The sail was with Bennett on Ohana, just the two of us, on a whim, for four hours, out to Peningo Neck, Rye, NY and back. Wind was from the north giving us mostly beamy reaches and got to sixteen knots for several periods interspersed with other periods of six knots. Auto steered most of the way. Ohana is 37 feet long and easy to handle. The exception is that the beamyness of the cockpit makes a single jib trimmer’s job a bit more of a challenge. A picture of the cockpit with eight old salts in it which shows its breadth is in the most recent prior post. I suggested the addition of telltales to the in-mast, non-battened roller-furled mainsail to check its trim if they can be added without jamming the furling system. The sail is easily shaped by its outhaul and main sheet but without telltales I was not sure that we were optimizing its performance. The jib is smaller, not a Genoa, but Ohana has a spinnaker style reacher for lighter wind. On the return we transited Hart Island Sound, and only needed one pair of tacks after leaving the red buoy marking the No Nations to starboard, to clear The Blauses. A delightful warm sunny afternoon.
The Committee Boat duty was for the Wednesday Night Races. They always need volunteers and we will be gone most of the summer. There were intermittent periods of strong winds and heavy rains in the afternoon and during the race, but racers are a hearty lot and Dave and his assistant Cristy were delivered to ILENE with their gear by the CIYC launch with plenty of time for us to motor out to position, test the wind, select an upwind start for a five mile triangle race 1) to a mark by the Bronx approach to the Throggs Neck Bridge, 2) then a broad reach east to buoys marking the channel in the Sound off the eastern side of Manhasset Bay and 3) back. It was the little observed Flag Day holiday in the US and Dave put up all of his signal flags to dry. Dave races his boat in Friday night and weekend races but for the Wednesday night series he runs the committee boat each of the 15 or 16 weeks of the season. Though an unpaid volunteer, he is a real “pro” and was responsible for a well run race.
We anchored in position in about 16 feet of water, ILENE’s first anchoring experience of 2023, and the first chance to test out the new low friction ring and Mantus hook for the snubber line. Once deployed, the hook held the chain well and the ring position decreased the boat’s “hunting” back and forth on its anchor. But overall the new system is not a success — yet. The problem is that the Mantus hook with its shackle is too large to fit through where I ran it, making it too difficult and dangerous to deploy it and more importantly, to retrieve it. So it is back to the thinking stage: maybe I can 1) tie the snubber directly to the hook without the heavy shackle thereby reducing the overall size of the metal, 2) run the line through a different slot or 3) use the inferior hook that we have used since 2015. Time will tell.
The repairs mostly involved water. A fresh water leak under the galley sink— again! My friend, retired Captain Jim, of “Aria”, had suggested that the last fix (wrapping the smaller hose with electrical tape so it’s outside diameter was equal to the inside diameter of the larger of the two hoses, jamming it in, and securing it with a hose clamp) might not work in the hot water hose due to the heat. But running water through both hoses I felt the hot water hose get warm, marked it for future reference and saw that the leak was in the cold water hose. So the solution I had suggested to the plumber was not erroneous in concept, but just in his execution of it. I took off the old electrical tape, put on a neater thicker band of tape, heated the larger outer hose with the heat gun to make it soft, jammed the two together and tightened the clamp as tight as I could get it. Then, with pressure water pump building to maximum pressure, no leak! Success.
The other water problem was more serious and potentially dangerous. The new electronically controlled bilge pump that I installed last spring had worked well all last season, but it did not come on this spring. I figured that the problem might be in the pump itself or it might be in the electric wiring which runs from the batteries through two fuses (which seemed sound) and two switches to the pump. I finally called Ed Spalina, who has helped me so often in so many ways in the past. He has been ill and is not looking for work, but came over and with an hour of poking and prodding he determined that the wiring was delivering electricity properly; the pump was bad. Ed does not charge for travel time and his hourly rate is so low that was very pleased to give him a 50% tip. The next thing was to get a new pump and I asked both Defender and Westmarine, my two main suppliers, to look at my purchases last year to determine when I had bought the pump. But I had bought it from a different retailer and my paperwork is in our apartment which is a sealed construction site while new wooden flooring is being installed. So I looked at posts to this blog last spring to determine the installation date in late April. Then I called Rule Pumps which is now a subsidiary of Xylem, Corp, to tell my story. No problem, the very pleasant and efficient customer service people said, the warranty is three years and all we need is the dating number pressed onto the pump itself.
Yep, there it was and the new pump will be on its way!
And expert rigger, Jeff Lazar, figured out what was wrong with the roller furler drum of ILENE’s Genoa that prevented it from turning freely to furl up the sail. He took out a part, disassembled it, filed down a rough edge, reassembled it and replaced the part. The miracle in this in my eyes is not that he knew what to do, and how to do it, but that he did not drop parts or tools into the Bay while crouched over the bow! Next calm day I will mount the Genoa.
And we have been getting good reports from Paul Beaudin of Doyle Saile on the progress of the new mainsail.
Maybe we can actually be off cruising by the end of the month!
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