August 9 - HYC/CIYC Eight Day Cruise. - Day 8, Zieglers Cove to Eastchester Bay 25 NM and Recap.

 We dropped our rent free mooring in Zieglers  at 11:15 but it was traumatic because Lene stubbed her toe on the cleat and thought it was broken. She had to limp back, go below and lay low all day. It was kind of like our first date in May 1997, when she also had a severely stubbed toe. I did try to console her, but not till we got out of Zieglers, the sails (main and small jib) were set and autopilot was holding the course. We had some ice left from the blocks we had taken on at the Harlem the day before departure. Wrapped in a dish towel and tied to the toes with a piece of short stuff, was all I could do —  and Tylenol and sympathy. She is much improved as of this writing.

We tacked back and forth across the Sound into the SW breeze. Gypsy Jake had left before us and was about 1 1/4 miles ahead of us. On the fifth tack, heading northwest toward Greenwich, we saw a rain cloud ahead but I though it would pass well ahead of us along the coast of Connecticut, moving east. BAM! It was an estimated 35-40 knots with driving rain that stung when it hit me. Not much volume of falling water.  GJ told me later that they had hove to for the duration, an option not available for ILENE with her self tacking small jib because the hove to maneuver requires that the headsail be sheeted down on the wrong side— backwinded. Hmmm? I might have tried to do that with the auxiliary jib sheet, but didn’t think of it at the time. Autopilot cannot handle that much wind so I stayed at the helm. The wind heeled our boat a lot. We were very overpowered. I turned on the trusty Yanmar, gave it enough fuel to maintain headway and tried to steer directly into the wind. Whenever the wind got even a bit to either side it heeled the boat sharply and a lot. How long did the squall last? Maybe about five minutes, Lene says ten. I did not time the squall or take photographs. During this storm we were headed in a good westerly direction toward home.

Then, as is usually the case after such violent storms, it had absorbed all the energy in the area. The wind was quite light so we continued motoring for home. We were about ten miles from Execution Rocks. But after a mile or so the wind started to came back, allowing us to shut the engine and sail toward home on starboard tack. Boat speed varied from 2.5 to 6.5 knots. We needed only one set of tacks to clear through the passage between LI and Ex Rocks. We were able to sail home after all, arriving at 5:25.

Gypsy Jake got home at 6. All boats safe home!

What kind of Club Cruise was it?  A good one I think, though too short. We were fortunate that we got along so well with Serge and Julia, who are no longer strangers. When there are more boats participating, it is easier to find friends among them and not get stuck with potentially incompatible folks. But Serge and Julia’s style of cruising melded very well with ours. 

Of the seven nights away from home we went ashore first in Oyster Bay for dinner with Roger L. of “Restless”  from the CIYC. (We also went ashore in Guilford but only to visit the shower house and dumpster. So six evenings we dined aboard, three times together and three apart (plus two breakfasts together). Guilford was our only dock. In Hamburg Cove and Zieglers Cove we took moorings but were not charged. The other four nights our anchors held us in place. (One night’s rent for the seven away.)

The chart plotter computer measures the length of the pink “track” line, a measure of the miles under our keels. For the eight passage days, we traveled 202 NM. And we put 24.8 hours on ILENE’s Yanmar (including idling and slow going near the anchoring points while setting and hauling anchor), so a little more than three hours per day. For ILENE that’s about 14 gallons of diesel for the cruise.