July 24 - 26 -- The 2020 "Between the Forks" Cruise Begins

Well actually a sad note before departing our mooring in Eastchester Bay. The NY Times reported the deaths of two men there whose jet skis collided at night amidst an epidemic of jet ski use. Folks cooped up by the virus have chosen to use these devices when they go out. Police are investigating the cause of the accident, the article said. I submit that at least one such cause was noise. The machines apparently have no mufflers (or they are removed) and they swarm, like waterbugs on the surface of the water, ROARING about. And when not roaring the machines are equipped with high decibel music players. A driver cannot hear himself or herself think. The other potential causes, in my imagination, are driving after dark, alcohol and lack of training. A toxic brew of potential causes.
Due to a forecast of early showers we did not arrive at the Club until 3:30, unpacked and stowed  the seventeen bags of stuff (two of cats), showered and dined at the Club at 6:30 and did more grocery shopping and wine shopping and had a peaceful night. (The wines are probably superfluous, however,  given the lack of social events caused by the virus.)  I had hoped to stop at anchor away City Island, perhaps in Manhassett or Hempstead harbors, just to get started, even by a short distance, the night before, but the delayed start time dashed that plan.
The next two days we moved to Port Jefferson and from there to the Mattituck Creek Anchoring Basin,  37 and 27 miles respectively. But one prior stop, on the other end of City Island to fill the new aft fuel tank which had run out of usable fuel when we were with Sammie. We did not drop the mooring bridle until 10:30 in an unsuccessful effort to wait for wind which never came. And armed with the GPS Chartplotter I went where I have never sailed any boat before when leaving the fuel dock: through the wide enough but unmarked channel by the middle ground shoal and past Pea Island. Fears created 30 years ago were thus conquered. I did not even raise the main and we felt the lack of the stability it provides, especially the first day in the more crowded waters near home caused by myriad powerboat wakes which roiled quite a choppy surface despite the lack of wind to drive the chop. By comparison, some of our recent day sails gave us pretty good speed without any appreciable waves, just the opposite.
One unfortunate sight was powerboats flying large Trump flags, projecting the poisonous venom of today's politics onto the water; hopefully the last hurrah of these angry misguided people.
With no sails to tend and auto doing the steering of the GPS generated course, there was not much "sailing" activity leaving lots of time for cruise planning. Weather checking, plotting and measuring distances between potential anchorages, reading the Cruising Guide and seeking "local knowledge" of the places we might want to stop at our destination: "Between the Forks" at the eastern end of Long Island.  The Cruising Guide, published in 2010, told me that West Harbor, on Shelter Island, where I anchored with my first boat, "Just Cause", with less draft than ILENE, before I knew Lene, was off limits to boats drafting more than five feet due to increased shoaling at the entrance. I was worried about both overcrowding and lack of deep water in the Mattituck anchoring basin, opposite Strong's Marina. Strong's was happy to offer us dockage at  their $5.75/foot/night, its weekend rate, but I had anchored in the basin before. Finally I called BoatUS who got back that there was plenty of water. I also tried to locate the marina in Three Mile Harbor where I had left the dink years ago; yep, but now $20 per day.  We also got a lot of useful information about Noyack from the manager of  Mill Creek Marina. Sadly, there are those in the boating industry who hang up on you when they learn that there is no revenue in it for them. We told him up front that our draft precluded our enterting his marina. He confirmed what the Cruising Guide said: that the town dock is available even to big boats, for up to two hours. And he also told us, about the areas marked off as for the fishing industry. "If you can see it above the water, keep off; otherwise you can anchor".
Anchored both nights, the start of a trend on this cruise. The Port Jeff-Bridgeport Ferry.

Beautiful sunset at Port Jefferson.

Alfie is mistress of all she surveils: Solar panels and radar dome.

No post unused in Mattituck by Gulls or Osprey:

Driving onto the beach after entering Mattituck? NO, just chuck a left after rounding the green buoy.

A friend from the city who apparently lives on the water, took this photo of ILENE in Mattituck  Basin.

