SV ILENE’s SAGA INTERRUPTED FOR ALMOST A YEAR BECAUSE OF MY MISPLACED TRUST IN A VENDOR.

[THIS WAS THE ORIGINAL TEST IS THIS POST BUT BELOW IS THE UPDATE] 

This was supposed to be the final post  to ilenrtheboat.blogspot.com:

“Yes, due to increasing technical difficulties with my using Blogspot, the continuing saga of the sailing vessel ILENE will henceforth appear at ILENEtheboat.com. The same name except without blogspot in the middle. The first post is already there. Blogspot was totally free, but my mate, Lene, got tired of hearing me cursing at the laptop (I don't curse at people, except for rubberneckers). And this blog is my hobby so I've spent a few bucks to make it easier for me, and hopefully for you as well.

I'm told that the 730 posts at blogspot will continue to be available to be viewed here, and a banner at the top of the new blog will be advising folks to go to blogspot for descriptions of the events of 2010 to 2020.” 

BUT AFTER ABOUT 40 POSTS UNDER THE NEW TITLE, COVERING ALMOST A YEAR OF SAILING, THE FIRM THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HELPING ME GOT MORE AND MORE RAPACIOUS, DEMANDING MORE AND MORE MONEY FROM ME UNTIL I HIT ON MY ONLY REMEDY. I WENT BACK TO ILENETHEBOAT.BLOGSPOT.COM.

FOR ALMOST A YEAR, MY ADVENTURES AND ACTIVITIES, APPROXIMATELY 40 - 50 POSTS, WERE REPORTED AT ILENETHEBOAT.COM.   WHEN I STOPPED PAYING, THEY NOT ONLY STOPPED HELPING BUT THEREAFTER ERASED ALL OF THOSE POSTS. 

I’m sorry for myself and for you my dear readers.

Feb 8 -- 21 ---- Two Winter Walks, Two Snow Removal Days And the Electrical Work Finally Done

As more and more snow makes the wooded trails impassible (or at least unpleasant) with shush or ice,  Dave has scheduled more "urban expeditions". Six us us, including Lene and I, met at Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard (originally Sixth Ave) and 110th St, in Harlem. That is the Manhattan neighborhood where our Club was first located, when it was founded in the 1880's, We made the loop of the closed and plowed road, counterclockwise around most of the interior of Central Park. Well Lene and I got off at 59th Street to take the subway home. but the rest of them were more intrepid. 

The next week ten of us met at the Staten Island Ferry terminal at the Battery for a free boat ride to the United States Lighthouse Museum. a seven minute walk from the S.I. terminal. Here are all of us except your photographer (Lene had other plans that day) listening raptly to the excellent talk by Jim Sarlo, the Museum's enthusiastic and knowledgeable Supervisor. His card describes him as an "Avocational Historian" and he jammed his free illustrated talk with many little known facts about lighthouses and Staten Island.

Following our time in the museum we repaired to a nearby inexpensive Italian restaurant for lunch before the return ferry ride and a planned walk up the Hudson's shore path. But various of our group detached themselves along the way until only Dave was left alone. 

I have to hand it to Dave. For several years I had been considering the Lighthouse Museum as a venue for the Club's annual-ish winter land excursions for learning and lunch that I have been leading since 2009. But I was deterred this year by Covid. David pulled it off with much less planning and anxiety than I put into such outings, and it came off perfectly; everyone had a good time and learned.

 The two snow days were different from each other. 

The first involved a lot of powdery snow, most of which had blown off. Getting off the remainder took only five minutes. But I stayed a total of four hours to complete the electrical projects.  As previously reported, I replaced the sockets behind the switch plates in the salon because plugs inserted into the old ones frequently fell out -- way too easily.  The other two electrical projects were the battery tangs and the wires to the water maker switch. Neither were broken; this was preventive maintenance before the damage could occur. I made the battery job a bit more difficult for myself  by not taking photos before taking the tangs off the battery posts of the seven batteries. This caused me to worry at night about how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. But years ago I had drawn a map showing all the wires attaching the batteries to the boat and to each other, which I was able to find at home. It saved the day. I crimped a new small ring tab to one thin wire of the pair connecting the solar panel regulator to the batteries; thin wires because they are short runs and do not carry much electricity at any one time, just a steady flow charging the batteries whilst the sun shines. And I took off, emery clothed, vaselined, reattached and bolted down the many battery cables involved for the four aft-most of the six six-volt house batteries. Then its just putting  away all the tools, replacing the boards atop all the batteries upon which the aft cabin mattress lies and that job was done. 

Next, we go forward to the other end of the boat: to the forward head and its hatch leading even further forward to the anchor locker. Strong task lighting and the small portable electric space heater moved into that small confined space with the door between the head and the forward berth closed most of the time (except for the times when I had to go aft to find a replacement nut for the one that I dropped into the anchor locker and again to turn on and off the water maker switch by the electrical panel to make sure that the new electrical connection was solid) made for a warm enough work environment, even without the short bursts of concentrated heat from the heat gun that shrank the shrink wrap tube over the new splice to keep out water.

The heat gun did its work and I rotated a fastener 90 degrees to accept a wire tie to pull the top of the heat shrunk closed joints to the top of an inverted "U". The red and yellow on the right side come from the batteries, while the red and black to the left go to the switch. 

For those that don't remember, here is what the connection looked like before:

Two other small matters. The new carbon monoxide alarm squawked and it is LOUD. A good test for me because the sound was unfamiliar and it took me a few seconds to locate the source and turn the alarm off. Then opening hatches for a few minutes and all was clear. The alarm goes off when a tiny fraction of a lethal dose of CO is detected, to warn us before it gets lethal.

