June 12 — Day 5 — Lay Day in Stonington

 No rush on a lay day so French Toast for breakfast. 

Next, we filled in the calendar from now until mid September, with places to visit. This will definitiely change and lacks details, such as periods of three to fifteen days to transit between X and Y, or to visit various ports, to be determined, on the St. John River. All can be adjusted to speed up the outbound with more days for the return, or vice versa. Days are built in for weather delays. I have not checked the tides at the mouth of the St. John River where we have to enter and leave — across the famous reversing falls — at the daytime slack at high tide. But Bennett of “Ohana” will be able to determine when to fly up and join us.

Dinked to town to pick up the repair part, which had arrived; thank you Raymarine. Visited a few of the local antique shops and art galleries and Lene got her hair washed, a process that uses lots of water, so better done ashore. We visited the Jinishian Gallery of quite expensive nautical art. The last time we did this was with the Club’s “Winter Land Cruise” maybe six winters  ago. Then his gallery was in rural Fairfield CT. The new place is smaller but, I think, in a much better location. I was struck by this painting

which I recognized as one of “Brilliant”, anchored next to us. A photo of her is in yesterday’s post. She is a rather famous boat, with her own Wikipedia entry. Built at City Island in 1932, she was owned by a man named Cunningham, who invented and installed on her the eponymous rigging gear to flatten the lower part of the mainsail. After winning races and serving in WWII, she was donated to the nearby Mystic Seaport Museum which uses her for educational charters.

Then back under the cockpit with good task lighting, lots of tools and a strong clean paint stirring stick to keep the autopilot pins from popping out of their pits. Cut into two parts, the stick halves are now held in their places by bolts and spacers for the pin attached to the rudder angle indicator and by wire ties for the pin attached to the rudder stock. The sticks are to apply pressure to keep the pins from jumping out. The grey plastic cap holding the ball is to the right in the upper picture and to the left in the lower one.

If this does not work (Thomas Edison tried many different materials as filament for his light bulbs before he found the one that worked) I will try again. 

Dinner reservations at 7 at Noah’s, where we have dined on prior visits to Stonington. Where to seat us?  There was only one table and a woman was also waiting for a table. We asked her to join us and then her name. Jes is retired, has had an interesting life as a nurse and later a spiritual animal whisperer and has left her Ohio home and is trying out various Rhode Island towns. After dinner she drove us to a supermarket and back. Tomorrow we will head east and see how far the wind blows us.