Jan 1 - 21 -- Winter Calm

Eight work days but only 30 hours. I've been slowed, a lot, by a sprained left wrist that I'm supposed to rest. Most of the time was spent on the cabin sole refinish job. Doyle Sails gave me the  "Common Sense" brand hardware for the new attachment of cockpit cushions (and lent me the tool for attaching the grommets) and I removed the old button type fasteners with my dykes. Also, I finished the cleaning out of the aluminum fresh water tanks. Unfortunately, I see that corrosion has caused pitting of the inside surface of the tanks and they will need to be replaced in a few years, hopefully before the pits become holes all the way through.

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How do you like the new removable orange rubber gaskets, peeking out from under the edge of one of the four viewing (and cleaning) port covers, cut from a sheet of rubber from Canal Rubber?

I've also had three pleasurable "Other" days so far this young year. First a dinner with other Corinthians at a restaurant in Greenwich Village. Lots of good sailing talk with my stuffed artichoke and only a ten minute walk.

Next, a second day at the Met, with Greg, of my book group, who knows a lot about art. We refined our tour of selected boating art, and decided we had to omit several lovely pieces including those of the impressionists. So much great art and so little time! Our tour will cover almost 4000 years of history and every continent except Africa and Australia.

Finally a "Two Act"  evening at the Harlem. First a membership meeting, at which I agreed to serve as our Fleet Captain until a replacement can be found, with a charge to try to organize a meeting to get the summer cruise planned (even though if plans for Nova Scotia reach fruition ILENE will not be able to participate). I was also charged to try to organize a winter cruise with a charter boat in a warm place next winter. Speaking of warm places in the winter, Pandora has reached the BVIs after a rough passage. Google Sail Pandora for Bob's blog.  I reported to the members that 20 of our 25 slots for the "land cruise" to the museum are filled so far.

Act Two was International Night which costs $15.00 (as a fund raiser) with a cash bar. You also bring a dish. As usual, each couple brought enough food in their dish to serve 20 but only two mouths to eat it; gluttony ensued. I made my first carrot cake, with cream cheese icing, and it was good. It is one of my favorita annual events at the club.

2016 In Review

The media do this at year end so why not me. Everything in here has been in the 53 posts of  2016, but compiled in an interesting -- I hope -- way. The 53 posts, the lowest number of them since this blog began, is partly because there was no multi-month cruising and perhaps partly because I grouped more activities into a single post.

First my arbitrary definitions: A "sail day" is any day during all or any part of which I either sleep aboard ILENE, or sail on her (or any other sailboat) or both. Though I may also perform work on the boat during a sail day, a "work day" is any day I work on the boat (whether physically on the boat or at home or shopping for the boat) on which I neither sleep aboard or sail. And an "other day" is one that is neither of the above but during which I engage in some sort of boating related, activity.

Let's get rid of the work days first, 66 of them, compared to 100 sailing days. Work days can be divided into time periods: 40 before launch on May 17, 11 during the time the boat was in the water and 15 after hauling on October 14.

The launch to haul interval, 120 days, made for a relatively short sailing season, though if you add the eight days on Bennett's boat, "On Eagles Wings", in the Virgin Islands before ILENE's launch, there were 128 days of access to a boat in the water, of which I count 100 as "sail days". Pretty efficient ratio of use: 100 of 128.

But how are these 100 distributed, one might ask.  Well eighty of the hundred were in the period June 12 to September 1, during which we lived aboard every night.  On 26 of the 80 we merely slept aboard on our mooring in our hailing port, using ILENE as a floating mobile summer home -- a use for which she is comfortably suited, though such is not the use for which she was made. A different 39 days during the live aboard months was our cruise around Cape Cod, discussed below.

All told we spent 48 of our 100 days living aboard on moorings, our anchor or at docks (26 at home, five in the Caribbean and 16 "lay days" during cruises from home). Subtracting those 48 leaves 52 underway days, six on other boats (three on Bennett's "On Eagles Wings", and one each on Mark's "Deuce of Hearts", Dave's "Lady Cat" and Rhoda's "Jazz Sail" and 48 aboard ILENE.

