May 22-25 — Four Calm Liveaboard Nights, Well The Third Was Not So Calm

      I call them liveaboard nights because the days were spent ashore, filled with lots of errands and efforts to get ready to cast off from our home anchorage. Gas station, Home Depot, restaurants for lunches, supermarkets, bank, wine store, dry cleaner, dentist, shoe store, Costco for hearing aids, mailbox for Mail, Opthalmologist, MRI,  auto parts store to obtain power steering fluid which stopped a squeak that har emerged while driving, our apartment to pick up 17 items we had forgotten which Lene had listed, and, last but not least, four hours in the Emergency Room which determined that Lene’s chest pains had no cardiopulmonary implications.

     I enjoyed my book group’s meeting and dinner at a friend’s house one night and took the dink in to the dock that night to permit my midnight return. In that regard ILENE’s anchor light was turned on by Lene, making her the only lighted boat in the field and easy to find. I noticed, in passing, that four us ten men in the book group are current or past owner/captains of cruising sailboats. And the book selected for our October meeting is “The Wager” a documented historical account of the shipwreck, survival and mutiny of the crew of The Wager, a British warship off Chile 1740’s. We also passed a pleasant afternoon and evening in outer Brooklyn with Lene’s brother, Ken, and nephew, Mendy. We sadly had to adjourn a dinner with David and Chris, due to Lene’s visit to the ER. And, weather permitting, we have sailing dates each day of the imminent holiday weekend.

    The biggest mechanical headaches involved fresh water and not all of them are solved. A leak from the faucet of the galley sink was permitting water to escape onto and below the counter. My biggest obstacle was how to unscrew and remove the 25 year old faucet. I would have to unscrew large black plastic nuts from the bottom of the counter which had been screwed tight to secure the fixture to the top of the counter and probably corroded there. I could not imagine the tool which would permit this in such a cramped space. At Home Depot we realized that we needed a plumber! Out in its parking lot, readying to leave, a panel truck drove up with our answer on its side: “PLUMBER handyman - reasonable rates”. Lene hailed the driver, Jose, and perhaps ten texts later he had agreed to come to the Harlem launch at 8 a.m. the next day. We purchased the new faucet he suggested and we’re happy about the good fortune of our serendipitous find. That evening he changed his arrival to “8 to 9”, which was fine. But by ten thirty he had not come or responded to texts or calls so we selected another plumber who arrived at 12:30. He carried an electric grinding wheel which he used as a saw, to cut off the top of the old faucet, pry up the cover plate and push the old bottoms down through the holes through in the counter. I had never thought of that. But after cleaning the mess we saw that the two large black plastic tubes of the new fixture had a slightly larger diameter and would not fit through the holes.  I knew what to do and offered my electric drill with its largest bit. He used the sides of the bit to grind the holes to a larger diameter until the tubes fit. But then problem two: the old fixture had short copper pipes running down which were fit into the plastic hoses bringing water up from the tank, and secured with hose clamps. The new fixture had longer hard plastic tubes of a slightly thinner outside diameter with fittings at the ends, to be secured to I wonder what?  My solution: cut the plastic tubes to the right length, use wraps of my black electrical tape to make their outside diameters bigger, jam them into the rubber hoses and secure them with the hose clamps. “It’s not orthodox” he said, but he did it, and it is not leaking. Jim, retired Captain of the sailing vessel “Aria”, cautioned me that hot water could affect the tape and hence to periodically check, which I will do.

But other fresh water problems: the o-ring in the  water maker’s carbon filter (to extract chlorine from the ship’s fresh water used to flush the water maker, was loose, causing fresh water to flow out and fill a lot of the bilge. I hope I have successfully reseated the ring but the new (as of last spring) electronic-monitoring bilge pump was not working so I had to use the hand bilge pump. This might be a fuse problem. We ran out of water in the port fresh water tank, the only one I filled, necessitating a short hop to the nearby City Island YC to refill. They have deep enough water at their dock, regardless of tide We could not go to the Harlem’s dock to water, usually available for five hours at each high tide, because the extra, low, aluminum dock used by the friendly, cheerful and generous  Fordham Women’s Crew Team, is using that space until their season ends next week. And now it appears that the electric fresh water pump that draws water from the tanks to the faucets is not working. Always something to try to figure out and fix, but the supply of  time until June 1 is running low.

