September 20 to 27 -- NO SAILING and Five Nights In Our Apartment.

Yes, the last night of the prior post and five more during this one were spent ashore. My plan to sail after services during the afternoon of the second day of Rosh Hashona fell through due to lack of interest. Two folks nibbled but no one bit the hook. A wider cast net will be deployed nest year. But on that day I returned to ILENE, to pick up a few things we had forgotten to take with us, and to pick up Mark and Liz of s/v Saving Grace, who took a mooring in the Harlem field. They spent three nights in our den and are what I call good travelers. It was their first visit to New York and they filled each day at hour home and later from their mooring with seeing the sights; Highline (shown here at 30th street amidst a whole new city that is under construction over the old railroad yards at the extreme west side of Manhattan),

Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty,
9-11 Memorial, Empire State Building, Met Museum of Art, and a ball game at Yankee Stadium. Whew! They are high energy folks!











We had dinner on their boat,

one at a restaurant in our neighborhood and one in our apartment. Lene taught them her favorite easy card game, "Oh Heck," but it seems that it is almost the same as their game of Wizard except that Wizard has a few extras including four wizard cards which trump any trump card. Mark has very good card sense.
I read their blog: www.svsavinggrace.com
They have lived aboard for six years but until 2016, remained in the Great Lakes, where it is very cold in the winters. Last year they sailed to the Bahamas via Bermuda. They like longer passages such as North Carolina direct to Nova Scotia and Nova Scotia direct to Boston, so Maine and the rest of New England except Boston is a virgin cruising ground for them. I read the part of their blog that dealt with their arrival in Nova Scotia to Baddeck and thence to New York. We were on the same journey but in Nova Scotia they went to many places that we jumped across and we likewise visited many that they missed out on; reason for a return trip.
I took in a very inexpensive short one woman musical off Broadway. There were one evening and two days of religious services and I got a gastrointestinal problem which slowed me down quite a bit.
We did a lot of chores in getting our house ready for the painters who are at work in it now, the car inspection, laundry, groceries, etc.
I checked out buying a new section of elkhide to recover the portion of the steering wheel at the top where my hands have worn through it during the last twelve years, and figured out what is wrong with and cleaned up the Magma kettle grill.
But the biggest deal is the addition of a 1250 pound slab of lead to the bottom of ILENE's keel, where it will do the most good in correcting her "tenderness" problem -- her bad habit of heeling over too much when the winds are strong. Making the pendulum (which is the keel) longer and heavier will diminish this bad habit but will also increase her draft by less than two inches, so we will have to see that our mooring is moved further from the Clubhouse into slightly deeper water. The slab of metal will be shipped from Mars Metals in Ontario, Canada to Harpswell, Maine, where it will be installed at the Great Island Boat Yard in Casco Bay during a week to be determined next July or August. So having decided to do the work in Maine we thereby decided which direction to sail to next summer and are now booking a winter storage spot at the Huguenot YC in New Rochelle for this coming winter.
We had lunch with the old salts on Wednesday, but decided that I was not up to the sailing part. I did not even do any of the boat chores that require effort, but just lolled about trying to get my strength back. This too shall pass.
We discovered another thing during our time in the City and then returning to the boat: out cats like the boat better. Smart cats. Sunset over The Bronx: lovely.