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.