     And little boat chores too:  (1) removing a 2 x 6 lashed to the stanchions (to be replaced with a longer 2 x 8, currently in the locker) to serve as a fender board, to be hung outboard of a pair of fenders, to protect ILENE’s sides from docks sided by rough pilings, (2) realigning the primary (green) and new secondary (red) jib sheets to place the former high on the sail’s clew, above the latter, and thereby prevent the thin red lines from getting caught up in the block of the green line and (3) rigging a way to hang the dinghy from the halyard, above the water along ILENE’s port side.

Some photos: sorry I can’t integrate them to the paragraphs of text.

May 21 — Move Aboard Day

 We were delayed a bit because Cruiser had a weird twitch in his mouth and the earliest time his vet could see him on a Sunday was 4 pm. But then he spontaneously recovered, we cancelled, loaded our stuff and our crew into the mini SUV and got to the Club shortly after four. The cats were quiet in the car, as they usually are, and once boarded they seemed to be saying: Oh this again.The Club’s Open House was running strong but we took our four dock carts full of stuff down to the launch and were aboard by five. But it took several hours to get everything stowed away. This includes enough cat food to feed two cats for three and a half months! Dinner of leftover Old Salts popcorn and fruit. We have a list of what we forgot; I will bring it from home tomorrow after our provisioning shop for perishables. It looks like a calm cool dry night is in store here on our mooring, a world apart, of total privacy and serenity.

May 17 - 20 — Old Salts In Big Cold Wind, Autopilot Restored (I Hope) and GIC

 

The wind moderated a bit during lunch, but still required reefs on both ILENE, with seven souls, and Lady Kat, with five. Lady Cat’s crew included one who mastered the “art” of the selfie, which I have not. I put the second reef in the main before the start by accidentally putting its loop onto the hook at the boom’s gooseneck to form the sail’s tack. But thinking that I had put in reef one forward, I cranked in the clew with reefing line one. And it took me a couple of minutes to figure out why the sail had such a lousy shape. Once figured out the error was easily fixed by cranking in reef line two. We made up to six knots with drastically reduced sail on our habitual circumnavigation of Hart Island. Lady Cat made great speed for such a smaller boat, my hat is off to Captain Dave,  but elected to not join us in the passage through Hart Island Sound and did not join us for the libations after getting back on her mooring. Having put delicious strawberries and cheese and crackers aboard ILENE “for later”, thank you Anne, the folks on Lady Catb abandoned those provisions for us to enjoy.

My next trip to City Island was to pick up the new batten from Doyle Sails and to attempt to restore Auto. The latter had caused me a lot of agita.

These pictures describe the system. The small Rudder Reference Transducer, where I correctly thought the problem was, has a small ball sticking up from its right end in the photo. Clipped onto that ball is a small rod, less than a pencil’s diameter, its other end attached to a bracket bolted onto the bottom of the rudder arm as shown in the photos. There is some sort of spring in the round base which provides a tension that the transducer apparently converts to an electrical voltage which varies depending on the position of the rudder and that voltage is transmitted to the ”Course Computer”.

I took the task light and all the tools and supplies needed to repair the electrical wires (that I assumed I had incorrectly reconnected) with me down into the lazarette. But what greeted my eyes  was that the connecting rod was detached from the rudder arm! So the problem was mechanical, not electrical, so  my second dive into the lazarette was to bring a screw driver to reattach the plastic receiving clip of the connecting arm to the bottom of the rudder arm. (On its round trip flight to Florida, the connecting rod and plastic clip had flown attached to the transducer.) I had bolted the plastic clip back on a couple of weeks ago but apparently it had fallen off. Getting close, I saw that actually the problem was not the bolts attaching the plastic clip to the rudder arm and so I finally brought the right tools and supplies with me on my third trip down: a glue and large pliers. The right end of the connecting rod is not screwed into the plastic clip, but has vertical ridges parallel to its shaft and it is simply pushed up into the plastic clip. So with glue on it I pushed it up into the clip and I think the dreaded repair is accomplished without the need for a thousand dollar visit by an electronics tech. At least I hope so. Powering the unit, the normal display appeared on the control panel instead of the cryptic error message and the “plus ten” and “minus ten” buttons seemed to move the rudder. The final test will be to see if it works while we are underway, but that will not take place until after we have moved aboard on May 21. I get a big thrill whenever I am able to fix something, but must restrain myself from patting myself on the. back until then. 

