September 19 - 25 -- Third Week After the Cruise

One day was for the annual atonement for my sins. And the fast was broken, in a very non-traditional way - boiled lobsters - at Bennett and Harriet's house. They live near where I pray. Another couple of days were devoted to the care of my mate who had surgery; Lene's mostly OK now.

Two sails. The first with Bill, the author of a book about his multi-day sail, aboard his catboat, in New York City waters. He left from Jamaica Bay on the south shore of Long Island, up the East River and into Long Island Sound, with many memories of past experiences that occurred to him during this multiday voyage. I had borrowed the book from Bennett and wrote to Bill and offered him a ride on ILENE, which is as sleek and modern as his catboat's look is classic. He teaches Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center; a new friend.

The other sail was with Morty and Clara on ILENE. They are "Old Salts" and I was not sure who I would be sailing with that day, the primary mission of which was to put away the dink. But I only worked an hour on it, pulling it up onto the dock, inverting it and using a brush and lots of fresh water to scrape off the marine growths that covered its bottom and lower transom, before stowing it again on the dock. I had planned to pull it up to the top of the seawall but the tide had gone too far down for that.  So I sailed, a nice couple of hours, going very deeply into Manhasset Bay, to the ten foot water line, before heading out. While there we passed "Thai Hot" while Bob was setting her anchor for the raft-up for those staying late for the Harlem's "Full Moon Rendezvous". These autumn sails are wonderful.

Next day was not a sail but a work day, though it took only an hour, near high tide, to float the dink, tow it to the seawall, get it up and fully deflate it before inverting it and using a yard cart to get it over to the "farm", the storage area across the street from the Club's driveway entrance. Then to place it atop another hard dink on the top level of a three shelf dinghy storage rack. There is a crew of men who are always working for the benefit of our Club. We could not exist without their near constant volunteer help. They had the Club's forklift running, which made the lift easy. It will be hard to steal the dink from its perch, without a forklift, and the lock on the chain will make that much more difficult.
With a little luck we have another two or three weeks before it is time to haul for the season.

September 12 - 18 -- Second Week Back

Our last two nights sleeping aboard this season, with transport of selves and kitties to our apartment on Friday the 14th. So the cruise is over but day sailing continues. But no less than four sail dates were cancelled during the week due to threatened rain (Nanda), fog and no wind (Old Salts though we did enjoy lunch), being stood up (by the organizer of the Veteran's sail) and the fouth day, totally fouled up by the remains of Hurricane Florence. But I did have two good sails.

 The first was with the members of the New York Map Society. I joined last year. They are fellow map enthusiasts though most are collectors and some are artists and scientists. I'm just a user of charts and they interest me. The annual dues are very low and they have interesting programs mostly on East 27th Street. I had offered a boat ride to the Society and thought to sail with two shifts of up to six folks per shift. But we had only nine souls for the lunch at the Harlem,  (the Society paid for it), of which only four joined me aboard ILENE. Sadly the four sailors did not include Andrew, the Secretary and energetic driving force of the Society, whose specific interest is Lithuanian maps! He did come for the lunch.  But both the President, Steve, who took the wheel for a while

and Sy, who was one of the founders of the Society, were among the intrepid four who sailed. We motored for a while due to light wind, but then the wind came up and we got to speeds over six knots, giving the folks a hint of the thrill of sailing.

And three of the four sailors live in lower Manhattan so I was able to give them a ride home in our car.
The only other sail during this week was with Rhoda aboard "Jazz Sail" her Catalina 27. I arrived at  her boat (with a sandwich to share) before she did and had it ready to go when she got there. We headed off but were back within five minutes when a rather heavy rain caught us. After lunch in the cabin the rain stopped and we got off for about three hours for a trip around Hart Island. Nice fall wind, plenty for that light boat. I noticed and photographed the top of her mast and aft end of her boom. Both show bare pole for the the last 12 to 18 inches; in other words, there is room on the spars for a larger mainsail. Hmmm?

