May 20 - 27 -- A Frustrating "Other" Day with GIC, Two Work Days and Lene's First Two Sail Days

The frustration occurred when I was all set up for a nice day of sailing, with Alison, Patrick and their younger son Ian. Alison was a classmate and friend of my oldest daughter, Sharyn, and both of her parents served as presidents of our Congregation before my years in that office. I had a reef in the main,

but due to my own stupidity and a failure of communications with Patrick, I drove the boat over the mooring and the bridles. The bridles, their connector and the pick up stick got all wrapped around the propeller so we were moored to our own mooring from astern! Fortunately, Two Cees, the local mooring servicing company was passing by, tied up to starboard, leaned over and cut us loose, and towed us to a vacant mooring, actually, Bennett's mooring. The guests made the most of a day on the water, even though it was NOT a sailing day. I have offered them a "rain date". After lunch and some wine they departed, I put things away and changed for the 133rd annual Going Into Commission ceremony and party. After all the flags were raised,

the cannon was fired to announce the official beginning of the sailing season.
More frustrating communications failures: I had arranged for the Club to obtain memorial paving stones for the flagpole patio with the names of Josh and Letitia, former members whose ashes their three adult children had scattered from ILENE's deck last summer. The family had authorized me to lay them in the patio, shown above, as part of the ceremony. But the Commodore, who had a zillion other more important details to attend to, heard my "Yes" as a "No," so the laying will have to wait until GOC, at the end of the season in October. The penultimate performance of Lene's play made GIC a solo event for me ("the show must go on!"), and I was a bit depressed not having my "arm candy" by my side.

The food was as good as ever and the service was as slow as ever.
Bennett asked me to help him launch "Ohana" from the Morris YC and bring her the mile to her mooring at the Harlem. The only problem was that ILENE was on that mooring. So we drove Ohana to a nearby vacant mooring and took the launch to ILENE. The remnants of the old mooring having been unwrapped and removed from her prop by Barnacle Busters' divers, we tested the engine: ILENE passed the test -- no vibrations! We drove ILENE to her own mooring with its new bridles and pick up stick, the old bridles having lasted eleven seasons. We took the launch from ILENE back to Ohana, drove her to her mooring, and then took the launch back to shore where we drove my car to the Morris YC so Bennett could retrieve his car. Seems complicated but it went easy, with a bit of trouble from Ohana's engine's cooling system, that has since been fixed.  And one hand washes the other: Bennett helped me bring my dink from its upstairs locker to the floating docks. Much easier with the help of gravity that pushing the dink upstairs in the fall! All this before breakfast so the launching could coincide with the high tide. I had planned to inflate the dink but the rain got heavier so that plan was adjourned.
Two days later I did the inflation along with the gathering of all of the dink's equipment except for its lock and cinching straps. (Where the heck did I put them last fall? An hour of searching with no results yet, though I do recall having seen them during the winter, somewhere.) I had lunch with the Old Salts but had to pass in their sail that Wednesday afternoon because I had to leave at 3:45 to get home, get cleaned up and changed and drive three of the guys to Jim's house in Chatham, NJ for a meeting of the book group. But after lunch the launch towed the dink to ILENE and I hoisted it on its davit bar with strong cordage temporarily substituting for the absent cinching straps. I brought a case of wine aboard and stowed its contents. I attached the blocks to the rail bosses and got the side sheets for the small jib installed through them, and I reinstalled the shined up, polyurethane protected ship's clock, with fresh battery.

And we finally got in Lene's first two sails of the season. Ann and David are neighbors and the volunteer heads of our Co-op's gardening committee; they make our gardens so lovely. We got to know Ann in the house gym. They were not sailors but David took to it quite well.