And Saturday night was the Harlem’s 140th annual spring bash, the Going Into Commission party, with a capacity crowd welcoming the 2023 season despite the heavy rain. A clear plastic tent was pitched atop the deck inside the newly painted red fence around the patio. Delicious food. The ritual is always the same, one of life’s constants.

Tomorrow we move aboard! I’m psyched!

May 9 - 14 — Six Days. — First Three Sails, One That Did Not Come Off And More Repairs Needed

 Before the sail days, one devoted to getting the dink ready for use. Thanks first to the Harlem’s Marine Committee for forklifting it from the top of the dinghy rack and transporting it via forklift the hundred yards to the edge of the seawall. I got its air pump, paddles. Anchor, thwart, fuel tank and fuel hose from the locker, inflated it, pushed it off the seawall into the Bay (at high tide), and towed it (by pulling its painter) out along the pier to the floating docks. There after clearing a temporary space by crowding its neighbors, I pulled it up onto that dock, washed the worst of the winter’s dirt from it and accepted the help of Pat, who has helped me so many times in the past. Yes, it was time to carry the outboard down the flight of stairs in the locker house, transport it from there to the floating dock and mount it on the transom of the dink. The last, the mounting, is a task that I absolutely cannot do alone, but Pat helped with the whole dink process. Pat also pointed out that the outboard’s sacrificial zinc is getting eroded and I’ve ordered a replacement for 2024. All the dink needed at the end of the day was fuel in her tank and that my prayer that the winter had not caused damage be answered.

The first sail was with the Old Salts on Wednesday afternoon after lunch at the Club. With eleven souls, we would normally have used only two boats, but three were available and each Captain wanted to sail his own boat — at long last!  ILENE’s crew consisted of my helpful friend Samuel (left) and Phil, who is in the process of getting qualified to use our Club Boats. Both are avid punsters (which I tolerate fairly well)  and cat lovers.

We were underway for two hours (with .2 hours of engine use) and we tracked five NM. The wind was light at first, disappeared totally in the middle and came back up as we were heading home.
We headed in the general direction of the Throggs Neck Bridge, tacked to pass south of Belden Point and soon after that essentially retraced our course on the return. (With variations, we took the same general route the next two days as well.) Today’s was not exciting sailing though ILENE did achieve a big five knots at the end. The other boats were Bennett’s “Ohana”  and Dave’s “Lady Kat”.  The après-sail:

Friday we were set to meet at two with Tom and Marie but a bit of a late start and the short hours that the Harlem is operating the one launch in the water in this early season (with most of our boats not yet launched) meant we would have to be back on the mooring and ready for pickup by the launch by 3:45 pm. This would have made for a very short sail indeed. So instead of sailing we tried to entertain our guests on the mooring, before dinner. Actually, it was Lene who did the entertaining because I spent most of the time on launching and starting the dink (yes, she started right up); driving it out to ILENE, hauling it up on its davit bar and securing it to the aft pulpit. Hauling and securing is normally a 15 minute job but it took an hour. This because I failed to remember that the aft davit bar, from which the dink hangs, was still lashed vertically to the aft tube of the radar arch in its winter position. I had not swung it aft and lower to its summer position. I was wondering how the tackles had “shrunk” so much; they were not long enough to reach down to the lifting straps in the dinghy. Anyway, in the end I figured it out, lowered the davit bar and everything fit. We made it ashore by 4 o’clock. However, that interfered with the dining room’s schedule which called for the kitchen and dining staff to have an hour off between four and five. But the bar was open and we entertained ourselves until five and had dinner and called it a day. 

Saturday I sailed with three people from my Temple’s Torah Study Group. Tacking by Throggs Neck and on that tack going  just past  Ex Rocks with the return through Hart Island Sound. There was little wind except for about 20 minutes when we were able to achieve 5.4 knots shortly after the turn toward home. Then came half an hour of motoring in dead calm.

                     My companions consisted of Bette, a veteran of last year’s Torah Study cruise, and rookies: MIke and Marlene. 

                     As we were approaching Big Tom 2 from the East, my AIS displayed Hidden Hand, headed south. David did not have VHF turned on, and again I had accidentally left my phone home with his number in it. So I closed to within hailing distance and yelled my Ahoy. David replied that this was his first sail to which I replied “My second!