On the other hand the headsail is a genny which with 1) the short radius of the winch handle (its shortness needed to avoid the lifelines) and 2) the absence of a self tailing top on the winch meaning only one hand is available for turning the handle, meant that grinding in was a tough workout for me; doable for a big guy like me, but I wonder how Rhoda manages. 
Rhoda also invited me to a performance of a reading of the play "Teddy and the River" a telling of Teddy Roosevelt's life threatening 1912 voyage of discovery on the Amazon, after his Presidency and his run as a Bull Moose. This was staged at the National Arts Club, half a mile from our apartment and it was a well written play and a well acted performance. Thanks for a lovely day, Rhoda.

September 5 - 11 -- First Week Back - Living Aboard

It is always good to be back and there are always a lot of things to do: car needed inspection, shopping. banking, paying bills, propane refill, haircut, etc. Our nephew, Mendy, spent three nights aboard with us including one of the two day-sails during the period, together with Christine and Heather. The wind was strong on a cool grey drizzly afternoon and when we came near to close hauled, with just the small jib and main, we were heeled considerably. Lene pointed out that we were not in cruising mode -- that we had no destination to make before nightfall. Could we please respect the cats wishes by reducing the heeling?
Aye Aye, Admiral!
So we furled the headsail and tacked back and forth across the mouth of  Eastchester Bay with the wind near the beam for the rest of our two hours before regaining the mooring for the noshing. I really appreciated Mendy's prodigious upper body strength. My crew performed a very nicely done controlled jibe.
The other sail during this week was on the first day we got back, on Mark's Deuce of Hearts, a very comfortable catamaran. I reserved ILENE form the service of the Old Salts until we get the cats moved back ashore. In addition to Mark and I, we had three couples and Claire. Our Club's secretary, Doug, hosted Karen, a social member, and two of her girl friends on his
Cape Dory 28, "Aquila". They joined us after for the digestibles. My problem with these events is that I eat too much; dinner - forget about it!
Some of the nights aboard have been hot and humid. others rainy, windy and or foggy.
The rest of the time this week: a visit to our apartment to get "city clothing", an matinee on Broadway, a day's trip to Kent, CT, to visit our friend Fran, a meeting on the upper east side of my Book Group, religious high holiday services, and a huge family dinner at cousin Judy's in New Jersey.
Back in August, at Frenchboro, Maine, we met up with and had blueberry pancakes with liveaboards Rick, Claudia and their son Dylan, but I failed to capture them photographically. But they are now at the Harlem so my error was correctable before they head south soon.

See ya next week!

Cruise Summary -- Maine 2018

We left the Harlem Yacht Club on July 4 and returned on September 4, 63 days later. But seven of those days were spent off the boat on a car trip to Quebec City while an addition to ILENE's keel was attached. So the cruise itself was only 56 days, considerably shorter than our Nova Scotia cruise of 2017.

The events of each of those 56 days, the delightful and the ugly, have been reported in 33 posts to this blog -- details and highlights. This posting attempts to describe the forest instead of the individual trees -- by statistical. as well as subjective approaches.

The 56 days are the sum of  45 passages (to 44 destinations - two visits to Rockport Maine) plus eleven lay days. About eighty percent passage days. Some of the lay days were weather related. One of them was devoted to the round trip visit to beautiful Monhegan Island, by ferry, a highlight of our summer. Our lomgest stop was three nights - in Belfast, associated with Witty's illness. We like to keep moving.

Among the 44 ports were 15  that provided the thrill of entering a new destination and 29 old friends; so almost a third were new ports.

The nights: no overnight passages like the three last summer. The vast majority of our nights were spent on moorings: 40  (ten of them were free!). Only 14 were on our anchor and two at docks. One of the docks was at Sandwich Mass, which seemed a necessary place to stop and has only docks. The other dock was at the Great Island Boat Yard in Casco Bay, where ILENE was hauled to permit her keel to be re-soled. At docks our kitties get frisky so we seek to avoid them.

How about the mileage, which added up to 1079, round trip. Roque Island, the furthest destination , is only 356 miles from our mooring at the Harlem as the crow flies, which would mean 712 crow miles, But the shortest locical course, without going in and out of ports and backtracking is probably about 450 miles on e way compared to our 539 miles each way.

