January 1 - 22 --- Not Much Going On in the Cold

The first day of the new year was a brunch at the Huguenot YC. We went with Bennett and Harriet, who are also keeping their boat, Ohana, at that club this winter. The Huguenot has imposed a new requirement for "winter members" like us: $100 of chits that we have paid for, to be used for food at the club. So with this brunch costing $45 per person, it was an opportunity to get most of  our chits eaten up. Not so fast! The "special event" brunch, we learned after the fact, cannot be paid for with the chits. How can they be used? The restaurant is open for two hours on most Fridays and Sundays during the winter, but they serve only soup. It would take a lot of soup to eat up $100. The solution: take out from a specific approved local italian restaurant to be delivered to and eaten in the Club House during the restaurant's "open" hours. Complicated, and I'm not sure how the Huguenot benefits from imposing this requirement.

But I have invited, subject to their Commodore's approval, the Huguenots to join with us Harlemites in our "Eighth Annualish Winter Excursion" which this year will be to the American Merchant Marine Museum on the campus of the US Merchant Marine Academy on Kings Point, Great Neck -- Wednesday, February 20, less than a month away.

Only one work day during this period, for four hours, on small chores while ILENE's batteries got a drink of rejuvenating juice. The seven of them cost about a thousand bucks when obtained in Grenada in the fall of 2011 and have been giving good service since then, knock on wood. But the electrical space heater did not work: the fan whirred but the heating coils did not turn orange--no heat! I took it home and it worked fine there so I'll try again with more indoor boat chores next decent available day. The cockpit table and companionway trim, that were re-polyurethaned at home, have been reinstalled along with the door to the aft head, with larger screws.

 I looked up the Ritchie Compasses site and ordered a new light plastic protective cover to replace the existing one which was ratty and did not hold on well. The compass itself has worked flawlessly for 20 years. I had less success in getting them to tell me what paint to use to repaint the cylinder in which the compass sits, from which the white enamel paint has come off. This pic shows the work needed, after I temporarily removed the cup holder from the forward side of the binacle.

Ritchie said their paint formula is  "proprietary" and actually did not even tell me the metal from which the tube in question was made. They want me to detach the unit from the boat and mail it to them! Yeah, right! Not very good customer service.
And I took home, scraped and sanded off the old glue and reglued part of a strip of clouded plexiglass to repair the top half of the companionway hatch boards. There is always something to do.

And five non-work days (I call them "Other" days but could just as well call them "Play" days) that related to the sea. I immersed myself in Frankenstein, the book club's selection for January. I had never read it before nor seen any of the movies. The book greatly exceeded my low expectations. The sea link is that it begins and ends on a wooden ship in the 1790's engaged in a voyage of discovery, north from Russia, searching for the North Pole. That part of the novel frames the heart of the story -- man creates monster -- and the frame is the first thing left out when the story is staged or screenwritten. I very much enjoyed an excellent musical version of the novel with book music and lyrics by Eric B. Sirota, staged at the Saint Luke's Theater on West 46th St. But no sea story. Similarly, I enjoyed a major exhibition about the creation, existence and sequelae of the novel at the Morgan Library, on Madison Avenue at 36th St., but again, the nautical aspect was downplayed. And good food and discussion at the boog group's meeting.

The Harlem's annual "International Night" party (an organized pot luck with ethnic foods) was cancelled due to forecast snow and sleet, but not before my linzertorte was in the oven. So by now, half of it has been eaten, and the other half frozen for a future occasion.

I also visited the Salmagundi Club, an old club in a brownstone mansion on Fifth Avenue, about three blocks form our house. This is a club of and for artists. They present frequent free shows of art by members and others. I had no expectation of a watery connection, but I admired two different  black and white photos by different photographers in different parts of the room of two different New England lighthouses. The first is of the interior spiral staircase of the light at the NE corner of Nantucket which we sailed past on our way to Nova Scotia in 2017. The second is of the light at Port Clyde, Maine where we were last summer, and I have included my own photo, which is considerably less artsy.

December 17 - 31 -- Closing Out 2018

Only two work days and one of them involved only ten minutes on City Island, half for nephew Mendy to carry the main sail from the car's trunk to the upstairs locker, and while there, the other half to buy larger brass wood screws to hold the lower hinge of the door of the after head in place. The other was at home, woking on the cockpit table so it will look good again next summer -- four hours. This picture was before the final coat.

And three "other" days: One was a lovely dinner at the home of Bennett and Harriet.
Another of  about ten hours was used writing and researching what I hope will be accepted as my next article in Points East Magazine: a stringing together of a hypothetical route, without excessive mileage on any day, linking our eleven favorite Maine stops, based on our five cruises there over the years -- from Roque Island, the furthest "down east" to Isles of Shoals, on leaving Maine waters for home.