July 11-21 -- One Other Day, Two Work Days And Seven Sailing Days

The Other day was a delicious dinner with Harriet and Bennett at their home in Alpine New Jersey. But adding one of the work days, on the boat, to the seven day sails means I was at the boat for eight of the eleven days in this period. It seems we could have saved on gas and tolls by remaining living aboard with the kitties. But quite the heat wave!

That workday was four hours of mostly compounding and waxing part of the topside and that part I now gleams beautifully. It’s chalky surface now shiny, instead. But that part it is on the infrequently-seen port side. I also glued the shutter to the porthole in the aft cabin but the glue failed so I’ve purchased new Velcro dots. And I used the old cherry colored wood stain pen to “repair” the appearance of several small blemishes in ILENE's interior woodwork that only I had noticed.

The other work day, actually spread over several, involved about seven hours of joyfully planning ILENE’s late-August Hudson River cruise to Albany. Such fun to plot out various marinas, yacht clubs and anchorages along the way, meshing them with days for meeting three different groups of friends in different ports, calculating the distances between the stops, making reservations, and making changes as needed such as based on the tide at The Battery on the first day. My best effort was in searching for and finding local knowledge to confirm the feasibility of anchoring in a side channel of the Hudson off of Athens, NY, a dinghy ride across the river from Hudson, NY, with good restaurants.

The newly purchased charts suggested that such anchoring was feasible but they were published in 2010. The 2010 Cruising Guide mentioned several anchoring spots in the Hudson but not off Athens. So I needed local knowledge to confirm. The cruise is shaping up, subject to weather, as a good one, to places I have never been by boat, though much of the cruise will sadly require motoring. Readers will be able to read about it, day by day, in this blog, starting next month. In the interim, I also planned a ten day cruise to the area between Long Island’s eastern forks but this was easy — familiar waters and mostly anchoring at night so no reservations required, except to meet friends.

Our seven day sails (Lene came along on four of them) averaged more than four hours each. Six of them were aboard ILENE; the other aboard Bennett’s "Ohana", with two of his friends.

Three were windless or partly windless days during which we stopped, with sails down and rudder locked hard over, and drifted while swimming. The first of these was on Ohana, which is configured to allow a swimmer to slip between the hanging dinghy to the swim platform and thence into the water. Ohana has a Code Zero sail, of lightweight spinnaker nylon but on a roller fuller, which is not only attractive, but permitted sailing when the heavier sail cloth of ILENE’s Genoa would not have caught enough of the whispers of wind to move the boat.

In fact we had to motor back. Ohana, at 37 feet, and with roller furling in-mast Main is so much easier to sail than ILENE in terms of muscle powered needed. On the return, we noticed a tug pushing a barge overtaking us and who we thought would need to cross in front of us. We hailed him on Channel 13. He confirmed do we did a small diameter 360 degree turn to let him safely pass ahead of us. The slow motor ride home provided lots of time for one of sailors’ favorite activities, the telling of sea stories of passages past.

The other two swim days were on ILENE, on which I have to lower and later raise the dink to gain access to to the boat after swimming. One was with Lene’s friends, Jeff (who brought a delicious gazpacho that was well chilled in the reefer, and cookies) and Sharon.

With the dink down, after the swim, Sharon and I drove it over to inspect the stone fort on the Queen’s side of the Throgs Neck Bridge. She teaches English at Manhattan Community College. Unlike the Ohana swim, during which the boat drifted only one tenth of a mile, ILENE drifted seven tenths, but still there was plenty of water from the rocky shore. Here are Sharon, Lene and the top of my head.

The last swim day was with Fred, a neighbor in our coop. He sails in J-24s owned by a private for-profit club in the Hudson near the Freedom Tower, but only about ten times a year. But he and his wife charter and suggested we do so with them in the Aegean next year. Lene is game; the rest is details. He suggested that with the addition of a second suspended side step we could avoid the routine with the dink that is now required for a swim. With the swim first, at the mouth of Eastchester Bay, the wind came up and we sailed under full sails on starboard tack out about a mile and a half past the last green buoy of the Ex Rocks complex before returning on port. Fred had the helm and we almost cleared Hart Island’s day marker but turned on the engine for five minutes to steer high enough to get past it.

