a lever that swivels up and forward on a pin at the forward end of the clutch. So I installed the new one with the lever moving the same way -- which was backward!!

All the others open one way; this new different one, the other!

In other words, when closed, the clutch did not hold the line when you want to lock it, but it did prevent you from tightening the line. But having done all the drilling and bolt and washer selection and grinding and snakeing of the line needed for the first installation, it took only ten more minutes to detach and reattach the clutch the right way. The clutch is fastened to the coach roof reinforced by strong washers, above this removable panel in the cabin ceiling.

This little job used an enormous number of specialized tools and I confess that I was pleased with myself. Thanks go to my rigger, Jeff Lazar, proprietor of Performance Yacht Management, who encouraged me to do it myself and gave me some helpful hints. He had also told me the size of the Allen stud which I installed myself (And I sorely regret that I did not bring my camera to the top of the mast to gain pictures of our clubhouse and mooring field from an altitude of 63.5 feet above sea level. Lene cranked me up and let me down gently. Another time for that photo.) While working from the top of the mast of a nearby boat Jeff also advised me to possibly shorten the strap at the clew of the Genoa to lower it a bit. The last step on the clutch job will be using a punch that Jeff recommended, and a hammer, to drive out a horizontal athwartship pin embedded in the forward end of the boom on which three thumb cleats rotate. They were used to hold the out haul line and the two reefing lines (red and black, remember) in place. Now, that the third and last of them is led to the cockpit, the thumb cleats are worse than superfluous --  they tend to chew up the lines.
Our sail home on Sunday in the late morning was via the shortest logical route on a variety of port reaches, from broad to close. It rained a bit en-route and with more and heavier  rain forecast for the afternoon,  and my shoulder getting sore from too much sailing, we made a short day of it.

A Book For Chart Loving Sailors

Maphead; Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks             

                                                                                                  by Ken Jennings

I was given this book by Lloyd and Rhoda who know of my love of maps and of my work as a volunteer in the New York Public Library’s Map Room where I have been “cataloging” several thousand nautical charts published by the U.S. Navy's Hydrographic Office during 1850 to 1950. (My project will be the subject of a post after it is completed.) And such a great gift this book was! Maps have been a special love of mine since elementary school, and for the author as well. Like me, he judges other books by the presence and quality of the maps they contain. I once drew a map of the apartments in an alley, whose occupants' lives was the subject of a novel I read. Ken Jennings' claim to fame is that he won big on Jeopardy a few years ago.

Charts are such an important part of navigation in sailing that this book review has claimed space in this blog.  Jennings loops together disparate thoughts in an imaginative way making  new insightful discoveries in each chapter. The book is quite readable with simple words and sentence structure.

The bad news is that Jennings devotes precious little ink to “charts” even though they cover roughly two thirds of the earth’s surface -- the wet parts. His focus is on the dry bits. He even has a few paragraphs on the last place in the US to be mapped in any detail, out west, a century ago. No more “terra incognita” he bewails, noting that as a result map lovers have mapped things other than the surface of the earth, such as the human genome. He thus ignores the fact that there remains plenty of “agua incognita”. One example is the Caicos Bank, several hundred square miles of shallow ocean bottom on which the charts note that they have not been surveyed  -- virtually no soundings, requiring sailors to maintain a sharp lookout for underwater rocks. Yet the book’s descriptions of the exploits of the explorers, the Mercator projection (which permits great circle navigation to be drawn as a straight line by expanding polar regions relative to equatorial ones) and the marvels of GPS, make the book valuable even for sailors. The “charting” in the subtitle is not of the “world” as such, but of the “world of the geography wonks” of which I am only a minor grade compulsive.

I do not collect maps, except those I use in navigation and none of the valuable antique ones with pictures of natives or sea monsters in their corners. I do not read books about fantasy worlds, which map those worlds exquisitely. Travel, until the railroad and airplane, was rarely of great length. A world leading explorers club of London in the 19^th century required a member to have traveled at least 500 miles from home, which very few people had done. Today there is a club that admits to membership only those (mostly retired wealthy people) who have visited 100 countries. (I counted and I’m at 54 and not at all compulsive to achieve 100.) Others try to travel, as a few examples, to the highest point in every state or to every Starbucks in their state (which is another form of mapping and collecting destinations).

Other people collect photos of and are experts on highway signs on interstates. There is this new group of geeks (and Jennings admits he has become an addict): “geocachers.” They place little waterproof boxes in myriad places identified on a website by their longitude and latitude. Others of their breed look up the locations, use their GPSs to find the locations, sign their name to the log in the containers and record their personal finds on the website. Some try to collect the most sites, the most in one 24 hour period or the most as to which they are the “first” to find it. There are millions of geocache sites! I’m not addicted to this either. 

Nor am I a “Degree Confluence” collector: people who try to get to the exact spot where a whole degree of latitude and one of longitude cross – frequently in someone’s back yard.  Google Earth, Rand McNally and The National Geography Bee are each given their own chapters as are people who engage in a paper and pen nationwide road rally.

