September 17-24 --- Only Two Day Sails And A Work Day

The two sailing days, totaled 7.5 hours underway. The first was with Mendy and the second with Eduardo, who I met on David's Hidden Hand recently.  He described the nice ten day cruise from Providence RI to Nantucket on a friend's catamaran this summer that he and his wife and two teenagers enjoyed. I even enjoy hearing about other people's cruises! He is shown here framed by both the Throggs Neck and Whitestone Bridges, a lucky shot on a day with good clear visibility.

There is no rule against "poaching" of a friend's crew; rather it is a matter of enlarging the circle. Eduardo is a "Club Boat" member of the City Island YC. We at the Harlem have a similar program which is a membership incubator. For a fee much lower than full dues, after the person is admitted to membership and checked out as an able sailor, subject to availability, he or she can use any of the Club's small fleet of 23 to 25 foot boats. The "subject to availability" rule has never actually been operative because so far there has always been enough availability. The purpose of the program is to create new sailors who will eventually want and be able to own their own boats and will join the Club, where they have made friends, to become "Active", full dues, members. This has worked for us at the Harlem but interestingly, in Eduardo's club an unexpected adverse consequence has occurred.  Senior Active boat owning members of the club, who feel that they can no longer maintain their own big boats, sell them and reduce their membership category down to "Club Boat" status.

Both days we cut generally similar wakes with winds out of the east but varying in strength and direction: into Littleneck Bay, and out past the Throggs Neck Bridge, with variations of course. Both days we passed the same string of barges with tug attached, anchored out in the Sound. With Mendy we passed a large catamaran with nine folks sitting on the foredeck which had full sails up but was moving incredibly slowly: we passed her three times!  I am so pleased with Mendy's progress in the art of sailing. With Eduardo, I put up the genoa on port tack for the long reach from the Harlem to the moored boats at the south end of Little Neck Bay. I did it to demonstrate that sail to Eduardo; it was one of the relatively few times the Genoa was used this season.

The work day was one on which, again, I did everything I had hoped to accomplish, at least mostly accomplished them. With the help of our Marine Chairman and the Club's forklift, our dinghy, partially deflated, is sitting, inverted, on the top of the Club's dinghy rack for the winter. It could be seen as a tempting target for thieves, but they would need a fork lift to get it down. The cheapest hour of free skilled labor imaginable and it is always fun working with friends. Thanks Dan. I also removed 99% of the fish guts and scales that were spread around in a five foot diameter pattern on ILENE's foredeck; gosh those birds have lousy table manners! It was too windy on the foredeck to work comfortably and I need another pass at it with stronger soap and a stronger brush to complete the removal of the stain. 

The last problem was diesel in the bilge. I used a 3M pad (that miraculously absorbs diesel but very little water) in my rubber-gloved right hand to mop up the pink liquid and squeeze it out into a plastic one quart tub set is a large flat plastic tray. Then poured the tub into bottles with secure caps and cleaned up the spills in the tray. I got about 1.5 gallons and I think that next time I will get the final 1% when it shakes down to the lowest portion of the bilge. 

Ah, but the most important thing is that I finally figured out how the diesel was getting there and was thus able to prevent a recurrence. I chalk the problem up to my absentminded stupidity. The fuel runs down from the deck fill into the tank though a rubber type hose about one inch in inside diameter. At the bottom end the hose is pushed onto an aluminum tube that protrudes from the aluminum tank. And the hose-tube connection is secured by two hose clamps that press against the outside of the hose against the tube. Everything was in place but I had not tightened the clamps! They were in place but just hanging there uselessly. very easy to fix.