Jan 14 - 30 -- Three Work Days and Five Other Days.

The work days at the boat totaled only ten and a half hours, mostly working of the two big projects of this winter: replacing worn pieces of the rope clutches and replacing the diesel tanks.

As to the clutches, I got help from the Saga Owners' Net and from Spinlock in identifying the existing clutches which had no labeling (Spinlock XTS) and finding the correct replacement parts. Actually they are the prior, 1999 generation, of XTS called XT, but the replacement parts in question fit both. It is nice to see that a marine manufacturer thinks of its customers in such a user friendly way; not all of them do. I also got help from Bennett, who I helped with his boat. His help was in unscrewing the bolts that hold the clutches, to the coach roof. It is a two person job, one holding the Phillips head screw driver in place atop the coach roof, while the other turns the nut with a ratchet wrench from inside the cabin. A tiny bit of Dremel grinding at the side of the opening from below was needed to fit the head of the ratchet unto the nut. Then came taking the side piece of the clutch off, during which we realized that to get the screw driver to fit we would also have to remove the hatch located adjacent. Bennett reached the same conclusion I did: the job is just too complicated to be worth it. The reason for the job was to replace the internal parts, top and bottom, that have teeth that grip the lines. The teeth show signs of wearing away, eroded by the line passing through them, but not so bad yet. Instead, I will try to swap adjacent lines, each through its neighbor's clutch, so that the lines that get very little use will be in clutches with mildly worn teeth while those that got a lot of use will pass through clutches that have virtually unused teeth. So one could say that we got nothing done; but on the other hand one of the two big projects of this winter is, in a sense, completed.

The other project is the replacement of ILENE's two aluminum diesel fuel tanks. This picture shows the aft one, from the top, with its thick fill hose to the left, its vent hose in the upper right, and the two lines taking the fuel to the engine and returning unused fuel to the tank shown at the right. Most other Saga owners have done this job: twenty years of erosion hold the promise of a big smelly mess. I have two sets of design drawings of the tanks showing the locations and dimensions of all of their fittings, from two owners via the Owners' Network. One design is higher tech, designed to increase the volume of the tanks but I'm going with simpler design, the exact replication of the existing, except to be made of thicker and a better grade of aluminum. At the boat I took up the cabin sole floor boards, removed the four wooden blocks that hold each of the tanks from moving from side to side (or upward if the boat rolled), and took my own measurements to confirm that the new tanks will fit! Now I am contacting vendors to fabricate the tanks, one in Rhode Island who has made these tanks before, and another in New Jersey suggested by Bennett, who knows about tanks.

The Other days were mostly fun days. Two of them were at the Harlem's booth in the New York Boat Show at the Javits Center. About 4.5 hours per day, and the only fun part of it was engaging with my Club members and meeting strangers. In former years a highlight of such service was taking breaks to tour the other exhibits. But this year's show was the worst in history. In the old days there were sailboat exhibitors and various vendors of chandlery supplies, tools, charts, magazines, etc.  The sailboaters dwindled over the years, getting down to just sailing dinghys but even these were gone this year; the power boat exhibitors have taken over more and more space formerly used by other vendors. Boring, though one vendor of Scotch whiskey gave me wee samples each day and I told them about our sail to New Scotland in the summer of '17.
I also visited the Hudson River Museum and several restaurants in Yonkers to plan the Harlem's "Ninth Annualish Winter Land Cruise" which will take in the Planetarium Show including celestial navigation after lunch at Dolphin Restaurant.

Another night I attended an exhibit in the rare book room of Columbia University's Butler Library. It was called "Awash in Books" and I did not know what to expect. It turned out to be a show of art books with watery themes from poems to the biblical book of Jonah. Very beautiful hand crafted books selling in limited editions for as much as $10,000! I admired them but fortunately for me, my acquisitive gene was suppressed. And they fed us wine and cheese etc. I invited the curator to a sail aboard ILENE.

The Harlem's annual International Night came off rather nicely after the first membership meeting, well led by our new Commodore, Frank. My contribution was a Linzertorte which was well received, i.e., they ate is all up!

A dinner with sailing friends Jamie and Lori who came in from Boston to see the ballet. They have sailed extensively in Newfoundland and been a big help to me with the last big item accomplished  over several days during this period. Guided by Jamie and the Cruising Guides I spent many hours planning our summer cruise which will take in the Atlantic coast off the Cape Breton Islands of Nova Scotia, the tiny part of France called St. Pierre and Miquelon Islands, then after abandoning the Euro and checking back into Canada in Newfoundland, a tour of the western half of its south coast (upper right in the chart below) before Prince Edward Island and completing the circumnavigation of Cape Breton and heading for home. A lot to do in only 70 days and some ports may have to be omitted if we get holed up in others by weather. An ambitious cruise, in my opinion (39 ports in 70 days), and one I'm looking forward to very much. I hasten to add that plans are always changed, even at the last minute while at sea, but at least it is a plan. The red rectangles represent the scope of charts, twenty of which I need to buy, but only shortly before our July 1 planned departure.