               

    Sunday I sailed with two young fellows, Julian, to starboard, a social worker, who sailed with me once before, and Manuel, a Corsican born IT guy,  in blue.  Manuel  had sailed in Europe. Julian is handicapped by a visual impairment.  He valiantly tried to steer by the compass card alone, which is difficult to do even for an experienced helmsperson. But without also being able to look at what was ahead, his attempt proved impossible; I had to reassign him to winch duty which he accepted cheerfully. Julian’s indomitable good spirit caused him to enjoy the day. The course was essentially the same as Saturday’s and in only a slightly shorter time period, but we had gusts to 20 knots on the long outbound tack which, with main and small jib, got ILENE’s boat speed up to as high as 8.4 knots. We went farther than the day before, half way across the mouth of Hempstead Harbor toward Matinecock Point before tacking over to the New Rochelle side and then turning back. And instead of motoring back at 3-4 knots as we had done the day before, we sailed back with very light air at 2. The wind shut itself off suddenly when we were off New Rochelle and came back softly, very near our stern. So we experienced both the thrill of speed and the joys of a gentle ride.

                    A new problem emerged that has to be solved very soon (before we leave for Canada on June 1): after three days of good service  Auto is not working: the display powers up but pressing “Auto” only gets an error message “AUTORELSE”  that is not described in the manual and a soft beep. And the display of the angle that the rudder is turned shows the rudder turned  extremely to port when in fact it is rather centered. My preconceived speculation was that the failure is in my rewiring of the “rudder angle indicator” component.  I  read the manual and called Raymarine; the tech support person confirmed my suspicion and gave me some tests to make with my Multimeter, to find and fix the problem. But sadly I fear I’ll need some help to understand exactly how to do this.  During the sail I was very pleased with Manuel’s  sailing experience, when I had other things to do. Back at the mooring the guys lowered a bucket for water and scrubbed the guano that the birds had left on the sail cover.

                     More to come.

April 28 - May 8 — Floating And Ready For First Sail

The day after I brought ILENE around from the Huguenot to the Harlem I retraced that path, helping Bennett bring Ohana around. But Ohana’s sails were mounted and we enjoyed a pleasant sail. - our first of the season. On both days I passed David’s “Hidden Hand” on her mooring at the City Island YC.  And on both days we had a brief wait for 2Cs to put the bridles on the moorings.

Three days at the boat on its mooring to report — short days partly because launch service ends at 4 pm. The mission, each day in addition to cleaning, was primarily to mount ILENE’s sails. The first try it was blowing with gusts to 26 knots. That is not a condition in which to be trying to mount sails on a mooring. When up or part way up, before furling, the boat veers and the headsails cross from side to side and are likely to blow me overboard. The other two days I was helped by Samuel, who had a day sail with me last summer and is an eager and quick learner. Thank you Samuel! But we only got the small jib and the main up. And the main still needs one short batten - all five were cradled together on the deck last fall but one walked away. Fortunately, Mark, P.C., bought a new Mainsail this winter for his catamaran “Deuce of Hearts” and offered me one of his old ones. Thank you Mark! 

The Genoa is not up because once up it must be furled and before the attempt, I tested it and the furler drum is corroded and does not turn freely on the forestry. So Rigger Jeff Lazar will be visiting ILENE soon, to fix the furler. The Genoa our least used sail;  Lene, if she had her way, would never fly it. 

In any event, once I provision her with bottles of beer, water and seltzer ILENE will be ready for the inaugural outing of the Old Salts on Wednesday.

The longest day was Saturday, May 5. It was the Harlem’s annual Spring Work Party, and by all accounts the best attended and most productive in memory. Thirteen separate projects were accomplished including three to repair and protect the docks, one for the winch house (used to launch and haul out boats), groups that polished all the silver sailing trophies and did the gardening and the group I got assigned to which lightly sanded and painted the railing around the deck. We started with only six of us doing the sanding, which was not done as thorough as I would have liked, and grew when we got to the painting until, at one time we had ten brushes working, six of them shown here. 

