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.
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