September 13 - 22 — Two Work Days, a Salt Day and A Dinner With Cruisers

 Yes. Things seem to go slower at home. There was a lot of mail to read and respond to in a mailbox that has not been opened for more than nine weeks. And unpacking and reorienting to a land based environment. For example. I am a very geolocated person; I generally have an interest in and know where I am. But upon wakening in the morning aboard, I quickly realize I’m aboard and afloat, but where is the boat this morning? It sometimes takes a few seconds for me to figure that out. And the first few mornings at home it has taken a few seconds to figure out that I’m in our apartment.

We had a productive day of cleaning part of ILENE’s interior. Swabbing the walls and ceilings with Fantastic, Chlorox, and or vinegar/water to wipe off accumulated grime. We also took off four more bags of stuff, but somehow I managed to forget to take off the foulies. Lene is an organizer and likes to throw stuff away. I appreciate her organizational skills but the hoarder in me wants to keep everything. In his “Inferno”, Dante had one of his seven concentric rings of hell reserved for both hoarders and wasters: they were buried in ice and condemned to gnaw on each others necks for eternity. Lene and I are not that bad. Lots of stuff: tools, parts, bits of wood, dowels, prods, plastic bits etc. are stored in rather large spaces behind and under the starboard settees. We did throw some stuff out but mostly organized it. Now wires, electrical tools, wire ties, butt connectors, switches and two boxes of fuses, are gathered in a heavy duty two gallon ziplock bag next to the electrical tool box, for example. And to make it easier to find things the big yellow box of flares was removed to the aft cabin freeing up real estate behind the settee. The second work day I spent some time trying to find a mechanic who can fix our water maker, without success so far, and took off the dink and outboard. The later is in the shop up in New Rochelle and the dink is deflated, trussed up, plug removed and on the seawall, tied to the big anchor so the wind can’t blow it away, awaiting the Club’s use of the fork lift to put it away for the winter.

With Lene’s conclusion that this summer was her last multi-month cruise, I had thought about selling ILENE and buying a smaller, simpler, easier to maintain boat. But no, for now we are keeping the old girl.

The old salts convened at a different time on Wednesday:  2 pm, with dinner after the sail at the club. We were underway for only two hours, and tracked eight miles, with 0.3 engine hours. The folks at the left in the dinner picture came with me, and those to the right with Dave.

Last spring I had mentioned to Jamie and Laurie, and to Jim and Winjanda that the other couple was headed up to Newfoundland. Well, as luck would have in they ended up tied on opposite sides of the same floating dock there and in talking during dinner up there quickly discovered that I was their missing link.

Jamie and Laurie, at the far end in this next photo, drive from Boston to NYC for their subscription to the NYC Ballet and we sometimes dine with them. This time they invited Jim and Winjanda as well and the six of us saw the Ballet.