We were underway for 3.5 hours to Peningo Neck and back in very strange winds. Gusts to 30 knots with high winds at both ends of the trip, with as low as 10 knots in the middle. Going out we passed two tugs with fuel barges heading west. They wanted to pass close to Hart Island and cut across our bow so we turned to starboard to avoid them. Outbound was a long port beamy reach under reefed main alone, achieving speeds averaging over seven tide-assisted knots. We passed north of Execution Rocks. Homebound was a long starboard close reach aided by the small jib, passing south of the Rocks. A terrific windy day, followed by dinner at the Club. we enjoyed the pleasures of sailing.
The next day our guests were four friends I made through Lene. The two men have sailed with us before. They had a great time out on the water and the rain did not fall. But while the main was up throughout, so was the engine, due to lack of winds, except for about an hour passing from the far end of Hart Island into Manhasset Bay, during which we put out the genoa as well, and made stately speeds of two to 3.5 knots. So a day on the water for fellowship, but most of it was not sailing. Left to right, back on the dock at the end of the day, are Elliot, Jules, Jeff, Lene and Sharon, all performers except Sharon who teaches writing in College.

May 16-18 -- First Old Salts Sail - Between Two Work Days

On the pre-sail work day I put the second reefing line through the sail, inserted the newest electronic chart chip in ILENE's chart plotter, took the unique number of the new EPIRB so it can be registered with the Coast Guard, and thoroughly cleaned one and a half of her heads.

Next morning I helped the Club's House Chairman, Fadi, to paint the rail of the deck that faces the water for a couple of hours. The floor of the deck had been done before the work party, in a yellowish-grey preservative paint, its broad flat surface easily rolled. The rail, however, is a sort of picket fence, with a lot more small surfaces. It soaked up its barn red paint. The picture shows folks on the deck during the Going Into Commission ceremony this coming Saturday, so the Club wants our home to look good.
Then after lunch, The Old Salts set out for what was the first sail of the season  and my crew rated the wind a "ten".

Peggy at the helm, then Rita, Marcia's friend named Carol, Marcia and Walt. That the bimini is not up yet lets in more light, making for better photos.We used full main and small jib, cleared Eastchester Bay after a couple of tacks and headed out to half way between Ex. Rocks and Matinecock Point on a starboard beam reach achieving an average of close to seven knots.

We overtook this pretty older yawl with all her sails aloft like a knife through butter. There was plenty of room for the only two boats out that lovely warm weekday in the young season. After the turn it was a beat on the way back with the wind instrument showing 27 - 28 wind units -- more than enough.  We were only underway for about 2.5 hours because we needed "wine time" and I had to get back in time to get changed and up the the theater, half a block from Broadway where Lene was starring in the one act play she wrote, "A Pregnant Lunch". I had pre-theater dinner with Rhoda and Lloyd who enjoyed the play.

The next work day was a paperwork day, at home, and just too much fun to properly call it work.  Using an index chart and a cruising guide I laid out the first draft of that portion of this summer's cruise to get us from the Harlem to the Bras D'or Lakes, in Cape Breton Island, the northern part of Nova Scotia. I estimated the distances between ports, to be refined later.

City Island is in the extreme western end of Long Island Sound in the lower left of this chart and the Bras D'or lakes are the white spot under the ball point pen's shadow in the upper right. It is only 662 nautical miles each way as the crow flies, and the chart shows it is pretty close to a straight line, subject to minor changes, tacking and the in and out mileage for each port.
Actually two major sailing events are set to start on June 17: The first, is our summer cruise while the other involves a convention of billionaires and their professional employees and is called the America's Cup. The first race of that best of thirteen series will take place in Bermuda, weather permitting on June 17. At speeds of up to 50 knots (YIKES!) these races, sprints actually, will each last a projected 20 minutes. (Between now and the Cup's June 17 start, the Louis Vuitton cup will decide which of the five challengers to Larry Ellison will race against his crew in the Cup.) By contrast, we hope to make six knots and our cruise, God willing, will end in mid September. Theirs is a whole different ball game and will be widely reported by major media. ILENE's event will be more exclusive, reported only in this blog and occasional emails from Lene.

