Day 1 — July 8 — The Cruise Begins — City Island to Almost Centerport 22NM

 Paul of Doyle Sails, bent on the new mainsail, which looks like the old one.

A few tweaks have been made including that the stack pack is not attached to the sail but is attached to the track in the top of the boom. This will, I believe, make the sail slightly less loose footed. The headboard is heftier and does not fit in the old head board car. Currently this is worked around by two shackles, with the replacement to a matching headboard car in the future. Slippery rings for the reefing lines at the aft end of the sail and a more easily adjusted height at the forward end are among the innovations.

 Meanwhile Lene drove our car to the garage under our  building where it is safe against potential flooding at the Harlem, and took public transportation back to the boat. Absence if car is cutting the link to home and land. For me, the start of a cruise especially a long delayed and awaited one like this year’s, is a moment of exhilaration, elation and joy

It turned out that the start of the 2923 Annual Joint Harlem and City Island YC Club Cruise (that I had helped to plan) coincided with the first day after ILENE’s  new sail had been installed. Three boats from the CIYC (one, Roger L.’s  “Restless” for only the first night, crewed by the Harlem’s Larry of “Jubilee”) were with ILENE. The other two CIYC boats were  Josh’s “Neara”,  pictured with his wife and dog, Cherry, in Northport, 

and John’s “Sarah”.   The day had good parts and bad parts. The bad parts included that we never got to meet the folks on the other boats.

We began ashore to drop garbage, including the old battens, and pick up a few items at the local market. And on the way back, two blocks of ice, to ease the work of the refrigerator. The latter seemed like a good choice as we shall see.

Dropped our mooring at 10:20 at dead low tide, meaning the next six hours would provide adverse tidal flow. Sails up but motor sailing until out past Execution Rocks. The wind was from the east at about eight to ten knots so we were tacking back and forth across the sound, with acute tacking angles due to the tide. It was fun making six knots or so with full sails, cross tracking with “Restless”,  who we identified by his active AIS, several times. We also identified, by the same means.  “Crazy Jake” with who we took a similar cruise about two summers ago. Passed close aboard a nice newish Solent rigged boat. Owner said it was a Savin (phonetic). 

But after 2.9 engine hours, at about 1 pm, the Yanmar died - with the classic symptom of fuel deprivation. And oh yes, the autopilot stopped again with the same symptoms as the last two times, so the wheel had to held by one of us the whole rest of the way.

The charted mileage of the passage is 26 NM but the computer measured our track at 38, with stopping about 2 NM short of our destination — and we got there at 9 pm, after an almost eleven hour passage. Well yes, there were periods of calm that accounted for some of the the long duration.  During the calms we drifted — we kept the bow pointed somewhat east but the computer shows the direction that we are actually going, which was northwest. During such a calm, off the mouth of Oyster Bay, I tried to fix the diesel: replace primary and secondary fuel filters and “bleed” the air out of the system. But then, upon restarting the engine, it started and died, as it had before. I figured we needed a mechanic. I’d exhausted by bag of tricks and failed. Without the diesel to keep the refrigeration cold, those blocks of ice were looking like a wise investment.

Eventually we go to the mouth of Huntington Bay  and beat our way, very slowly, to its southern end where there is a well marked channel to Northport Bay at the eastern end of which lay Northport Harbor with the Centerport YC at which we had reserved a mooring and planned to meet the others. Too late for dinner and the wind so light that we just could not get into Northport Bay. Lene was not a happy camper. Her arm hurt too. “Get a tow” she yelled. 

But we had one trick left. When the wooden square masted ships of old were becalmed, the men manned the small boats and pulled it by rowing with long oars. 0ur small boat is the dinghy and it has an outboard engine. In wind and waves the little dinghy gets overpowered by the stronger forces, but our problem was no wind. So I lowered it, tied it fore and aft along the aft starboard side of ILENE and gave it very gentle throttle. (Lots of throttle and the engine would stall and we had had enough of engines stopping today, thank you.) Lene steered ILENE, which got gradually up to 2.6 knots, through that passage and at the east end of Northport Bay, where we anchored for the night.

A rather depressing night because how likely were we to get a mechanic to come out on a Sunday morning, or even on Monday? We texted our goodbyes to the other boats and planned to spend Sunday on anchor, or perhaps sail, if wind came up, about two miles to the east end of Northport and re-anchor just outside the mooring field, only a one mile dink ride from town.   Stay tuned for a more upbeat chapter two!