The work days were all related to winterization which is complete except for padding the hard points under the canvas cover to prevent them from chaffing through and putting back together the things that were torn apart inside the cabin to gain access for the winterization.
Twenty three and a half hours of work by me plus 1.5 hours of work by JP of Headsync, who helped me winterize the Spectra Ventura watermaker, 1.5 hours by Ed Spallina helping me get the last few systems winterized (during which I learned that I need a longer, i.e., taller, hose through which to pour the pink stuff through the engine) and 5.5 hours of Mendy's help it lifting the headsails to the locker, taking the main to Doyle Sails for repairs and putting on the winter cover. Total man hours so far this fall: 32.
This was the eleventh time I have installed the canvas cover, but the first time I did it during strong winds from deep on the port quarter. Wrestling the big sheets of ungainly stiff canvas in the wind gave me a wee taste of the much more difficult and dangerous was work of the iron men who manned the old square rigged wooden ships, They did it in the rain and snow while hanging off the spars of boats that were picthing and rolling in storms while at sea! But after perhaps four hours of preparation in taking out the stanchions and lifelines and positioning and attaching the whisker pole forward and the wooden poles aft, and snuging the halyards around the mast and shrouds so they would n0ot slap against t hem all winter, Mendy and I did it, with only one false start (with the aft section of the cover backwards) we got it done in near record time and without breaking zippers, or, more importantly: falling off the boat. I also took off the cockpit table and two pieces of molding at the top of the port side of the companionway which had been weathered and need to be sanded and repolyurethaned this winter,mwith more woodwork to come.
I had a nice lunch one day at the Club which finished up my chits. I only need to spend $600 per year in the restaurant, but being away for ten weeks meant I had a bit left to be spent. I visited with two parties were being catered, one celebrating the retirement of a local man and the other a commemmeration of a person who had died twenty years ago. A third such group was not catered but a la carte. A group of black power boaters who had out a chart kit on the table. They were palaning a cruise to Block Island for next summer. I could not help them with their question: "Which is the best marina?" having never stayed at any of them, but provised distance and taught them to look up the tide at the race. That was fun.
I had a theater date with Bennett and Harriet; Lene would have been there too except for her broken bones which are mending quite well, thank you. A Club membership meeting was a pleasure, even though I had to leave a bit early. The Officers and Board members presented their reports with well deserved self satisfied glee. Both financially and physically, things are looking up at the Club, due our leaders' countless hours of volunteer hard work over the years.
I attended a presentation by a professor at the CUNY Graduate Center on a new book he had written about the New York City waterfront during the past 410 years. How deep water to the edge of land gave New York an advantage over other cities. How the water rights were given by the city to private persons who built the first docks, wjhich were later landfilled and bought back by the City. How the cooperation of four ship owners created Black Ball Lines, the first packet shipping company, which could never guarantee arrival times but did guarantee a departure from New york to Liverpool on a fixed date each month. How the corruption of the waterfront shapeup system worked against the longshoremen (with a plug for the Brando-Kazan-Bernstein-Malden and Eva Marie Saint film "On the Waterfront" -- which I watched for the first time the next day). How containerization severely curtailed the corruption but required the relocation of longshoreing to New Jersey which had land available for the trailers. And how public-private financing is developing the waterfront today with parks for the people balanced against privileges for the wealthy. Very informative.
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
Tuesday, November 13, 2018
How Much Sailing In The 2018 Sailing Season?
Having launched ILENE on May 26 and hauled her on October 26, the sailing season lasted precisely 176 days this year -- not a record. And the first and last of those days are not counted as sailing days in my crazy system of mathematics -- they involved motoring between ILENE's winter the summer homes. Subtracing them leaves only 174 days.
Two weeks for our Alaska vacation in June and one week for the car tour to Quebec and Portland
during the Maine cruise (though most of these 21 days were water-related "Other " days, leaves 153 days for potential living aboard and or sailing.
The next subtraction is for ten Work days during the period ILENE was afloat but that I neither lived aboard nor sailed but worked on the boat, leaving 143 days for potential sailing.
We enjoyed 27 "Other" days during the period afloat, relating to sailing but off the boat. Subtracting them leaves only 116 days available for sailing.