Here is my plan:
June 17 - City Island, NY to Block Island, RI  - An overnight. Estimated 17 hours, the trick is to time the tide rushing through The Race.
June 18 - Lay day
June 19 - Block to Nantucket - Doable in 14 hours of daylight. I'm toying with passing south of Martha's Vineyard and avoiding the tidal flows through it, but encountering perhaps stronger N-S tidal current through Muskeget Sound, between the Vineyard's shoals and Nantucket's. Anyone with ideas, local knowledge of such a route? Advice would be appreciated.
June 20 - Lay day
June 21 - Lay day
June 22 - Enroute to Shelburne NS  - An overnight, 36 hours
June 23 - Arrive in Shelburne
June 24 - Lay day
June 25 - Shelburne to Lunenburg - Shelburn to Halifax are two long day sails
June 26 - Lay day
June 27 - Lunenbrg to Halifax
June 28 - Lay day
June 29 - Lay day
June 30 - Halifax to Shelter Cove in Popes Harbor
July 1    - Popes Harbor to Liscomb Harbor
July 2    - Lay day
July 3    - Liscomb Harbor to Whitehead  - Halifax to St. Peters are four much       shorter day sails.
July 4    - Lay day
July 5    - Whitehead to St. Peters
St. Peters is the SW entrance to the Bras D'or Lakes via a canal there.

So that's nine passages in 16 days.

Once at St. Peters, the cruising guide lists 40 different marinas, towns, anchorages and mooring fields, many of them containing several options as to where to stay. So we won't be able to visit them all but we want to take in a variety of towns and totally secluded anchorages from the best of them, and the good news is that they are all close, 2-3 hours, max from each other.
The odds of following this plan exactly are near if not absolutely zero. First the tides have to be checked. Weather may intervene. The Admiral must be consulted and she may have different ideas. And finally, as I learn more about the area, I suspect to learn that some of the ports that sounded good may be problematic and others better. But it is a plan and I'm excited.

PS: Thinking ahead, the return trip, with prevailing Southwesterlies, is projected to take longer and will also take longer because after we get back to Shelburne, we hope to swing clockwise around the south end of Nova Scotia to the town of Yarmouth, and thence across the Bay of Fundy to the Mt. Desert Island region of Maine and a lot of hops all along the way to home.

May 11 - 14 -- Plan "A"

My most recent prior post described some nice sailing related activities, but I failed to mention that the last three of these days were Plan "B."

Plan "A" was to help a Corinthians friend, Cynthia, bring her new boat from City Island to Cape May, with a bus ride back to New York from there for me. Cynthia's new boat is a lovely Cape Dory, full keel, a bit heavy, snug, safe, stable and classic looking. While new to Cynthia, the boat was launched in about 1986. Cynthia bought her in Greenport, NY where she had passed her survey with flying colors -- all claimed systems "GO!" Cynthia had spent some time and money with her new boat in Connecticut, adding electronics and modernizing features that had not come with the boat..

I had enjoyed the fun of calculating tides and distances. Her ultimate destination was to have been in the Annapolis area where Cynthia lives. She had other crew for the remaining portions of the cruise but was happy to accept my help for the Atlantic portion.

But this is a story with an unhappy interruption -- notice I did not say "end".  While motoring west through Long Island Sound from Connecticut to City Island, the top of the oil reservoir blew off, the four quarts of engine oil was spewed throughout the engine compartment, the engine ran hot (but its overheating alarm apparently did not sound) and when it got hot enough the engine cracked.
So for now, instead of enjoying her new boat Cynthia will have a lawsuit.
Hey, thank God at least no one was hurt.

Addendum: In early June Cynthia called back to report that the repairs were complete. Unfortunately, in our rush to get ourselves and ILENE ready for three months of Nova Scotia, I no longer had three consecutive days available to rejoin the crew.

May 11 - 14 -- Three Good "Other" Days and a Nice Windy Sail

Manu and Michelle are two French speaking gals who brought their French, aluminum sloop, "Teepee",  across the Atlantic. We met them on St Maarten at the end of 2010, and several times since then on other islands, in Florida, in upstate New York and New York City. They have stayed in our apartment and babysat our kitties. They have appeared several times in this blog.

Well, Manu's parents, Odette and Emanuel, were visiting NY, from their home in Montreal (by train)  and we had two lunches with them. The first was at Katz's Deli, a very crowded famous New York landmark noted for its lack of ambience, and the second was in an extremely exclusive, "by-appointment-only" dining establishment. Have you guessed it?  Yes, the cockpit of the s/v ILENE. I also drove them to several of the sights of my city that are outside of midtown and easier reached by car than public transportation.

