April 4 - 14 — Slow Progress and Hidden Hand Has Already Been Launched

 Yes, my friend David’s boat, bring one of the last to be hauled out last fall, was located rather near the water, thus blocking in other boats including ILENE, that were hauled earlier in the fall. David faced a fine or penalty if he blocked another boat on or after April 11. He got his boat ready and she was launched on time, on the tenth, but ran into trouble, fortunately no injury, because the Huguenot forced him out at New Rochelle before his own club was ready to help him get in from his mooring at the City Island end. Huguenot has always forced people out before the rest of the sailing world’s season has begun. In my early years with them, the deadline was before many insurance companies began “in water” coverage. And I have never understood the artificial deadline pressure so imposed.

I have not prepped ILENE so quickly but she is blocked in by many other boats and is ready to be painted and polished by the professional contractor who will get the job done on time.

Six days at the boat of eleven days in this period, about 4.5 hours per day.

Winter covers, poles and accessories are in my locker, under the sails which get removed from them first.

Stanchions and lifelines inserted and locked in. The reason I had so much trouble bolting in one of the stanchions last spring was that despite what I had thought was careful labeling of each of the six stanchions with bits of masking tape, I got two of them mixed up with the hole for the securing bolt through one socket base misaligned with the hole in the stanchion in it.All went smoothly this year once this got straightened out.

Most running rigging restored to summer position. I got help from Samuel hauling me 3/4 way up the mast in the bosn’s chair to reinsert the port stack pack halyard  that had come loose and blew down during the winter. Sam also helped with reinstalling the cabin ceiling panels in the salon. These were two tasks that I could not have done alone unless I had at least three hands. He also helped me by controlling a line around my waist and run to a winch while I stood on the edge or the transom to reinstall the two antennae and the blocks to haul the dinghy back up there. These transom tasks were not impossible to do alone, only unsafe. Freed of the need to use one hand to hold myself on and prevent falling 20 feet to the ground below, I could use both of my hand for the work, which was done easily and quickly. Thanks, Samuel, you were also a better companion than my radio!

Final coat of poly in the galley; it will look good once the tinker toy parts are all in their proper places, which can be done after launching.

I reinserted, physically and electrically, the five pieces of the Autopilot after their return from Florida. For two of the five the  wires simply get plugged back in. For each of the other three parts, I had been required to cut the electrical wire connecting it to the other parts, to remove it from the boat. Rewiring was when the frustration set in. I could not crimp on the butt connectors with the tool that I have been using successfully for that purpose for decades:

My problem was that each wire contained five plastic covered thin wires  (they call them “high gauge” wires for some perverse reason) in close proximity to each other, I could not get the crimping part of the tool, the part between the pivot point and the red handles, into place between the separate wires because it was too wide and I did not have the grip strength, from the awkward position I was lying in to grip the handles strongly enough to push the bump part of the crimper  through the plastic cover to crush the inner metal tube onto the wire firmly enough to prevent the wire from slipping out of the butt connector.  What to do? Or as the Psalmist wrote: “from whence shall come my salvation?”  Dean, my ever helpful “professor”, who has helped me from the first day me met in the Intercoastal Waterway off Beaufort, South Carolina in the spring if 2012, was only a phone call away, on his boat, “Autumn Borne” in Vero Beach, Florida, where he was about three weeks before commencing his migration north. He said I should get myself a Klein brand single-purpose crimper tool for about $30. He sent me a picture of his, with his boat’s initials marked on it:

The crimping vise is small enough to get in between the separate wires to do the work, and the tool is nine inches long, allowing lots of pressure to squeeze the butt and secure the wires. I bought the Klein tool and set to work. Another problem was that ILENE’s manufacturer had not left an extra turn of wire so the two ends barely met. This was fixed by connecting about three inches of spare white wire between the two ends. The next picture shows to assembly, before sealing with plastic, at the most accessible of the three, the electro-compass, just below the cabin sole. Five red butt connectors are toward the left and two connector blocks are to the right. The green wire is easiest to see, starting from the compass wire side, through its butt connector and white extender, to the topmost white block and then to to end of the wire at the bottom leading aft the the computer. It is all folded, wrapped in a sheet of plastic,  its seams sealed with electrical tape and the bundle secured by a plastic wire fastener screwed to the wood at the lower left.

Two of the five parts attach physically to parts of the rudder so the work had to be done in the cramped dark uncomfortable space below the cockpit, aided by a strong task light and flash light. For one of them I had to disconnect the other end from the rudder and in so doing, being a klutz, I dropped one of the two small machine bolts which had been in place since 1999. Fifteen minutes of searching with a strong work light proved fruitless so a trip with the remaining bolt to Buddy’s Hardware Store on City Island was required to buy a box of five replacements. And anxiety builds over whether the auto pilot will work at all, and if so, properly, after all this investment of time and money.

I mixed up four tiny batches of two part epoxy and “micro bubble” dust into a paste to apply in layers to fill the nick in the trailing edge of the keel and the four holes I drilled into the rudder to let out potential water and sanded them all smooth to be ready for bottom paint.

