September 13-19 -- The First Week Back

Only one sail and that on Bennett's Ohana with the Old salts the day after we got back. The meeting was very well attended and we packed some fifteen folks onto Ohana and Deuce of Hearts. I sailed on the former for about two hours with Bennett's new sail, a "code zero" -- a sort of light weight spinnaker that furls upon itself and is tacked to the anchor roller and hauled up by the spinnaker halyard. The furler is operated by a continuous loop line led from the bow, next to mast and back to the cockpit. It is going to take a bit more time for us to learn how to use the new sail effectively, and then it will provide more speed. Lene joined the luncheon and the sailing but went back to ILENE during the libations section of the afternoon.
We took the subway to Manhattan with a family whose boat was on a guest mooring at the Harlem. They had sailed here from Copenhagen and planned to go on the Nova Scotia. I put them onto this blog as a reference work. We went into the city to get our car and mail and as to the latter, it was a good thing because a check we had mailed out in June had come back as "undeliverable" so I got to pay the vendor by hand delivery.
Our apartment was in great condition and we had planned to live on ILENE for the first three weeks while the apartment is painted, but the forecast proximity of Hurricane Jose caused us to move ourselves, our stuff and the cats back to the apartment for a few days during the encounter. The strongest winds predicted are only gusts of 40 knots and we have ridden out stronger winds on our anchor but a course change for Jose of just two degrees to the left would mean much stronger winds. Fortunately the hurricane seems to be northbound, passing east of us, giving us the gentler winds of its western half and from the north, without a long way to work up huge waves in Eastchester Bay. But hurricanes are large, powerful, dangerous, full of hot air and capable of moving in any direction at any time (sort of like the incumbent in the White House) so it pays to take precautions.
We had an unhappy experience at the Club's dining room: The food was great but service was so slow that our alfresco dinner turned out to be eaten in darkness. This is a problem that will have to be fixed. I can't invite guests there, who have schedules to meet, if they may have to wait 90 minutes for their food.
We met up with PC Mark and Marsha of Leeds the Way, for a beer on their return to City Island, met them for breakfast the next day, and helped them haul out, deflate, roll up and store their dinghy.
We attended a party given by our financial adviser, Tom Mingone in his lovely home in Rockland County, NJ. Tom has sailed with us but has a power yacht. At the party we unexpectedly met Seth and Sue, who belong to our congregation and have sailed with us aboard ILENE. We ddi not know that t hey were clients of Tom.
Sunday we drove up to Kent CT with our friend Sheila to visit Fran. Both Fran and Sheila have sailed with us.
At Torah study class I invited the whole group to sail with me after services on the second day of Rosh Hashona. But the hurricane may mess that up this year. The holidays are about repentance and the Rabbi said that repentance for our failings is analogous to tying back together the two pieces of a rope that connect us with God which get severed by our sins and failures. His point was that the resulting rope is shorter, bringing us closer to God. But I later pointed out that the rope is also weaker because a knot reduces the strength of a rope. Only sailors will see the negative corollary in the metaphor he described,
We met up with Christine and Heather who have sailed with us in New York and Miami. Christine who has a way with birds, is a volunteer at the Greenville Animal Shelter in Westchester which we visited with them. This huge American bald eagle is injured and cannot fly -- but he has a home here.

And my book group met at the home of Lee and patty (who met us in Red Brook Harbor on the Cape a couple of weeks ago) to discuss Robert Massie's Catherine the Great, which is a land book except for voyages on the river and the Baltic and battles at sea with the Turks. (Did you know that American naval hero, John Paul Jones, had a brief and unhappy professional relationship with Catherine? She imported his talent but her Russian naval brass made his life miserable.)
Leaving the boat on Monday was after pickeling/winterizing the water maker and turning it off electrically for the season and securing everything above decks below, tying extra lines around the sails, pumping the bilge, carrying off eleven bags of stuff including food, and taking the dink to the dock, hauling it up, removing its water retaining plug and securing it firmly to the dock. A lot of work to prepare for the worst.
Still, an easy first week back.