I spent parts of three days at the Harlem, cleaning up the dink and the boat so ILENE would look pretty for her welcome home party twelve days after our arrival. A significant part of this work involved cleaning fish bones and scales off the foredeck. This was a new experience for me; I had not known that birds were such piggy eaters. Heretofore my experience cleaning up from such squatters involved deposits made from the other end of their alimentary canals. The salt water wash- down hose, soap and elbow grease did the job.
For her party ILENE was at the watery end of the Harlem's dock and the food and wine was on the lawn at the other end of the dock, creating a sort of bi-polar party but a lot of Club members and other friends stopped by. We did not bring Whittie and Alphie, to the disappointment of some.
Next weekend we participated in the Harlem YC's annual "Race to Louie's" with Christine and Heather as crew.
Christine is a young poetess, artist and former cat sitter and Heather is her girlfriend. I think a photo of them is in this post but I'm not sure or where.
Louie's was a small, somewhat decrepit, homey fish restaurant with a dock in the Town of Port Washington in Manhassett Bay when last I ate there, perhaps 15 years ago. Now it is an entirely new, building and dock, larger and posher. The race was from the buoy off Cuban Ledge, near the Club in Eastchester Bay to the last green buoy off Port Washington in Manhassett Bay, by way of a buoy near Throggs Neck. ILENE was considered the fastest boat among the entrants and was assigned a handicap (correctly or not) of 1.0582, as compared to the slowest rated boat which was rated .8686. All the others were less than 1.0. This means time is added to our actual time and subtracted from the actual time of the other boats. We completed the course in 1 hour, 22 minutes and 15 seconds, taking third place, both on actual and corrected time. If I was looking for excuses, I would blame the Caribbean winds which had worn our telltales (little ribbons sewn to the sails whose direction of flapping helps us see how to trim the sails for optimum speed) to little useless nubs. They have since been replaced. After the race we docked at Louie's chatted with friends at the noisy bar, congratulated the winners, Dave and Barbara and their two sons of Laughter, and ate fish. But the desert course was aboard a raft-up of the other Harlem boats, deeper into Manhassett Bay, near which we anchored. It was the hottest night in two years and windless. We got relief from the fan but the girls retreated from the after berth to the cockpit. Next morning, after a hearty breakfast, all four of us swam over to the raft to nosh and schmooze some more. The return sail was peasant but uneventful.
Our last sail in June was with Peter, who was one of our Caribbean 1500 crew and his wife, Debbie, who was our Rabbi. We had 25 to 30 knots of wind, and would have done better with double reefed main and small jib than the configuration I selected: single reefed main and no head sail. Peter had the helm most of the way to Greenwich CT and back. Ilene drove out and met us for dinner in Arties (the Club's restaurant being closed).
Life's great adventure continues!
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