The future of maps and of people are discussed. Will paper remain? Will the content richness of electronic charting rule the world, destroying privacy? Does GPS destroy people’s ability to navigate on their own by making it unnecessary, like spell checker and calculators have allegedly destroyed people’s abilities to spell and do simple math? My own though on this is that the greatest danger to human navigation ability is the “Head Up”, rather than “North Up” display on people's chart plotters. There is nothing inherently logical about north being up other than that its consistency permits people have a sense of where they are going which Head Up destroys.

Jennings’ wife, he reports, like my own, has a poor sense of geography. He, like I have, has told his wife to take her best guess and then go in the opposite direction.

Those of you who enjoy maps will enjoy this book. Thanks again, Lloyd and Rhoda!

Early Season Sailing - June 20 to July 1

My first sail out on Eastchester Bay this season was on Bennett's new boat. This means that the first 11 of sailing the calendar year were all on Bennett's two boats: The first eight of these in the BVIs on On Eagles Wings, plus the two days bringing his new Beneteau back from RI and finally, the eleventh, a day sail arising from a chance meeting with Bennett and his friend, Will, in the parking lot on a day when I had planned to work aboard. OK! I admit it. I confess! Yes, I am weak to the siren call of sailing, and strapping me to the mast would not help this weakness. We sailed for about three hours and then spent a few more on the mooring investigating two possibly related problems: a rasping knocking sound when the rudder passed 15 degrees to starboard and the auto pilot steering off course rather sharply to port when activated. I under stand that both problems have already been fixed.

Two nice social events in people's homes as well: a party to honor the naming of YC friends Mark and Marcia's new grandson and a birthday party to celebrate Bennett's birthday.

Then came two five hour days -- cleaning the boat's interior, putting things away, putting things back together. It all payed off: my severest critic, Admiral Ilene, said the boat looked "clean" when we finally went sailing. Don't worry, I know where the remaining dirt is hidden and will get to it soon.

Our first sail of 2014 on ILENE was four hours with Dev and her boyfriend, Vin, who we were very pleased to meet.

An intelligent gentleman. It was his first sail and with the wind Gods not having provided enough, I had the pleasure of inviting them back for a day with more wind so he can enjoy the true thrill of sailing. So we did some motoring though we did get up to 4.8 knots Speed Over Ground for a while during one brief puff. We got into Little Neck Bay before turning back. Two things are not working yet: Speed through the water measures at zero due to the speedo wheel being clogged and the Genoa cannot unfurl though I do have the Allen headed set screw needed to fix that issue. This will take place next time I am aboard with another person to haul me to the top of the mast in a bosun's chair in light wind.

Sid and his wife, Jan, their daughter, Danielle, and Danielle's friend, Kara, both age 13, and our nephew, Mendy joined us the next day for five hours, mooring to mooring. Sid was a colleague of mine and continues to work in the law; Jan is a recently retired teacher. They are also  gourmet cooks but this time they brought delicious store bought Italian delicacies for lunch. More wind than the day before. Almost everyone took a turn helming so Auto got a day off. We passed east through Hart Island Sound, and then deeply into Manhassett Harbor before going near the Throggs Neck Bridge and then back to the mooring. On the way back we passed near a 2006 Saga 40 which I learned is kept at the nearby Morris Yacht Club. Perhaps we can get to know the owners better but we have been away a lot in the summers of late, so that may be difficult. We had the Club's pretty good burgers (except they have not yet mastered the "rare" button) for dinner in an elegant friendly atmosphere at a bargain rate. Except for first timer Kara, they are winners of ILENE's "frequent sailor" awards, but that does not excuse my forgetting to shoot their photos; sorry.

Next  a day of shopping for the boat: a punch to knock out a pin at the forward end of the boom that will no longer be needed; weather stripping to seal water out of the propane locker; the aforesaid Allen head set screw; the services of a lumberyard to cut a small piece of cherry veneer plywood I had into three smaller pieces to fix a hole in a corner of the aft port cabinet; cherry veneer to iron onto one of the edges of each such piece; a mast base block and a rope clutch (so that when installed, and the line snaked through the tunnel, I will be able to adjust the outhaul from the cockpit instead of having to go forward and put the boat into irons to tighten the main sail's foot); and a  shackle to hold up the starboard dinghy davit tackle to replace the one I lost. All this for only $200!

My third sail aboard ILENE was with club members Rhoda

and Lloyd

and their grand dog Rocky, a cute young well-behaved Westie.

About 4 hours to get to the Seacliff YC mooring field in Hempstead Bay and tack back. There was enough wind, over 20 knots at the end, that a first reef of the main would have been desirable. Lloyd, who had not yet an experienced ILENE rounding up due to being overpowered, has now learned how to deal with this, gaining confidence in the process. I love teaching, which readers of this blog probably characterize as my pedantry.

Fourth of July weekend had three boatloads of friends but the first of them got washed out by the weather. Rain dates are being sought. Stay tuned.