On a day before these swims I noticed, from the vantage of the launch when leaving the boat, that following Mendy’s swim in Oyster Bay, about fifty nautical miles earlier, I had failed to raise the swim ladder; it had been dragging in the sea all that way. Oops! And, I worried,  how to get it up without lowering and raising the dink, But the next sail, once underway, on autopilot, the force of the water rushing past the hull swung the ladder up and aft from vertical against the boat’s stern and I learned that I was able to squeeze my arm down, through the gap under the raised dink and the top of the aft gate and with the short boat hook, grab the swim ladder and bring it up.

We sailed with Lene’s friends, Rhonda and Sheila: the former from third grade and the latter from almost fifty years ago. Rhonda lived for many years in Great Neck so we sailed past it — all the way to the mooring field at the southern end of Little Neck Bay, then through the channel off Kings Point, before a counter clockwise circumnavigation of Hart Island. Good winds most of the trip and all points of sail under main and small jib. Rhonda is an athlete and enjoyed the helm quite a bit of the way. This picture at The Black Whale, after the sailing.

I learned some truths in an interesting conversation with Ilene later that day. Her head was not in the sailing and I asked her pay more attention — to anticipate our next moves, like I do. But this was on a day when her primary interest was her friends and she told me that she will actually never be as “into“ the sailing as I am. This was all accomplished without yelling or anger. I remain grateful that she cruises with me after our 23 years together. Few wives do.

I spent a day with Madanda, a gentleman who I had chatted with for ten minutes at the co-op’s holiday party last December. Lene thinks I’m a bit crazy for going sailing with people who I hardly know, but it seems to have always worked out for me. Madanda is a retired PhD financial hedge fund whiz and with the round trip car ride and dinner at the Club after our sail (thanks again, Madanda) we had eight hours to get to know each other. He retired shortly before the pandemic and has not been really able to try out the anticipated pleasures of his new retired life yet; I gave him several suggestions from my experience. The winds were lighter and we headed under the Throgs Neck Bridge toward the Whitestone. But our SOG on the very broad reach was quite slow, at times less than one knot. At the green buoy off the rock pile on the Queens side about 1/3 of a mile before the Whitestone Bridge, it became apparent why: the tide, as I had suspected, was flowing to the east. Three tacks took us back out to the Sound, making five knots SOG, which provided refreshing relief from the heat.

On another sail Lene and I were joined by her long time girlfriend Rudy, and Rudy‘s new boyfriend, Darryl.

We met him for the first time and he had the helm much of the way — before discovering auto. The winds were from the south, and quite strong. After the first tack out of Eastchester Bay, it was a single tack all the way to Matinecock before another straight shot all the way back to Big Tom, both ways with the wind forward of the beam.This was our furthest day sail so far this season and, again, it was good to make speed because it reduced the apparent heat.

And we sailed with Lene’s friends, actress/comedienne Jackie and her husband, musician Steve. Steve is strong, willing, a fast learner and did a lot to help out my tired old bones. He had the helm close hauled into Little Neck Bay and Jackie most of the way on a very broad reach out, through the Kings Point Channel and Hart Island Sound. Approaching Big Tom we hailed Bennett on Ohana who was outbound. It was near a run from there to the mooring and a new problem emerged, which has since been fixed: the main halyard was tangled and it took a while to untangle it so we could drop the main. While I was working on the untangling, Lene continued, at good speed, in the Channel, past the Harlem mooring field toward the City Island Bridge. So we motored back south to our mooring.

Another problem got solved during this period: in the first few days afloat, I had to scoop diesel out of the bilge! A leak in the NEW fuel tanks or one of them, and which one???!!! But none since then, despite some vigorous 30 degree heeling. I’m calling it “Problem resolved!”