I also attended the first of the nine performances of the charmingly pleasant one act play, A Pregnant Lunch, written and starring my beloved, not just a sailor (or a pretty face), Ilene. It is on a program of eight original one act plays being produced for nine nights, half a block off Broadway, by the Wednesday Repertory Company. of which Lene is a member. And who else was in the audience: Bennett, Harriet and Jenny from the Harlem, And others who have sailed with us: Lee from my book group and his wife, Patty, and Donna, Ilene's Financial Advisor and her husband Bob, all of whom have sailed with us.

While it rained all day on Saturday, this did not dampen the spirits of the Harlemites who turned out for the spring work party and a membership meeting. The work party was a bit over-staffed because it was necessarily limited primarily to indoor chores. I replaced light bulbs in the chandeliers, polished furniture, polished the bar's foot rail with brasso, replaced filters and, going outdoors, picked up bits of trash in the yard. Painting, electrical work and carpentry took place in the locker house. They always feed us and it is an opportunity to renew and make new friendships. Work on the new Gazebo, to replace the one blown away by hurricane Sandy has begun- bigger and stronger.

Between the work party and the meeting, I read in the City Island branch of the NY Public Library and there met a man who was featured in the Sunday Times: writer of haiku on driftwood at public spots around the island. He has published a book of them in his spare time after teaching in the NY public schools by day. I invited him for a sail, but his summer does not begin until we leave for Nova Scotia so maybe next year.  And the membership meeting showed that the club is moving forward and improving due to the efforts of our leaders.

Sunday's sail was with Marie Genevieve and her son Rafael, the family of Art, who is a member of my book group.

MG is a sailor from the lakes of Switzerland and off Cornwall, England and she and Rafi have been on ILENE before, and hopefully will do so again. Art, however, has sailed once and learned that it is not his cup of tea. We sailed for four hours, heading to the Throggs Neck Bridge under full main and small jib. But seeing gusts of up to 28 knots, I put a reef in the main before beginning to beat under it and the Whitestone Bridge, past Rikers Island and to the Queens power plant before turning for home on a long port broad reach. Outbound we fought the tide and while it was weakening, we enjoyed its push on the way home, peaking at 9.1 knots SOG. A highlight was passing a comparably sized sloop which was motoring. She put up her genoa as we closed. One problem was that the middle batten was backing its way out of the leech of the main, but this was fixed before we got to the mooring. (I may have to shorten this batten by an inch of sew a tack in the sail at the leech to keep it in place.) MG called her sister and chatted in French before putting me on. The sister had been on a winning sailboat in a transatlantic race. My crew was not put off by 25 degrees of heel. On the way back, after clearing under the last bridge, the wind came forward of the beam but lessened. We carried the same tack through the passage off Kings Point and did not tack over until we closed the north shore of Long Island. Then passing Stepping Stones Light on the way home, we got back to the mooring at two, when the rain was supposed to begin, but it did not come until three. With her bottom still clean, ILENE loves to go!

May 6 - 10. -- Summer Is Here; Lene Works Aboard, LAUNCH, Problems Solved, and First Sail!

Yes, the season has begun. Lene worked with me Saturday afternoon. First item was the nuts on the bolts that hold the swim ladder to the swim platform; Lene worked the Phillips head driver from above while I held the wrench on the nut in position impossible, from below. She said hello to both Bruce and Linda, who stopped to chat on their way to m/v J-Erica, and with Tex and Maria who were getting m/v Heaven Sent ready to launch. I filled the starboard fresh water tank, replaced the hot water bypass and reconnected the hoses to the hot water heater, cleaned the filter at the fresh water pump and purged the antifreeze from the system at all twelve outlets. Lene wiped the ceilings with Clorox to prevent mildew, I put away a zillion things and we called it a day.

Launch this year was ten days earlier than last year, but that, I believe, was largely due to my week in the Hospital for gastrointestinal problems last year.