Other fun activities unrelted to the water, obligations-- social and otherwise and bad weather took 24 days. This means we had only 92 "sailing" days in 2018. adding back up the other way, only 24 of the 176 days of the season were unrelated to sailing, about one in seven. I like the high "utilization rate".
Dividing the thousands of dollars spent this year on maintenance, repairs, improvements, insurance, summer storage and winter storage by 92 means that the cost per day of getting ILENE underway for a day was, let's just say: "a three figure number". Most boat owners, I believe, do not want to know that number -- too painful -- even more painful for many, who use their boats far less than we do. But this per diem cost is a misguided way to look at things: one must add in all of the Work and Other days, for which boat ownership is the prerequisite, which lowers the per diem cost markedly. Still, our life style is out of reach for people without money.
On the other hand, we lived aboard without sailing during nineteen of the 92 days (eleven lay days during our cruise and eight after we returned from it).We love living aboard but while counted as sailing days, it is not actually sailing. Subtacting the nineteen from the 92 leaves only 73 days of being underway for sailing this season: 8 before the Maine cruise, 52 during it and 13 after we got back.
Four of those 73 days, were on other people's boats: two on Mark's "Deuce of Hearts" with the Old Salts and two with Rhoda on "Jazz Sail". I love sailing on other boats and learn from them but this means I actually got ILENE underway on sail days only 69 days this season.
We used 151 engine hours this year. Seventeen of them were for the refrigeration system during our seventeen "Live Aboard" days, leaving 134 engine hours for the 69 days of actual underway sailing aboard ILENE. This means an average of just about two engine hours per day which seems surprisingly low to me. But some of the sailing days we were underway only an hour and on the good days were up underway to eight hours with only 1/4 hour of engine use at the ends of the passage.
Still only 151 hours is pretty good, in my opinion. Some folks say I should put in a new refrigeration system that would work off the batteries, to avoid "using up" the engine, because engines are admittedly very expensive to replace. Not for ILENE! Battery operated refrigeration for a boat like ours, that is rarely at the dock, would be a constant source of worry whether we were getting enough juice and would require that we runthe engine anyway, so its generator would charge the batteries or the addition of a wind generator or carbon powered generator which are themselves expensive and are noisy and complicated to install and maintain. Meanwhile, with only 3593.9 engine hours on her, our Yamnar 4JH2E diesel is still young, and at the rate of only 150 hours per year, the engine is likely to live longer than we will!
Another view: ILENE was new in 1999; she has completed 20 seasons, some of them quite long -- to the Caribbean. Average engine use: 179 hours per year.
I have noted before, sailing is one of the few life activities in which the more you give it away to others, the more enjoyment of it you derive. So I've taken a look at how much I have been able to give away this year.
Three of the sails on ILENE were with the Old Salts, (plus the two days on Deuce of Hearts). Salts who sailed with me aboard ILENE at least once this year were Mike and Sandy, Morty and Clara, Peggy, Bennett and his new daughter in law, Claire and Virginia and Sarah: ten folks.
Lene sailed with me during the entire Maine Cruise plus seven day sails from the Harlem. Three of those seven were with a total of ten people from Wedrepco, her theater group. The other four day sails during which Lene graced me with her presence were with: (1) Greg and Wanda from Nova Scotia, (2) Tom and Marie, who we met touring the Rockies along with Roz and Bert from the gym in our building, (3) nephew Mendy with Christine and Heather of Westchester and (4) Sid, a former colleague in the law, and his wife Jan. Twenty one more folks.
And finally I had seven more day sails on our boat, without Lene or the Salts, with: Gene from the Harlem, four members of the J-24 Fleet of racers let by PC Jeep, four members of the New York Map Society, Bill, a retired professor who wrote a book about sailing his catboat through New York's waters, Alison, Patrick and Ian from our Congregation, and Fred from our building. Fourteen guests.
Adding them all up, I sailed on ILENE with 45 different folks this season, 21 of them for the first time. A good year overall and the fall work season is now in effect through December 31.
Two weeks for our Alaska vacation in June and one week for the car tour to Quebec and Portland
during the Maine cruise (though most of these 21 days were water-related "Other " days, leaves 153 days for potential living aboard and or sailing.
