"There is nothing more pleasant than cruising on a boat with the whole family."
Letter from Empress Catherine the Great

Friday, December 15, 2017

November 16 -- December 15 Not Much Going On In A Month

We had two "other" days during this period: One was going to see Ilene, the actress, in two of the eight original one act plays staged by the Wednesday Repertory Company. I went with our sailing friends, Bennett and Harriet. Ilene was amazing, playing two quite different characters in the two plays.
First, an angry, red-faced, born again, Bible thumper and quoter, whose two daughters kill her, at the end, by getting her increasingly angry, above the threshold that her coronary condition can tolerate by cursing at each other.
In the second play Lene played Roberta, nee Robert, who has to work with her brother, Richard to write their Mom's obituary. Richard does not accept her trans status but she wins him over at the end; a very sweet story with lots of humor about siblings being reconciled. 
We also enjoyed a weekend in Pine Bush N.Y. at the home of Tom and Marie, friends we met out west in September 2015. They are not sailors --YET -- but that will be fixed this summer. The water experience which qualifies our weekend with them as an "O" day (OK, I admit its a stretch) was a very nice hike past the lake and to the falls in Lake Minnewaska State Park near New Paltz N.Y.
Only two work days in the month, only ten hours. I'm really getting lazy.
+Opened the viewing ports in the fresh water tanks pumped out about six gallons of water from their bottoms and put about a pint of rotgut vodka in each.
+Charged up the batteries.
+Disassembled one of the two remaining cabin sole boards to bung out the dings in them and received the Fostner bits from John to do that job.
+Replaced the zinc in the refrigeration unit.
+Scraped and sanded down the prop and shaft.
+Took a lot of time figuring out the right size for a bolt and nut to replace a missing one that helps hold the reading lamp in place in the aft cabin.
+Took measurements for the physical installation of the Standard Horizon AIS radio and called Raymarine who advised that because their chart plotter was built in 1999, before AIS was invented, their chart plotter will not display the AIS data. While I can connect the AIS to the Chartplotter via its receptacle for an NMEA plug, the chart plotter that will not cause the chartplotter to display the AIS data. So the two screens will be adjacent to each other and the Chart plotter screen will not got clouded over with AIS data. And good news from Standard Horizon: the same plugs that feed the electricity and the signal from the antenna to the existing Standard Horizon radio will feed the same items to the new AIS radio. I guess that's what they mean by "plug and play!"
+I cut bigger pieces of old carpet and figured out a new way to attach them so that the corners of the solar panels will not chafe through the winter cover.
+I got a phone tutorial from Groco on how to stop "flowback" in the two heads: The white plastic piston rings need to be given a slightly larger outside diameter (to press closer against the cylinder walls, by removing them and tapping them, top and bottom, with a hammer so they bulge out at the sides.

I started to work on the slide show to be given at the Harlem about our Nova Scotia cruise and another slide show about developments in Nautical Charts during 1850 to 1950, for the Library and the Map Society.

And I finally got out my letter to C-Map, the maker of the electronic charts of the Bra D'or Lakes that were so inadequate and hence unsafe -- see posting for Day 26 -- July 13 of this summer's cruise.
Its getting colder but I'll try to get more done next month.