ILENE is in the slings, rolling aft toward the water. Here the two headstays are dangling by her side, the white diagonal lines passing through the first "U" in the word "Huguenot", and by the blue horizontal fender just below the top of the freeboard. The blue spinnaker halyard slopes down to a cleat on the foredeck, barely visible, providing resistance against the mast falling over backwards.
High tide was at 11 but they had other boats, albeit ones with shallower drafts, and let me wait until noon. The engine came on at the first flick of the key, with a warm gratifying purr. There was no room at the dock immediately outside the lift and I steered in reverse and then forward to another facing dock, and without hitting anyone! Once tied up I turned off the engine and waited another hour for the yard men to reattach my headstays and lift the folded Genoa from the dock to the deck. Again I puttered about waiting and then turned on the engine, preparing to cast off and motor to City Island where I planned to mount the headsails and then to find a way back to New Rochelle by land, to pick up our car, which now was loaded with winter stuff: tarp, ladder, heater, electric polishers, antifreeze, etc. to be loaded into our locker at the Harlem.

Not so fast young man!  Engine purred on easily, but 30 seconds later it sputtered and died.

But before working on the engine, another more immediate problem presented: I'm hearing the bilge pump. I'm actually hearing the aft grey water sump pump cycling. The bilge pump is completely submerged, and the water in the bilge is muffling its sound. Where is the water coming from!!? Well it is flowing forward so the problem must be aft. Removing the ladder that covers the engine, the culprit is revealed -- It is me!  Yes, there is a small plug, about 1/4" diameter, that should be screwed into a like sized hole near the bottom of the raw water strainer to permit the strainer to be drained. Alas, the boat's resident idiot had left the plug on top of the strainer and so there is effectively a 1/4" hole in the boat, below the water line, through which sea water was rapidly spurting. An easy fix -- I screwed in the plug and let the bilge pump do its work. But I learned that a 1/4" hole will let in enough water to overwhelm the dispelling capacity of the bilge pump! And I'm reminded again of the rule: never leave your boat during the first few hours after launch; use that time to check for leaks lest your boat sink at the dock.

The Huguenot's yard manager is telling me that if I'm not off their dock "today", they will charge me for one night's dock rental. If this is true, it is contrary to the policy in prior years: one night's free dockage at the beginning and at the end of winter storage. And the old rule is a needed one to permit the dismounting and remounting of sails (while in the water so 1.) there is no fear of tipping over the boat by having sails aloft on land being caught by a gust of wind and 2.) so the headstays can be detached and reattached more easily, without the sheer weight of the sails wrapped around them) and so sails can be used as moving power to get the boat between the Harlem and the Huguenot. I will speak to the management about this.
 In any event, once the leak was stopped I tried to start her up again, but the tricks I knew failed and hence I called trusty and under-priced (yes this is not a typo) Ed Spallina, and drove home with ILENE still at the dock.
Ed met me at ten the next morning. We bled out the air and I watched, helped him and learned more about how the engine's fuel delivery system works. I wrote up the details of this process and will keep that paper in the service manual at the page that "describes" the bleeding process. Yanmar's manuals are woefully lacking in detailed instructions for people like me who are not previously mechanically trained. ILENE hummed again and I was off the dock, by myself, before 11 a.m. Tuesday, less than 23 hours after launch. A very uneventful motor passage through the western "back door" of New Rochelle, at near high tide to City Island.

There, I had to ask Dave, the Head Launch Operator to help me find ILENE's mooring; they all look pretty much alike without their occupants. I had to make three passes to pick up the stick because its float had slid too high up its shaft, causing it to float too low, but we got on the mooring and I fixed the stick. Then I made the bed (which gives ILENE her lovable liveaboard look), hoisted and furled both of the headsails (which was difficult, despite my spraying copious amounts of McLube on the luff bead, because the wind decided to come up), vacuumed up the big stuff in the saloon, put away everything and caught the last launch ride back ashore at 4 pm. Summer service, when launch service continues till at least 8 pm are not yet in effect. Dave was kind enough to drive me and drop me off at my car on his way home, which saved an hour of public transportation (two buses!). The end of work day 40 of 2017. From now until we haul in the fall, work will continue but most will be occurring on days when we live aboard or sail.
       And yes, the first sail of 2017!