It is kind of like the building of the a Great Wall of China: throw enough of us peasants into the job and it is amazing what can be accomplished. When they first opened the can the paint looked pink but it dried a nice shade of barn red. Our club is grateful for its leaders who planned the projects, shopped for all the supplies and tools and organized the rest of us into teams. Inside and out the rail now looks pretty good and hopefully will last a few seasons. I went around at the end pushing extra paint into all the upward facing cracks and crannies, to try to keep water out. We “charge” a $25 fee for those who do not attend, which is very cheap compared to four hours of physical labor, but the charge is more of a request for a contribution—unlike the practice at some clubs, the fee is not enforced. In fact, the two work parties per year are great social opportunities to get to know members and make new friends. It reminds me by a weak analogy of Tom Sawyer’s fence painting party.

The bagels and coffee had been served inside the greenhouse before and lunch was on the patio, after. I have to hand it to our caterer, Anne and her crew. She had served a packed Cinco de Mayo party the night before,  a baby shower in the part of greenhouse behind the painters while we epwere working, a first communion party for a family of about 16, our ”free” lunch and then she ran a bourbon and mint themed Derby party in the evening. 

But between the work party and the Derby party we had a well attended membership meeting. All good news: the Small Business Administration loan that we took to repair the Clubhouse after “The Storm of the Century” nor’easter in 1992 has been paid in full and SBA returned a thousand dollar overpayment and reported that we had never missed or been late with a single payment.  We have more money in the bank than usual, membership is increasing, activity, the lifeblood of any club, is bounding and perhaps best of all, there was none of the snide back biting “questions” that made such meetings a hostile environment when I joined about 30 years ago and during my first decade. We have come to appreciate the diligent competent work of our elected volunteer leaders.

I had come to the Club by public transportation and got a ride to his home in Alpine NJ with Bennett, where Lene had driven, and we had a gourmet dinner cooked by Harriett before a round of games and a drive home. A long but fun filled day.

My next post will report on Sailing!

April 24 - 27— LAUNCHED Apr 26; On Home Mooring Apr. 27

 This was a crazy tense period due to the pressure Huguenot puts on boaters to get launched early under threat of financial charges. It is not that they need the land on which the boats are stored on jackstands for parking cars or any other summer usage. Nor is “the rush” needed so they can lay off their yard people for the summer because they keep their staff salaried year round. I like to launch early which is better than the Harlem’s policy, under which launching is just getting underway and our parking lot is still full of cradled boats. It seems a friendlier middle ground would be preferable. For me, the rush  involves responsibility (to get launched)  without authority (over those whose efforts I need to coordinate to get me launched) which combine to aggravate my underlying anxiety. Here’s what happened.

Monday April 24: I got two calls five minutes apart. David Detailer called to say the freeboard was done. “What about the bottom?”I asked. ‘Oh, you wanted me to do that too?”  He had forgotten (it is the height of his short busy season) but he promised it would be done on the 25th. Next a call from the Huguenot: “We will launch you on Wednesday the 26th.”  “When is the high tide that day?” was my question. “At around five in the afternoon.”  So I figured this might actually work out. I called 2Cs, our mooring maintainer, saying I’d be on my mooring on Thursday, the 27th, and please call me if for any reason you won’t have my mooring set up for use by then.

Tuesday April 25:  I was there from 2 to 5, but David’s crew was painting another boat and told me they had one more to do after that before they would get to ILENE.  I used a roll of their tape to tape off about half of the waterline and some of my half gallon of bottom paint to hit the spots that need two coats: the leading edges, the tough to get spots and those where the barrier coat was showing through. At five I looked up and David’s trailer was gone! So that leaves tomorrow morning for the painting and I called David when I got home but he said that his team had gone to dinner and was actually painting ILENE’s  bottom as we spoke.

Wednesday April 26: I took the three sails down from my locker at the Harlem and loaded them into the SUV. Arriving at 1:30, with plenty of time to get ready for a launch around 5, I found the Huguenot’s yard men, Orlando and Gus, busy removing the tacks of ILENE’s two head stays. Her bottom was painted except for the seven spots where the jackstand poppets were pressed against her hull. It turns out that with the dredging done during the winter, the Huguenot is not dependent on high tide to launch and planned to launch me much sooner than I had thought. I carted each sail from the car to the dock where they would tie me up for the night. That way it is a lateral heave of each sail from dock cart to deck. Parking the car I returned  to the boat and she was up in the slings already with one of David’s guys rolling bottom paint onto the seven poppet spots. Not a lot of time for that paint to dry. Hope for the best. They were ready to drive the travel lift to the launching well but I said wait a minute, put the ladder back up and went aboard to reconnect  the raw water intake hose with its hose clamps and check that the seacock was open so as to be able to turn on the engine when the seawater intake got lowered into the water.