The next subtraction is for ten Work days during the period ILENE was afloat but that I neither lived aboard nor sailed but worked on the boat, leaving 143 days for potential sailing.
We enjoyed 27 "Other" days during the period afloat, relating to sailing but off the boat. Subtracting them leaves only 116 days available for sailing.
Other fun activities unrelted to the water, obligations-- social and otherwise and bad weather took 24 days. This means we had only 92 "sailing" days in 2018. adding back up the other way, only 24 of the 176 days of the season were unrelated to sailing, about one in seven. I like the high "utilization rate".
Dividing the thousands of dollars spent this year on maintenance, repairs, improvements, insurance, summer storage and winter storage by 92 means that the cost per day of getting ILENE underway for a day was, let's just say: "a three figure number". Most boat owners, I believe, do not want to know that number -- too painful -- even more painful for many, who use their boats far less than we do. But this per diem cost is a misguided way to look at things: one must add in all of the Work and Other days, for which boat ownership is the prerequisite, which lowers the per diem cost markedly. Still, our life style is out of reach for people without money.
On the other hand, we lived aboard without sailing during nineteen of the 92 days (eleven lay days during our cruise and eight after we returned from it).We love living aboard but while counted as sailing days, it is not actually sailing. Subtacting the nineteen from the 92 leaves only 73 days of being underway for sailing this season: 8 before the Maine cruise, 52 during it and 13 after we got back.
Four of those 73 days, were on other people's boats: two on Mark's "Deuce of Hearts" with the Old Salts and two with Rhoda on "Jazz Sail". I love sailing on other boats and learn from them but this means I actually got ILENE underway on sail days only 69 days this season.
We used 151 engine hours this year. Seventeen of them were for the refrigeration system during our seventeen "Live Aboard" days, leaving 134 engine hours for the 69 days of actual underway sailing aboard ILENE. This means an average of just about two engine hours per day which seems surprisingly low to me. But some of the sailing days we were underway only an hour and on the good days were up underway to eight hours with only 1/4 hour of engine use at the ends of the passage.
Still only 151 hours is pretty good, in my opinion. Some folks say I should put in a new refrigeration system that would work off the batteries, to avoid "using up" the engine, because engines are admittedly very expensive to replace. Not for ILENE! Battery operated refrigeration for a boat like ours, that is rarely at the dock, would be a constant source of worry whether we were getting enough juice and would require that we runthe engine anyway, so its generator would charge the batteries or the addition of a wind generator or carbon powered generator which are themselves expensive and are noisy and complicated to install and maintain. Meanwhile, with only 3593.9 engine hours on her, our Yamnar 4JH2E diesel is still young, and at the rate of only 150 hours per year, the engine is likely to live longer than we will!
Another view: ILENE was new in 1999; she has completed 20 seasons, some of them quite long -- to the Caribbean. Average engine use: 179 hours per year.
I have noted before, sailing is one of the few life activities in which the more you give it away to others, the more enjoyment of it you derive. So I've taken a look at how much I have been able to give away this year.
Three of the sails on ILENE were with the Old Salts, (plus the two days on Deuce of Hearts). Salts who sailed with me aboard ILENE at least once this year were Mike and Sandy, Morty and Clara, Peggy, Bennett and his new daughter in law, Claire and Virginia and Sarah: ten folks.
Lene sailed with me during the entire Maine Cruise plus seven day sails from the Harlem. Three of those seven were with a total of ten people from Wedrepco, her theater group. The other four day sails during which Lene graced me with her presence were with: (1) Greg and Wanda from Nova Scotia, (2) Tom and Marie, who we met touring the Rockies along with Roz and Bert from the gym in our building, (3) nephew Mendy with Christine and Heather of Westchester and (4) Sid, a former colleague in the law, and his wife Jan. Twenty one more folks.
And finally I had seven more day sails on our boat, without Lene or the Salts, with: Gene from the Harlem, four members of the J-24 Fleet of racers let by PC Jeep, four members of the New York Map Society, Bill, a retired professor who wrote a book about sailing his catboat through New York's waters, Alison, Patrick and Ian from our Congregation, and Fred from our building. Fourteen guests.
Adding them all up, I sailed on ILENE with 45 different folks this season, 21 of them for the first time. A good year overall and the fall work season is now in effect through December 31.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)