 My companion was Chanda Laine Carey, Mellon Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow and Assistant Professor of Art History at NYU. She was a presenter at the CUNY art symposium I attended on April 18. (see blog post) She spoke about a painting by Kerry James Marshall called The Gulf Stream, 2003, which was homage to the iconic 19th century painting with the same name by Winslow Homer. I provided some information about the pictured boat at the symposium and for Chanda, our sail was professional research while for me it was pure pleasure. I filled her head and notebook with as much information about shrouds, sheets, halyards and other lines, sail numbering and lettering systems, points of sail, tides, etc. as I could, but we need another session for preventers, topping lift, knots, etc, on a day with more wind so she can experience the thrill.
We were off the mooring for about two and a half hours in very light air, though we did reach 4.5 knots of SOG briefly. We were under full main and Genoa and made three tacks to off Fort Totten before a broad reach back. And half a bottle of white celebrated our safe return. A nice easy gentle relaxing day. Summer is here; let the good times roll! Am I a happy camper?

January 22 to May 5 -- Twenty Nine More Work Days

I've written several posts since January 21, but they were all about "Other" days with boat related: art, friends, travel, and club activities -- but not about work on the boat. Yet such work has been going on and knowing how much some of you guys like this stuff (OK, not many of you) this post, on a rainy Friday after ILENE was supposed to have been launched yesterday (but the launch crew ran out of daylight) will catch you up.

Yes, 29 more work days,  have occurred with more than 120 hours, averaging four hours and nine minutes per day. These included five more work at  home days, refinishing the cabin sole, which was the biggest project of the winter. These 29 days, together with the 23 earlier ones between haul out on October 14 and January 22, makes for a total of 52 work days this winter season, with a few more to go to clean the interior, continue to compound and wax topsides, launch, mount head sails and bring ILENE from New Rochelle to the Harlem.

What was accomplished during these 29 days? I mean other than the regular attention to:

+the bilge, 

+snow on the cover, 

+scrubbing the bottom in parts with maroon Scotchbrite and applying paint left over from last year to the waterline, bow, keel and rudder (the spots where it washes off more quickly), 

+sanding and four coats of Velox paint to the prop, 

+replacing all of the zincs, 

+uncovering and transporting the winter cover from New Rochelle to City Island (half of it to Doyle Sails for replacement of a broken zipper),  

+bringing the sails in the opposite direction, and 

+compounding and waxing everything above the water line.

The newly repaired cabin sole boards, except for two large ones that are reserved for next winter's work, are completed and reinstalled. You see the old finish, top, and the new.

They shine, but teak is a strange wood and some of the teak bungs, as you can see,  do not match the color of the rest of the sole making for an interesting abstract pattern.

Don came through with new wooden sticks to hold the batteries in place that match and replace the old ones. Repeated little drips of battery acid had so rotted them after 18 years of use, that they were no longer strong enough to do their job.

The darkly stained pieces show the effect of the acid.

I coated the new wood rods over the batteries and their "holder" pieces with resin so they should last longer than the next 18 years. Thanks, Don.

I spent a lot of time and money on lines this winter, the strings that run everywhere on sailboats. I had fead the bright idea to put the four halyards, one for each of the four sails (main, jib, genoa and spinnaker), through the washing machine and a fabric softener rinse after 18 years aloft. And I ran messenger lines to be able to pull the halyards back up to the top of the mast and back down through the interior of  the mast in the spring. But the line I used for the messengers was to thin and two of them broke. I bought a stronger 125 foot line, used the remaining cheapo messengers to get the sturdy messenger in place and then the sturdy messenger to get the headsail halyards into place. The two that broke required me to engage Jeff Lazar, the terrific local rigger. He has a climbing apparatus that connects to any stout halyard by which he climbs to the top without the need for me to haul him up in a bosn's chair. But how to get lines from the top of the mast to the narrow slots near its base where the halyards exit? Jeff uses a clevis pin attached to a length of thin but strong chain. Gravity pulls the pin to the point inside the mast where I was able to use Jeff's grabbing tool to extract it from the slot. After that he attaches the end of the halyard he had brought aloft to the end of his messenger permitting me to pull the halyard down through the mast. 