Launched at about 2:30, and that’s when the problem started. 1) The Yanmar purred to life as if she had only been shut down two minutes ago; that’s good. 2)  No water running into the bilge; that’s good too. 3) But unless cooling seawater is pumping through the engine, it will burn itself up in a few minutes. And no water was coming out of the tailpipe, seen to port in the upper photo, above. I let it run for about a minute hoping for a delayed reaction, but no luck. So I shut the engine down. What to do? I called the ever helpful Dean of “Autumn Born”. He was still in Vero Beach, Florida, awaiting the start of their migration north to their summer berth in Catskill, New York, near Albany. Dean is an engineer and has helped so many people so many times. When I told him what had happened he said, “Oh, that’s an airlock.”  My next question: “What is an airlock?”  He explained that an air bubble can block the passage of water to the raw water pump and what I should do about it. Meanwhile, I helped the yard men tow ILENE about 100 feet from the slings to the dock where she is seen in the lower photo above using her dock lines. I put the sails on deck, filled the port fresh water tank with the dock hose through the filter, and washed off much of the topsides before taking the ladder back to my locker at the Harlem for the summer. Not a good night’s sleep - worrying about how I was going to accomplish something I had never done or seen done, just by following Professor Dean’s advice.

Thursday, April 27: I dropped off the SUV for an oil change at the auto mechanic and walked the last .8 miles to the boat, arriving at about ten to fix the airlock and get ILENE out of Dodge. When the water enters the boat (through a seacock, so it can be shut down when a link in the hose is open)  it goes through a raw water strainer, then by hose to and through the condenser of the refrigeration unit and finally by another hose to the raw water pump on the engine which pumps the same seawater through the engine and out the tailpipe. First step was to remove everything from the aft cabin including the mattress and the boards covering the aft end of the engine, setting up  work lighting and the heat gun used to soften the rubber hoses so their ends can be taken off the fittings they are attached to  and gathering the tools needed. Then came the hose removal. I took off the one from the raw water strainer, opened the seacock,  saw water gush into the boat, closed the seacock and reattached the hose. This was proof that the airlock had not been reached. The same operation at the other end of the same hose where it enters the bottom of the Condenser. Open seacock, see lots of water gush in, close seacock. Next came the hose from the top of the condenser.

This photo shows the condenser, it’s discharge vent, top left, with it’s hose taken off, sticking up on the right, next to the toe of my blue sneaker. But this time, when the seacock was opened, no water came running out of the Condenser. Airlock found! But how to get rid of it. I couldn’t pour water into the plastic fitting shown at the upper left because water does not flow uphill. (Later I figured that if I took a short hose, inserted it inside that fitting, bent it upward (U shaped) to a higher level than the fitting, and put a funnel in the other end of it, I could have poured water into the condenser. But all I could think of was Dean’s reference to the dock hose. But how? I tried to tape the end of the dock hose to the empty fitting but this wouldn’t work. 

Then came what for me was an inspiration! I reattached and clamped down the hose shown in the picture and went back to the hose end where water exits the raw water strainer (where I had started) and re-detached it. I stuck the end of the dock hose into it and clamped it tightly using the hose clamps. Then I turned on the spigot at the dock, held my breath and turned on the Yanmar. SPLUSH, SPLUSH, SPLUSH!  It worked! The air lock was pushed through. I called and thanked the professor.

But by now it was after two, time to shove off if I’m going to get on my mooring before Harlem launch service ends at 4 pm in this early fringe part of the season. No time to mount a sail as I usually do. I came out from behind Glen Island on its western side and ran the engine at 2000 rpms. With both seas and 12 knot winds on my port quarter and a perfectly clean bottom I was making 7 knots!