July 7-10 -- Two Short Work Days, Day Sail With Neighbors, and A Rainout

The two work days totaled six hours, eight if you include two that Lene helped -- cleaning the heads. The remaining wide spot on the door between the pullman berth and the salon was narrowed by use of less elbow grease - with the Dremel. So the door fits and can be closed at last. I also obtained bolts, nuts and washers from Buddy's Hardware and reinstalled the flexible neck reading lamp in the pullman. No more wobble. 

Have I told you about Buddy's, the best little hardware store on City Island? Well it is the one but a treasure, the antithesis of Home Depot with its army of hard to find, often not knowledgeable, orange clad floor workers. Buddy, his name is Carl, bought the old Buddy's, moved it a few doors to a smaller store and yet seems to have everything I need for the boat -- and will get the stuff that he does not have. But the best thing about the store is Carl. He knows his stuff and has, for example, told me that I can repair what I need, and how to do it, without buying what I went to him for. A year or so ago I had to tap threads in metal. My friend, Pat, who helped me, told to to get a tapping tool from Buddy's. This was the first time I had tapped threads in over thirty years of sailing, first time in my life! Carl lent me the tool, no charge, no deposit, no questions asked. I insisted, over his opposition, on giving him a few bucks when I returned the tool. Where else does one get service like that! It's worth the trip to City Island. So it's my pleasure to tip my hat to Buddy's. 

I installed our new Carbon Monoxide detector. My friend said the only time his beeped in 25 years was a false alarm, but the vapor is highly toxic so why not. It is the unobtrusive black square in the center top, and the hinge side of the recalcitrant door is at the left.

The adhesive had grown insufficiently sticky on the pads that held the Velcro-removable Zarcor shutter on the aft berth's porthole. I glued and clamped it -- good as new, I hope. 

I noticed lines slating against the mast, retied them from port to starboard and thereby stopped the noise. And the vacuum cleaner took up the sawdust and other particulates so Lene returned to a clean boat. 

Our day sail was with Max and Ellen whose kitchen wall is the other side of our kitchen wall, i.e., close neighbors. We were underway three and a quarter hours under main and small jib, on a nice weekday afternoon. Fortunately the south winds were more than the four knots of wind predicted, enough to move the boat at about 4.5 knots through the water. We sailed under the two bridges to gain a full view of the Laguardia control tower before heading back. We had favorable tide outbound and achieved GPS speed of 7.3 knots, less on the way back, and ended with a dead run back to the mooring field. No waves and our guests' shrimp and wine tasted good. Dinner at the Club followed and I finally figured out how to get meat cooked medium rare there; ask for rare! From departure to return to our garage in our friends' car we spent eight hours with them.

Next day's sail date with new friend Madanda had to be adjourned to a rain date by Tropical Depression Fay. Most such cyclonic (counterclockwise) storms are picked up by modern detectors off the Atlantic coast of Africa and tracked on their irregular but generally northwesterly paths across the pond; this one popped up out of nowhere off Cape Hatteras. Not strong enough to be a hurricane but it would have been no fun to be out in; and the rains, as New York readers know, were torrential. Not having heard any bad news from the Harlem, ILENE weathered the storm.

July 4 and 5 -- Oyster Bay with Mendy

Underway from 11:10 to 3, almost four hours, with almost no wind, though we did fly the main and even put up the genny for about an hour. An uneventful passage. We anchored at the most inward bay, labelled West Harbor (I had never noticed that before) in about eight feet of water at low, a bit more than half a mile from the barrier beach. Lots of boats for the holiday but by no means crowded; we had at least 150 yards to our nearest neighbor. I showed Mendy how to snub the anchor though such was not needed given how light the winds were. He and I dinked in to the beach and met PC Bruce and Diane when passing m/v "North Star". They said that other Harlem boats were in the greater Oyster Bay area but we did not see them. Dave of s/v "Lady Cat" had proposed this area for Harlem boats this weekend but was deterred from joining us by a non-boating technical problem. Did I mention that it was way too hot for the past four days?
We walked past the area where the beloved and well remembered Club rendezvous used to be held. It was vacant and gone to pot; no longer a fit place for such an event. Can a well maintained beach be considered "infrastructure"? Crossing to the Sound side of the beach we left our shoes and walked west to those houses that line the beach. But it was tough going -- the beach here was rockier and tougher on the feet, or maybe my feet have gotten more tender?  Then after retrieving footwear we walked along the road, east to Center Island. I had expected, as has happened in the past, to be stopped at the entrance of this wealthy exclusive collection of mega houses but the police station was unmanned. I had recalled tree lined streets and thought that the shade would provide an escape from the heat but the shade was less dense than expected and we returned after