And the final task accomplished so far was sanding bare, wiping with Acetone, applying one coat of primer and three coats of  $pecial expen$ive Italian Velex bottom paint to the shaft and prop. 

David Detailer’s crew will scrape and paint her bottom and clean her freeboard next week. All I have to do is  lubricate her prop and apply new zincs. 

Spring was short, with summery near ninety degree days.

March 8 to April 3 — Well The Winter Cover Is Off; A Sign of Progress

Four work days totaling sixteen hours. One with David of Hidden Hand. We have a symbiotic relationship: he needed to bring paint from his locker at the City Island Yacht Club to his boat. I needed to pick up and pay for my repaired sails from Doyle Sails and bring them to my locker at the Harlem. His prime activity at his boat was to find out if his batteries had held up through the winter with assistance from his solar trickle charger —they passed the test. Pleasant conversation makes the work go faster.

I’ve applied two coats of polyurethane to the cherry wood but at least one more coat would be useful generally. But after a light sanding, the third cost is definitely needed in this case, because the old brush I used for coat two (now discarded) had not been cleaned thoroughly enough Tiny specks of dried paint came off the brush and are “glued” on the wood.

I also attached the new slippery ring/spectra lead for the snubber line, but I think maybe I should attach it to the stem of the boat using a thicker diameter shackle that will more fully fill the hole through which the shackle passes. I did smear more sealant into the top of the new rubber mast boot cover and believe the leak is finally fixed. Samuel, a non-sailing friend  (well we did enjoy a day of sailing together), is scheduled to come out next week for fellowship, but primarily to be useful. He will hold up the cabin ceiling panels while I screw in the battens of wood that hold them in place.

But as noted above, the heaviest job was removal of the two halves of the canvas winter cover. After untiring, unzipping and dropping to the ground beside the boat, each must be stuffed into a cart, dragged to a flat plot on the far side (the leeward side) of the hill, dumped out, spread out flat, folded into a neat package, tied up, carted to the car and loaded in in it, together with its poles, pads, and tie down lines. The covers are now in the car, at home, awaiting my next trip for shlepping up stairs at the Harlem for stowage into the locker. 

All five pieces of the Raymarine Auto Pilot are back on the boat, waiting for me to reinstall them. Their travel and the work of testing and shipping cost almost $500. But the techs, having fitted all the pieces together on their test bench and tested each singly and in combination with each other found nothing wrong!  I credit them with actually doing the work they claimed to have done, and with not intentionally trying to gaslight me, but I was not crazy when I saw the system stop working properly late last summer. So after I get all the pieces physically remounted and rewired, I need to find a local tech to recalibrate and hope it works. Frustrating! 

Several events at the Club. 

—A traditionally delicious  St Patrick’s Day dinner after a club membership meeting. No pressing business to transact, which was a good thing because we were one member short of a quorum — probably because of the lack of controversy. So the meeting went merily along as an info share, but without legal effect.

—An open house to show prospective members our charming friendly selves and our Clubhouse and to give them some of our good food and beverages. If I had been in sales, my family would have starved to death. But I’m a pretty good advocate, especially for a cause in which I believe and lovingly sold the Harlem to folks who were not members — yet. Actually, our club sells itself!

—And the first of what I hope are many more Sea Story Parties has come off with seven members telling each other five sea stories. There was no planned theme into which the stories had to fit, but all five were about storms or groundings survived or avoided: in The Med, rounding Cape Horn, west of Key West, east of Shelter Island and in the Gulf of Maine. I predict that future parties will be better attended and involve more diverse stories.Here are our story tellers and if I hadn’t told you the truth, I could use them to claim that all five stories were about “the big one that got away”. It seems we talk with our hands. Thanks and photo credits to Harlen.

Six days during this period involved a vacation in an all inclusive adults only beach hotel at Cap Cana on Punta Cana, the Eastern end of the island that contains the relatively wealthy Dominican Republic and poor blighted Haiti. Good food in multiple restaurants, bars and pools everywhere, but a short private beach and no sailing at the resort or elsewhere, except crewed party boats. Here is the view from our large luxurious room and balcony of one of the pools and the beach behind it.

 The blue horizontal line seen through the palm fronds is a barrier about the diameter of a duffel bag designed to keep seaweed from piling up on this windward shore. The white horizontal line higher up is waves crashing on a barrier reef. If there is a passage through that reef through which a Hobie Cat could pass, it is not marked. And the lifeguards were not really guarding the pools and knew nothing of tides. So with lots of good food in several restaurants, the resort was rather like a cruise ship, but without going anywhere or a library. We read, ate and rested a lot. There was a bike ride, a gym, exercise bikes in the pool, meditation and yoga, so we were not totally sedentary. Very friendly staff. My first and last Club Med-style vacation.

Another event, and I have to confess that this has absolutely no relationship to water or boating whatsoever, was a lovely breakfast with my granddaughter near JFK Airport during a layover on her flights from The Bahamas to her school in California.

And I held a dinner party in our house for four sailing couples.