And great news: the 24 year old reinstalled autopilot worked like a champ. One feature of it is a three digit display of the boat’s magnetic heading on the key pad in inch high LCD numbers. I had always ignored it, looking at the actual compass instead, because the LCD display was always some 20 to 35 degrees wrong. Now it matches the compass reading. It is better than when I got the boat! After testing it I let it steer us home while I went forward to gather the dock lines and fenders, etc. and coiled and stowed them and the hose etc. Rounding Belden Point into Eastchester Bay, we were in the lee of City Island. I got a phone call on my cell phone, from who?  Oh, it’s 2Cs: “We saw you come into the Bay, we are on our way, and will have the bridle on your mooring ball in ten minutes. So I circled, they attached and the bridle hardly had a chance to get wet before I picked it up. Boat secured I called the Harlem’s Senior Launch Operator, David, a constant at the Harlem for many years. He came “alongside shortly” as he responds to the VHF, and took me to the dock. I chatted with him about my plan to have Uber drive me to the auto mechanic to retrieve my car and he said if I could wait til he got off, five minutes, he would drive me there because he passes the place on his way home.

So while sails are not mounted, the season has begun . But ILENE is lonely out there (in the gap between the right two Adirondack chairs).

April 15 - 23 — Four Work Days, Three With Lene and a Maritime History Lecture

Good news and bad about this summer’s  cruise. Well my mate had five separate medical problems in March and April! Most have a new drug to try to control them. But the potential effects of the drugs on her and interactions between them are not yet known. So Newfoundland, where medical care may be as much as 36 hours away, had to be scratched. I often stubbornly take abandonment of goals badly, but not this time.  And Prince Edward Island, another place that neither of us has ever been to, much less sailed to, is being added. So the bad news is not that bad.

The good news is that I’ve never seen Lene so enthusiastic about a cruise before. She has purchased enough cat food and litter to last into September as well as pharmaceutical supplies. She is arranging for our crew to see their vet and actively planning with me. And she has worked on the boat three times during this period, partly inventorying what we have so we can determine what we need to bring on board. Because we plan to live aboard for a week before cutting the plug to home — to let our contractor move our furniture — to rip out the old and lay in new wood flooring, we will have time to “remember what we forgot”. The rest of her time was devoted to interior cleaning, a task in which I joined.

I also put the steering wheel in place, reinserted the canvas covered rubber rollers on the transom lifelines after a good scrub in strong cleaners and zinced and lubed the prop.

Lene watched the rudder while I pressed the Auto Pilot’s buttons and not only did it move, but it moved in the correct direction. Whether or not  it is calibrated remains to be seen. I finally got the wood around the back of the galley range back into place. I applied some stain to portions of the interior woodwork trim where needed.

I also poured 1/3 of a gallon of distilled water into the 18 cells of the six ”house bank” batteries. The boat is starting to look good. The only disappointment among so much hope is that when it rains hard water still comes into the boat through its coach roof. 

But it was not all work. Club Freetime advised of a free lecture on the concept of “Maritimity” in the time of Russia’s Peter the Great. He called St. Petersburg “The New Amsterdam”. I’m always interested in things salty and having cruised from Amsterdam to St. Petersberg and back on a floating hotel, and visited the Svarlbard Achipelago last summer on a different such craft, I figured this lecture would be in my wheelhouse. Our lecturer, who escaped from Putin to a position at the University of Genoa, his introducer, me and seventeen faculty and PhD candidates were in a seminar room in Columbia’s School of International Studies. His argument was that “The Great Divide” between the wealthy Western European nations and the poorer ones to the east, including Russia, was the result of the western nations developing and exploiting the sea.

Peter, he thought, was a visual rather than an analytical thinker. He made a grand tour of many European capitals which just happened to coincide with the year that the Atlantic yielded record tonnage of fish, and he could not contemplate that fisheries could become commercially extinct. 

Our lecturer described a nation’s “maritimity” in terms of its having a great port and an “Admiralty-like” organization. He tied in “Cabinets of Curiosity”, namely museums of sea specimens and cuisine: oysters and herring, which, after the Tzar acquired a taste for them, the lesser classes did as well. But those sea foods could not be grown in Russian waters. Though Russia had access to the Baltic and the Med, his fishermen, having fished out the whales from Svarlbard, reported to him that whaling could not be accomplished with commercial success. Peter ordered his shipyards to build Dutch style ships but they simply did not know how to obey his orders. So the lecture was somewhat more theoretical and abstruse than I had expected, though interesting.

Two other nights of theater with Lene and sailing friends who are also actresses. One with with Elaine in a MFA production up on Morningside Heights and the other with Dana, playing Titania in scene from A Midsummer’s Night Dream at the Player’s Club on Gramercy Park.