In 2016 we put in to 25 different ports, 22 during our cruise plus Jersey City for calibration, and Cold Spring Harbor and Sheepshead Bay for recreation.

The 52 underway days were distributed through the season thus: 20 before the cruise started on July 23, 23 during the cruise and 9 after we returned on August 30. Excluding the 23 of the Massachusetts cruise, leaves 27 days of underway sailing to and from our hailing port. Of these 27, nine were with the Old Salts group, all but one aboard ILENE, and 19 with various groups of friends.

Who came with me. On the cruise it was me, Lene and the kitties, with only one day sail with friends from home, Lee and his son out of Hyannis Mass. By contrast, among the 27 voyages from home, only the trips to Cold Spring Harbor and Jersey City -- three sailing days -- were alone with my beloved. All the other 24 included others and many of them were without Lene.

Nine of the 24 day sails were with members of the Old Salts group, (eight of them on ILENE), and the other 15 of these day sails were with other friends. On the eight Old Salt sails aboard ILENE, 21 different individuals sailed with me, some only once and others as many as four times, averaging 5.5 people, in addition to me, per trip. Ilene, alas, skipped all of these lovely Wednesday afternoons. Four of the 21 individuals were the folks who own the four boats other than ILENE on which I sailed.

Lene came with me on six of the seventeen non-Salts day sails on ILENE and so did 37 other individuals, in groups of one to five, three of them who are Salts and the other 34 who are not, but from all the other walks of our lives. None of those 34 folks made more than one sail with us in 2016, but eleven of them have sailed with us in prior years. So in total, 57 different people, other than lene and I had the pleasure of at least one sail aboard ILENE, If I collected fares on a per trip per person basis, there would have been 84 of them in 2016.

I think our boat gets put to good use; as well she ought. So a short season, but a full one.

The 39 day circumnavigation of Cape Cod was of course the highlight of the season. We covered 766 miles on a very pleasant, somewhat meandering track with 22 ports (eight new ones) that only got as far as Provincetown Mass..

Port	Miles	Lay Days	Moor- ing?		Comments
BEFORE  MASS – four days, four ports
Indian Harbor YC, Greenwich CT	16	0	Yes		Met and hung with Mark and Marsha on "Leeds The Way"
Housatonic Boat Club, Stratford, CT	27.5	0	Dock		NEW STOP A very friendly club, outdoor showers
Hamberg Cove, CT River	46	0	Yes		An old favorite; Lene's first time
Block Island, RI	44	0	Yes		Dined al fresco at Kimber-ly’s, by the food store
IN MASS --   29 days, 13 ports
Menemsha, Martha’s Vineyard	41.8	2	Yes	Gay Head, sunsets, installed lamp given to me by Gene Black during a rainy day
Vineyard Haven, Martha’s Vin.	17.7	0	Yes	A haven for schooners; buses all over the island
Edgartown, M. V.	9.8	2	Yes	Bike ride to Oak bluffs
Hyannis, Cape Cod	25.7	3	Yes	Friends from NY taught me how to shuck oysters, swim from beach, nasty day sail.
Provincetown, Cape Cod	68	2	Yes	Gentrification of the marina, NY friends with car for hike in the woods, dinner at good fish place and grocery shop
Sandwich, Cape Cod	23.1	0	Dock	NEW STOP Gentrification, a rainy day
Pocasset, Cape Cod	12.7	1	Anchor	NEW STOP can dink to “town,” if that’s what you call it. Free moorings but we didn’t learn that until we were hauling our anchor, which held well in 35 knot gusts
Marion, Buzzards Bay	7.2	0	Yes	NEW STOP Small town, small club, LOTS of boats
Mattapoisett, Buzzards Bay	8.2	0	Anchor	Kinsale Inn is now the Inn at Mattapoisett. By the mooring field, we had the only anchor light, making the long dink ride back at night easy
Pope Island Marina, New Bedford, Buzzards Bay	12.7	3	Yes	NEW STOP Very friendly with easy dink ride to town dock in heart of town.
Lake Tashmoo, Martha’s Vineyard	20.5	1	Yes	NEW STOP Easy in and out, easy walk to Vin. Haven for dinner and movies
Cuttyhunk, Elizabeth Islands	14.5	1	Yes	Alas, fresh fish no longer   available
Westport, Buzzards Bay	12.2	0	Yes	Rendezvoused with Lene’s HS girlfriends
AFTER MASS  --  six days, five ports
Newport RI	20.6	2	Yes		Art Museum, Cliff Walk and Doris Duke’s Rough Point mansion
Niantic YC, Niantic CT	45.4	0	Anchor		NEW STOP Long dinghy ride ok in calm water, under bridge with swift current, to marina for movies in town
New Haven YC, CT	30	0	Anchor		NEW STOP in Morris Cove, free mooring but too small for us. Not a calm night
Northport, LI, NY	36.7	0	Yes		Our only stop on Long Island on this cruise.
HYC, City Island, NY	25.6	NA	Yes