only a short walk, tugged the dink off the beach and went back to ILENE. Mendy took a swim and we rested up for dinner which was immense, topped off by some of yesterday's baklava. The huge municipal fireworks had been cancelled but Bayville put on quite a show. Then card playing and until bed time. Mendy slept in the cockpit. The night was pleasantly cool.

Next morning after mango/blueberry/sweet potato pancakes with maple syrup we headed back, but again no wind to speak of so it was motoring all the way into apparent wind close to our bow. For about fifteen minutes while crossing the mouth of Hempstead Bay we got maybe half a knot from a breeze out of the south. But the heat was back and Lene had the brilliant albeit subversive idea that with only a few day sails scheduled for the next few weeks, why don't we move with our kitties from ILENE back into our air conditioned apartment where she can watch TV. And that is what we did. Every Captain wants a happy Admiral.

This weekend's round trip of about 40 nautical miles was alas, all motoring.

July 1 - 3 -- Three No-Go Days

I mean we did not get underway by sea. We did visit our friends Tom and Marie in Clark NJ.
They had been aboard for a day sail earlier this season and in past seasons and treated us to a delicious dinner and good conversation. My only failure was again to fail to take their picture.

Next day started with my annual eye exam, followed by my first haircut after more than three months. Lene was thinking I should grow a mullet but agreed, after the deed, that she prefers in short, the way she wanted it for the prior 23 years, during which the salt has crowded out the pepper. And she looks at me a lot more than I look at myself. 

Returning to the boat for chores like cleaning, cutting up the next pineapple, and planning for our proposed cruise up the Hudson in August.  We scored the paper version of Points East magazine and read in it my account of last summer's Rhode Island cruise. ( pointseast.com. Click on "Latest Issue in upper right corner and scroll to page 28.) 

The third day of the trio was a cheduled day sail with Jeff and Sharon, with the plan to visit Lady Liberty. The date had been picked for favorable tides. But Mother Nature conspired against us; the predictors stating an 80 percent probability of rain, in addition to very light winds until the afternoon thunderstorm. So an adjournment. They predicted correctly though the winds of the thunderstorm were not as strong as envisioned. During the morning's drive to shop for food and The Times Lene espied the New Rochelle farmers market and we ended up with a lot of good stuff including kohl rabi, to make my cole slaw a little different, and baklava. I also sanded down the edge of the door between the salon and the pullman berth so that it now almost fits in the jamb. Soon it will indeed fit. The purpose: so that physically the kitties can be kept from waking Lene at first light for their food, though the door is not soundproof and Alphie's voice will still be heard.

June 28 -30 -- The End of Our Time with Sammie

6/28 -- I toured the furthest inward clockwise bay of Oyster Bay by dink with Sammie at the helm. Amazingly, on a Sunday morning close to July Fourth there were ZERO boats at or near the northern (beach) end -- where our Club has celebrated so many large memorable rendezvous -- and only about four boats in the entire western bay! That's the virus effect. There were some cars in the parking lot though.