Here is a chart showing the distribution of our days, passages and miles into the three segments of the trip:

SEGMENT	MILES	DAYS	PASSAGES	MILES/PASSAGE
To Maine	324	10	8	40.5
In Maine	407	35	27	15
From Maine	348	11	10	35
Total	1079	56	45

No matter how you slice it, it is about 300 - 350 miles to get to Maine from New York City.
By driving through the nights this could be done in about 70 hours, less than three days. We took a more leisurely pace with about nine passages each way ending up using one third of our cruise in the coming and going phases, but we saw some very nice spots along the way, taking our time to smell the coffee. Still, we did an average of about 35 to 40 miles per passage on the outbound and return passages, compared to only 15 miles per passage in the target vacation area where we spent two thirds of our time.

And the food: Lene puts out the three squares each day subject to occasional meals off the boat.
During the 56 days we had one breakfast (on Monhegan Island), four lunches and 17 dinners "out".

We do have a few prejudices: toward moorings, against docks and in favor of healthy boat cooked food. But subject to these, the patterns simply emerge when I count things up at the end, rather than with set targets.

Subjectively, first. what went wrong:
1. I somehow left our clear plastic cockpit enclosure "walls" at home, and the Club burgee too. I was sorry about the burgee but it was such a warm summer that the cockpit enclosure was not missed.
2. I put water in the fuel tank, necessitating a tough job this winter.
3. Witty's illness put a crimp in our style- the reason for the second visit to Rockport Maine, and we hope he gets better soon and that the motion of the boat did not contribute to his pain.
4. The biggest problem was the light winds. We did a lot more motoring than we wanted to.
5. The transformation of nice places into berths for superyachts to the exclusion of sailors like us was a problem to which I do not have a solution.

The positives:
1. People whether it is unexpected accidntal unplanned rendezvous with boats associated with our Club -- four of them.
meeting with old friends or making new ones, we are social animals and enjoy being with other people in port.
2.  We escaped the brutally hot New York City summer.
3. The new ports we visited -- and there are so many more.
4. The new addition to the bottom of the keel has been a big success in making for a more comfortable ride.
5. We got back alive and safe.

This blog will continue with many fall sailing activies already planned. Thanks for reading.

September 3 and 4 -- Port Jeff to Cockenoe Island Anchorage to the Harlem Yacht Club, 17 and 29 Miles

We are home. Continuing to live aboard the next ten days or so but home.

Cockenoe Island and its spit extending quite a bit east, (to the right) underwater, is a tiny lump of land at the eastern end of a group of islands called the Norwalk Islands. They protect Norwalk and Saugatuck from the winds and waves of Long Island Sound. I had thought to possibly go to Northport on the north shore of Long Island for our last night away, but once out in the Sound it was clear that crossing to its Connecticut shore would make for a better ride. We feared too little wind and it was indeed light, and from the southwest. Northbound across the Sound was sailable, though slowly. we made between 4 and six knots. A short passage on a steamy hot day; why not sail slowly, give the Yanmar a break and take advantage of the water cooled air contitioned breeze. We were headed too far to the east, toward Fairfield, CT, where I had planned to tack and go west to Norwalk. But during the three hours the wind came very gradually but steadily about 35 degrees to the south and with each increment we turned a few degrees further west until me were almost parallel to the Connecticut coast, making landfall near Cockenoe, our track a long curve.  Lots of room for lots of boats and our Rocna got well set. I had planned to dink over to explore the island, having never been here before, but it was so darn hot and Lene was engrossed with her tennis watching so I just stayed put and rested up for the final passage home the next day.
The next day was windless, six hours to motor the 29 miles. Then a laundry, dinner abord and reading before bed.
And an article called "Nova Scotia Idyll" has now come out in the September issue of Points East magazine, starting at page 26. I wrote it, condensed down a lot, based on the facts in the posts to this blog about our summer cruise there in 2017. It is the sort of article I wish I had been able to read before we went there. pointseast.com
So while we will be reaclimating to city life, the sailing of 2018 is far from over.