One highlight of the cruise was the 68 mile passage, our longest, from Hyannis, south of Monomoy Island, through Pollock’s Rip Channel and past the entire Atlantic coast of Cape Cod to Provincetown. It included sighting a pod of whales. I had never done this outside passage before and we needed good weather because there are no ports along the route. Timing the tide so we could leave early with the tide for this 11.5 hour passage and arrive in daylight came at the cost of having to cut out Nantucket, which we last visited fifteen years ago. Except for the 68 mile day, our average mileage per passage in Massachusetts was low, permitting leisurely sails in light winds, as compared to the longer runs to and from the target area where three knots just won't cut it.

Another highlight turned out to be New Bedford, which is a commercial fishing town but has a whole lot more: museums, restaurants and history.

On the way from Niantic to New Haven, we took a bit of a detour for a slow motor tour through the Thimble Islands -- a bit of the rocky Maine coast in Connecticut. Never did that before; an interesting place to visit but I would not want to anchor there.

I calculated our food bills: 71% in groceries vs. 29% in restaurants. Lots of good boat cooked food.

  

I enjoyed 31  "other" days as well, which ranged from Club meetings and parties to dinners and luncheons with sailors (e.g., five of the eight of us at our Thanksgiving table were sailors), boat shows, planning of land and sea cruises, for the Club, museums, power boat rides in the Gulf of Mexico and British Columbia, and gallery trips.

So add em up: 100 sailing, 66 work days and  31 other days means that 197 of the 366 days of 2016 were related to my passion.

2017: The Bras D’or Lakes on the northern Atlantic side of Nova Scotia.

November 27 -- December 31 -- A Long Time With No Posts

With the advent of cold weather the circulation of the blood seems to slow down as it gets thicker (I should ask Rhoda whether what I've just written is true; she knows this stuff.) and so does the pace of life in general. But there has been boating activity, just not so much and of course, alas, no sailing this winter.

Six work days -- averaging a few minutes short of three hours each, a bit longer when I visited the boat -- two of the times -- and shorter for the work-at-home days. At the boat, it was scraping and cleaning of the inner surfaces of the freshwater tanks, which is done now except for the final wipe out with cheap vodka on a rag, buying and cutting the rubber gasketing material on Canal St., and closing up the tanks. I also spent some time trying to replace the button snaps that hold the cockpit cushions on their benches so they do not slide off onto the cockpit sole when we heel. The current fixtures are press on button snaps. I installed them but they do not hold well. The targeted replacements (eight of them but I got ten because I'm likely to screw up) have oval shaped prongs attached to the boat with heads that fit through oval shaped grommets that I have to fasten to straps at the backs of the cushions. Then, by rotating the tops of the prongs there will be a positive connection that won't pull off. I placed an order but it didn't go through; the product was not shipped and I was not billed. Order number two worked like a charm but the ones delivered are too big so at year's end I'm trying to reach the west coast vendor and arrange to swap them for smaller sized fasteners.