The gentle eleven mile passage took 3.25 hours, mostly with low rpm motor and mainsail into light starboard headwinds. But for perhaps one hour near Connecticut we were under sail alone, moving toward Zieglers Cove at about one knot  --  because the engine died. The smaller rear fuel tank we had been drawing from since launch was empty of usable fuel. During the hour I switched tanks and bled air from the fuel line. Lene helped in this regard, pouring diesel from a small plastic cup into the bleeding hole while I pumped away at the small, impossibly located hand lever. (I raised a blister on the side of my thumb in the process. I need to get a thumb cover for the next time.) Sammie maintained a lookout for other boats and that we remained on track.
Ziegler’s Cove is a bit tricky to enter due to an unmarked channel guarded by rocks on both sides, those to the east being underwater. But it’s quite easy with the Raymarine Multifunctional GPS display. The thin purple lines on the screenshot shows ILENE's track into the Cove from the lower right past the two rocks that I have marked with a red pencil. Toward the top, the red horizontal line marks the "cliff" we aimed for, though the photos below show that while rocky, the cliff is not a high one.. ILENE's second stop is shown by the white "ship" shaped diagram with concentric rings (giving the scale of the place. The first such ring is 1/16 of a nautical mile from the boat, about 376 feet, but as can be seen much of its area is yellow (land) or darker blue (shallow water). The two red circles near the cliff have jagged purple lines showing how ILENE moved about getting to and while "hunting"on her anchor, to the right and a mooring to the left. The "14" in the upper right is our depth at that point in the tide cycle, and the dark blue arrow from the boat pointing to the lower right says our speed over the ground is our drift to the SE at one tenth of a knot. Lots of information available.

1. 

The small beautiful well protected cove was literally full of motorboats at every one of its 28 moorings. by my count. So we anchored for the afternoon outside the Cove proper, in twelve feet of water, under the cliff-like northern wall. But with potentially violent thunderstorms predicted, that was not a good place to spend the night. I predicted that some of the powerboats would be leaving. We had towed the dink, because of the short distance with light winds, and Sammie and Lene explored the Cove, during which they found a good empty mooring. They returned, put Lene aboard to help me, and Sammie went back and held onto the pickup stick of the vacant mooring while we raised anchor, and motored over and moored. Sammie and I explored nearby Scott Cove, off to the right -- bigger but rock strewn and shallow, good for the dink which draws 1.5 feet, but not for ILENE’s 5’ 10”.
In late afternoon the thunderstorm did come with lots of announcing noise and a short torrential rain, but winds were moderate. Several hours of light intermittent rain followed. The cold front pushed out the heat. Dinner aboard -- there are no restaurants or any other commercial services of any kind in the Cove -- was followed by card playing and a good night’s sleep.
My prediction that some of the power boats would be leaving was an underestimation; ILENE was the only boat to spend the night in the Cove. Here are views of the Cove from the mooring in the morning, looking in, looking out and of the "cliff".

The only negative about the Cove is the poverty of its WiFi signal.

Monday morning, Sammie finally got to taste my sweet potato-blueberry-mango pancakes that Lene had bragged about so much. Sadly, she is not a fruit person and did not like them, a first among the many folks who have had them.

I raised and drained the dink with Sammie’s help and we got underway for the  mile passage from Zieglers  back to the Harlem. But I made a mistake in figuring that the wind would be too light and from behind us to do much good. I put out the Genoa, on a lark, and was too lazy to take it in, head into the wind and raise the main. So we were under Genny and engine most of the way home, with only a short interval without the engine. I "wasted" a sailing passage. Once out of the Cove and headed home, the apparent wind was on our port side but after a while it was to starboard and stayed there. Auto steered easily and I whipped about fifteen line ends, mostly short stuff, looking up from time to time. We passed a bunch of kids learning how to race sailboats

and several fields of lobster pot buoys, a rarity in western Long Island Sound in recent years.

The afternoon was devoted to a car tour of some of Manhattan's many sights, down the length of Central Park's east side and Times Square, etc. They shopping for dinner at home, laundry and dinner with Ken and Mendy with more card playing, which I opted out of -- more fun to fold the laundry. 

On the final day of the three we dropped Sammie of at Laguardia with a bag of warm New York bagels and half a dozen good books, and returned to the boat for a day of paperwork interrupted by several rainstorms and joyously interrupted by visits, by dink, between the rainstorms, first by Bennett and his friend Jess (who we met at his birthday party a week before) and then by David and his daughter, Katya, who gave us a water purifier for ILENE. Thanks, Dave!