September 1and 2 -- Newport to Chocomount Cove on the North Side of Fishers Island,to Port Jefferson, 34 and 55 Mil

The first of this pair of days was a lovely sail and since we did not get off the boat (in either port) I have no land based activities to report. We planned to stop at Stonington CT, where Dodson would rent us a mooring for $58. But NOAA forecast only five to ten knots from the southeast at night and so the security/cost of a mooring seemed unneeded and a bother. We have walked the one lovely main street of historic Stonington many times and saw no need to go ashore there. So we looked for an anchorage. One, on the east side of Mason's Island, where Past Commodore Tom keeps his boat, "Rally Point", would have done nicely and his is a very hospitable Club, but it is exposed to the southeast. Chockomount, on the north side of Fishers Island, on the other hand, was new to us, ideal for the wind, and we anchored in 24 feet of water with 80 feet of snubbed chain, and were the only boat in the broad cove. Great view of the Connecticut coast. well lighted by the several towns across Fishers Island Sound. The land on Fishers is all privately owned and no access to the island itself by dink was available from Chocomount had we wanted to go ashore.
How we got to Chocomount: There was so little wind in Newport Harbor that we raised the main while on the mooring. We passed this craft docked by Fort Adams

while motoring out and then the Crystal Symphony, the very ship on which we cruised Alaska, June 2-10, anchored in the harbor. Of course, it got here by sea through the Panama Canal while we flew between the coasts.

Once out in Narraganset Bay, the wind was a broad port reach and not really strong enough to fill our big sails which flopped about. Once we got away from land the wind built. After the starboard turn and gybe off Point Judith, we were on  a broad reach, almost a run. I connected the preventer lines to protect against the accidental gybe and we sailed slowly until the wind built up a bit more. To get more speed we would have had to steer north of west --  close the beach and I saw the possibility of avoiding that by sailing wing on wing, with the genoa out to starboard. This worked for about an hour and a half, until it too had us closing the beach. But by then the wind was sufficiently south of west and we jibed the main and sailed on a port broad reach all the rest of the way along the western half of the Atlantic coast of Rhode Island.

We saw the big modernized but intentionally old fashioned looking hotel on the hill and then Watch Hill Light.

We sailed through Watch Hill Passage and most of the way through Fishers Island Sound to our cove. It is circled by the large homes of the rich-who-do-not-want-to-be-famous. Underway almost six hours at an average speed of 5.9 knots with a lot above 7.5 but a lot of time going in the fours as well. A warm sunny day with good visibility and enough wind to actually sail. Hooray.
I recalled making the same passage with my friends, Jim and KC, before this blog started, when it was cold, grey and nasty and we had to beat into it all the way. This time, just the opposite. And we timed the tide right too. Sunrise at Chocomount:

Though Chocomount was nice, my  mistake was not going 20 or thirty miles further with the good sailable wind on the first day, becaust the next day's long passage from Chocomount to Port Jeff was windless. Here is a view of the Connecticut coast to starboard  from eight miles away (the white dot on  the horizon is a 53 foot power boat
(AIS told me her length) half a mile away) and next the North Shore of Long Island, from six miles off our port beam. A bit boring, won't you agree?

Well actually there were brief interludes of weak wind, but from behind us, at speeds less than our six knots of boat speed over the bottom, causing a couple of knots of apparent wind on our nose. The main was up throughout but it did no work.

In Port Jeff we chucked a right, anchored behind the beach and checked for possible dragging. In came a boat that looked like it had a Harlem YC burgee. And a Past Commodore Burgee, too! It was "Thai Hot", Bob and Laura's Island Packet, in from Block Island. I had helped him sail her back from Bermuda in perhaps 2008, and he crewed with me on ILENE's big passage in 2010, from Hampton Virginia to Tortola, BVIs.  Again it is a very small world. And here are views the next morning around the anchorage.
Thai Hot with the Port Jeff smokestacks to her port side and the town further left.

The west, north and east sides of the anchorge with one of the ferries just come in from Bridgeport through the cut in the beach.