 But the greatest amount of boat work was devoted to refinishing the cabin sole which consists of seventeen pieces of one inch thick plywood with a rather thick decorative veneer layer on top. All but four of them are now home in various states of refurbishment. Ilene is not very pleased with our apartment becoming a workshop, but I've put things away after each day's work and she is tolerant. The bathtub, which is partially enclosed, with a pair of two by fours across it, has become my work bench. It catches the sawdust which can then be vacuumed up without great difficulty.  And for application of the polyurethane (one coat on the bottom and sides to seal them against moisture and two or more on the top) Ilene's closet, a large one, is the place to be: rigged with task lighting, it is large enough to do several pieces at a time and it has the primary benefit of preventing cats paws from messing up the work. I have a lot more to do before spring on this project.

And another job has arrived on my honeydo list. When we renovated our apartment in 2007 we installed environmentally friendly kitchen counter tops, instead of granite. They are made of paper pulp and resin. It was a mistake. But with application of sandpaper, of several degrees of increasing fineness, and then application of mineral oil, they are being restored to look like new -- "before we go sailing!" Ilene is not very demanding or unreasonable; it will get done.

Part of the lack of more work getting done relates to the inhabitants of our sick bay. Witty has a serious and hopefully controllable though chronic bowel problem with many visits to the vet. We are hoping that his weight loss has been stopped with a treatment of steroids, though he can't be in the Olympics any more. But he does not appear to be in any pain, though he is listless compared to his former energetic self. I think he is on the mend.
Lene's glaucoma got worse. Therefore she had an operation involving cutting a hole through the wall of the eyeball and creating a blister shaped "reservoir" outside the eyeball that is hidden under her eyelid.  This was outpatient surgery but resulted in blurry vision that may last as long as a month. Like Whitty, she has no pain and the doctor is thrilled by the reduction of her intra-occular pressure, the cause of the killing off of her peripheral vision. And me; just a sprained wrist from a fall -- luckily not a broken wrist. But these things slow a guy down.

But it is not all work and illness. I have spent four days, about fourteen hours, having fun planning the Harlem's "Winter Cruise," the annual land cruise. This year the theme, from beginning to end, has been maritime art. There were four false starts before the program came together. The first plan was to visit the annual winter auction of such art at Bonham's Gallery, in midtown Manhattan. But the date of the auction conflicted with Club business so that did not get off. Next, I discovered a great collection of contemporary maritime art at the Jinishian Gallery in Fairfield CT. I visited the gallery and the nearby restaurant, and was impressed that we would have had a good time and eaten well. But family setbacks persuaded Mr. Jinishian that he could not host us this year. He called back to suggest we visit the India House, which was a marine trading firm and is now a posh businessmen's luncheon club down by the Battery with an art collection. I made an appointment and visited the place, but this would not work for us -- it was weekdays only and came with an expensive lunch and the maritime artworks were not easily viewed. While down at the Battery I though of plan four. The main hall of the former Customs House, now the Museum of the American Indian at Bpwling Green, has a set of large murals showing the arrival of an ocean liner in New York Harbor. And two blocks away, mammoth maps in what was the great hall of the Cunard ticketing office at 25 Broadway. I looked at it but the latter is now a Cipriani's restaurant and they said "No!" Plan five, the plan to be effectuated, required a bit more work, which I guess is why I saved it for last,. I was given the idea for it from a man I sailed with about five years ago, whose daughter is an art historian. he told me that she led groups through the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue with an emphasis on sailing related works. So I visited the museum after consulting the Met's website and came up with probably more pieces than we can see in 90 minutes. I registered our group with the Museum which gives us group rate discounts and then organized the art through a logical pathway through the museum (and 4000 years of history). I located and priced out the Petrie Court Cafe for our lunch and nearby parking for those who do not want to use public transportation and then came the best stroke of luck: I have described in this blog museum crawls with my fellow book group member, Greg, an artist (we have one of his pieces in our living room) and recently retired as professor of art at Pratt in Brooklyn. He and his wife have sailed aboard ILENE. And he has agreed to come with us, thereby relieving me of the more difficult part of my docent duties. I'm excited about our upcoming adventure, early in February. I'm sorry if I sound too pleased with myself; but I am!