And I had put one of the small cabin sole boards in backwards: detectable because the thin holly strips separating the wide teak strips did not line up with the strips in the adjacent boards. An easy fix: unscrew, turn around and re-screw.

The second snow day involved no boat work other than removal of the snow, but this time it was not powdery but heavy and wet and without wind it had accumulated atop the cover. It took half an hour, not five minutes, while Lene waited for me in the car, but it is done. Thus was the third snow removal so far this season, a new record.

Jan 10- 24 --- Three "Other" Days and Two Work Days

The three Other Days first. One very nicely done memorial service for our late member, Hadley, presented by his widow and three adult kids. There was no minister and no religious ritual of any faith. Rather the so-called Sailors Psalm was read and John Masefield's poem: "I Must Go Down To The Sea Again".  And each of his family spoke about how much they loved, missed and had learned from him. Also, one of those slide shows that are de rigueur these days, over sailing music, again very well done. Then open discussion  in which I shared my many warm memories of him as did many others. 

The two other Other Days were Sunday walks in the woods. One along the ridge of the Palisades from the Stateline Lookout north to the state line

and the other in Westchester County at the Kensico Dam and nearby Cranberry Lake where the quarry from which the stone for the dam was cut (which reminded me of Maine). Both days were chilly and the later breezy as well but we all bundled up and the exercise kept us warm. The crew is becoming more regular, about seven to ten folks who gain masked outdoor exercise and sailing fellowship. Bravo to David for organizing these events week after week.

The two Work Days, totaling 5.5 hours of work, were mostly electrical. Before I get to that, I did attach a longer piece of wood to the cylinder of the new plastic hand operated bilge pump to permit easy uptake from the bottom of the bilge, but the damn thing then fell apart and needs to be fixed.

I got the water out using old fashioned methods.

 The good news is that the ILENE's seven lead acid batteries are not ruined after all. The reading I had gotten was a false one. But they are ten years old and the big bill for replacing them will be coming up soon. In the meantime, by temporarily joining both battery banks I can get the diesel started after which its attached alternator charges the batteries. And I'm planning to get a portable jump start battery for when the batteries get weaker.

After cleaning the oxidation form the lugs, I tried to reattach the wire ends that had been joined at the junction box pictured in the prior post.  But the thing sort of fell apart and Mr. butterfingers dropped a few of the screws which fell under the 300 feet of the anchor line for the ort anchor so I came up with a plan B. A nut and bolt will hold the loops an the ends of the wires to each other, and the juncture will be sealed in a shrink wrap tube, then wrapped in electrical tape for insurance and attached to the bulkhead in the form of an inverted "U" so that any water (there will be water) will, hopefully, flow down past the ends of the "splice" rather than into it. But I had only one heat shrink tube of large enough diameter, so the job is still not done.

Finally to the batteries again, after clearing out and moving all of the "stuff from the aft berth to the pullman berth, forward. Sandpaper scraped off all the corroded oxidized material that grows on the copper battery cable lugs. After greasing them and vacuming up the dust, they are reattached to the batteries. But only half of the lugs are done so far. The benefits of a long winter--time to get these pesky tasks done.

2021 At Last --- Jan 1 - 9 --- One Work Day And A Walk In The Park

 The walk was organized by Dave, of the sailboat "Lady Kat", for Harlem members and their friends. Eight of us showed up for this inaugural winter walk, which was enjoyed by all. More of these events will be planned. An opportunity to get some socially distant but social outdoor masked exercise with your fellow sailors and swap sea stories in this not so cold but very cruel and deadly winter.

The site was the parkland at the northeast end of Orchard Beach, our route essentially the crudely drawn blue line on the chart. Orchard Beach, the yellow sandy crescent, is just northeast of City island, and northeast of the hike is the part of New Rochelle where the Huguenot is.

The red dot I drew in the water is roughly near where we turned back, and marks an off shore rock that the group jokingly called "Roger's Rock" over my protest. Rocks are named after the boats that go aground on them and my groundings have not been near this rock. Here is me sitting in front of "my" rock. Later examination of the nautical chart for the area shows plenty of deep 12' water at low tide almost to the edge of the rock. It is a place to anchor to shelter from a westerly storm.

 Finally here are seven of the eight of us on a crude wooden boardwalk over the marshy land, Lene leading and me next to last.

The work day. less than three hours, was timed so I could order and pick up $100 of takeout food that the Huguenot requires winter members to buy each winter. And I plugged in to shore power to charge both ILENE's and Ohana's batteries. But we only got about one and a half hours of charging because the Club's circuit breaker tripped, shutting off shore power. During that first part I had the electric space heater on and turned on a burner of the galley stove with a reddish clay pot inverted over it to act as a radiator.

I got 1.5 gallons of new rain water from the bilge but the stick cleverly used to hold the pickup hose for the new hand pump is too short to permit the operation to be easily worked with only two hands so I will bring a longer and stronger stick to the next work day. I coiled up a length of two strand electrical wire so it will take up less space, pondered how to get the new pump to pump air into fenders, and examined a junction box that I had installed on the port side of the bulkhead of the anchor locker six winters ago in Florida. I had read on the internet about a new, allegedly easy to use, all plastic, enclosed box for outdoor use. The anchor locker is not outdoors, but it is not exactly dry either. I had coated the terminals of the wires with vaseline, installed them horizontally so water would not run down them, hooded the box with a stiff piece of plastic bag to drain the water off the connection and forgotten about the matter for six years. Well the connection was still secure, but not at all pristine looking.

So I disconnected everything, sanded down all four of the the terminals to good red copper and reassembly will be for next time. 

But another problem is the possibility that one of the battery banks has died. To be investigated.