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.