But I needed two additional expensive visits from Jeff to get ready to sail. While aloft to insert the halyards, he noticed that a bearing at the top end of the foil of the Genoa roller furler was missing so he ordered the part and returned a few days later and installed it. 

Jeff's third visit to ILENE was to re-rivet a "D" ring to the starboard side of the mast (above the second spreader) to which a small block is attached, The Lazy Jacks of the stack pack are tied to a line through that block so the stack pack can be adjusted to the correct height. I had apparently broken the D ring off while raising the main. I prepared for Jeff's visit by removing the half rivets contained in the D ring's attachment holes with hack saw, Dremel tool and hammer, and cleaned off the rust. Jeff drilled out the other parts of the rivets, remaining in the mast, and used his rivet gun to reattach the D ring.

I actually managed to fix another screw up myself: In the fall, I had put a big knot in the aft end of the first reefing line. The purpose was so its end would not pull forward into the interior of the boom when I snugged it up. But unfortunately I put this knot at the lower rather than the upper half of the opening at the aft end of the boom, thus achieving the worst of all possible outcomes: the knot was at the forward end of the boom, too big to be pulled out at that end, and it was fourteen feet from the aft end of the boom!  My first plan was to use my 25 foot electricians tape, to snake it out, by fastening a pick to the steel tape's end with tape, and feeding it forward till it grabbed the knot. No luck, the first pick is still in the boom. I tried again, this time lashing the pick to the snake so it could not pull off, but it did not grab. Plan B did work. I taped and tied the end of the snake to the portion of the errant reefing line just forward of the knot and used the tape to push the knot aft through the boom. I got to 18 " of the aft end, when this method failed to make further forward progress. With another pick, attached to a stick, I was able to reach in, grab the knot and pull the line out the last 18 inches. As to the pick that is still in the boom, I tested the second one and learned that they are magnetic, while the boom is aluminum. So I attached a pretty strong magnet to the end of the snake and approaching from the aft end, tried to grab the pick with the magnet. No luck yet. It's being magnetic means that it is not stainless steel and will likely rust. Any ideas for me on how to get it out?

 My final string play this winter involved a sturdier set of blocks and line to hoist the aft end of the dinghy (the heavy end that has the outboard and fuel tank) up from the sea to the port end of the davit bar. This had been very heavy and required me to use the power winch at the coach roof to get it up. The reason was that the equipment was too flimsy for the load, with 1/4" diameter line over sheaves with 7/8" diameter. In fact the center sheave of the block had been scraped away by the line under pressure, exacerbating the problem. One aspect of the solution is the use of new 5/8" diameter line over much larger blocks. But the other part of the problem was that the old rig had three sheaves at the top and only two at the bottom. The newer equipment that I ordered and have now installed adds an extra sheave to the system which should halve the force required to lift the dinghy. 1) the Good small tackle, to starboard; 2) the worn away center sheave of the bad block that was to port; 3) the new heftier rig.

Finally I ordered a sheet of faux teak for the swim platform. They sent me a sheet of clear plastic on which to create the template. But to make the template the swim ladder had to be removed. The four nuts securing the bolts that hold the swim ladder in place are at the very far aft end of the boat, under the cockpit sole requiring a crawl through a very small place to place a wrench on the nuts. Three nuts came off easily enough, but after wrenching the last one for a while, I realized that when I turned the nut, the bolt turned with it. What to do? Get a second person to hold a Phillips screwdriver on the outside, on the top of the bolt while I turn the wrench  from inside to loosen the nut.  But there was no second person so I grabbed the head of the bolt with a vise grip wrench and lashed a stick of wood to the closed wrench which was long enough to wedge into the forward corner of the swim platform to stop rotation. It worked! All is put back together again except the nuts, which will be installed when Lene comes to help me clean the interior tomorrow. First picture is with the ladder removed.

The platform looks better than before, I think.