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.
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