The third such day was not supposed to relate to boats, but rather was a visit to the Metropolitan  Museum of Art, for its Delacroix exhibit. I had led a group of Harlemites throughout the museum to look at art involving boats a couple of winters ago but expected no maritime content on this visit. Wrong. First, amidst the huge throng, I ran into Howard and Barbara of the Harlem; such a welcome surprise. And then I saw this painting in the Delacroix show: Christ (reclining, with a bit of a golden halo, on the port side) and his entourage in a small out-of-control ketch on the tempestuous Sea of Galilee. I don't know the Christian Bible well enough. I knew he was a fisherman (and a carpenter), but the storm scene remains unfamiliar to me.
I've also been busy thinking about sailing next year on boats other than ILENE. For one thing Lene and I are in contact with potential boats for bare boat charter with Bennett and Harriet for 7 to 10 days in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in late April and checking out airlines that serve the airport there. This may be our first catamaran experience. It may not come off but planning is 1/3 of the fun.
Also I'm firming up a passage, crewing with Yves on his French boat, Rusee-de-Jersey, from Bermuda to Halifax in the first half of June. We met Yves in Quebec City last summer. The other member of the crew will likely be Gregg, who we met in Halifax and new York in 2017. This event is highly likely to come off and I'm eager to learn more about the boat.

                                                           ************
But while thinking ahead to 2019, it has come time to sum up 2018. Previously I reported on the 82 Sailing Days, i.e., days of sailing and/or living aboard. Some of them also involved working on the boat, of course, but I count them as "S" days. In addition I enjoyed 57 Work Days, divided as follows: 33 before the launch, ten while afloat and 14 after hauling. And then there are the "Other Days" -- experiences with sailing friends, the Club, etc. -- 47 of them. So adding up all of the "S", "W" and "O" days, 2018  had 196 days related to sailing in some way. A good use of my time, thank you.

November 20 -- December 16 -- Only Four Work Days and Three Other Day Activities

It has been so long since the last post that I'm writing even though not much has gone on since then. I could write up a few of my thrilling golden oldie adventures from the days before this blog started in 2010, but have resisted that impulse -- so far.

I visited the US Merchant Marine Museum at the US Merchant Marine Academy on Kings Point, Great Neck, Long Island--  across the Sound from the Club. This to familiarize myself a bit with where I'm taking the 2019 Winter Land Cruise. The museum is not open on weekends forcing a weekday visit so I solicited opinion about whether that would be offensive and it was not. A theater night with sailing friends. The annual Interim Board Meeting of the Club, to which I get invited as Fleet Captain, an appointed position, which I am publicly willing to relinquish if I or the Commodore can ever find a successor to replace me. It is a nice dinner with friends at which the Commodore, Peter, a loquacious lad, thanked and celebrated each person in attendance for his or her contributions. A warm and friendly group. As an "outsider" to the Board (I do not attend meetings) and an old timer at the Club, I thanked them for inviting me to the dinner and for the progress they have made since my early days at the Club, about 28 years ago, not just in improving the plant and the finances but also improving the cheerful comraderie of the Club -- since the divisive factionalism that soured the Club back then.

The four work days totalled only ten hours. One of the days was at home sanding some of the woodwork I have taken off the boat to varnish and soliciting more expert opinion om my brain trust on how to do the repair jobs. The other three days were the warmest in the period and at the boat. More padding at chafe points under the cover, removing all cushions, the wheel and the salon table to the pullman compartment, clearing the salon for work, emptying the bilge and constructing a plastic shield around the bare mast in the cabin to hopefully direct the leak from the mast partners into the bilge instead of everywhere else, closing up the fresh water system in the big lazarette to be ready for spring, vacuuming the salon, cleaning the freezer and starting the repairs by taking up the first of the floor boards and removing the door to the aft head to measure the maximum size of the new larger and longer brass wood screws that will hopefully keep the lowest hinge in place. I also bought a new random orbital polisher to replace one of two I use each spring to compound and wax the freeboard after the old one had finally given up the ghost after many years of use.
Winter is here and there is lots to be done.

October 28 - November 19 -- Six Work Days and Four Fun Events

The work days were all related to winterization which is complete except for padding the hard points under the canvas cover to prevent them from chaffing through and putting back together the things that were torn apart inside the cabin to gain access for the winterization.
Twenty three and a half hours of work by me plus 1.5 hours of work by JP of Headsync, who helped me winterize the Spectra Ventura watermaker, 1.5 hours by Ed Spallina helping me get the last few systems winterized (during which I learned that I need a longer, i.e., taller, hose through which to pour the pink stuff through the engine) and 5.5 hours of Mendy's help it lifting the headsails to the locker, taking the main to Doyle Sails for repairs and putting on the winter cover. Total man hours so far this fall: 32.
This was the eleventh time I have installed the canvas cover, but the first time I did it during strong winds from deep on the port quarter. Wrestling the big sheets of ungainly stiff canvas in the wind gave me a wee taste of the much more difficult and dangerous was work of the iron men who manned the old square rigged wooden ships, They did it in the rain and snow while hanging off the spars of boats that were picthing and rolling in storms while at sea! But after perhaps four hours of preparation in taking out the stanchions and lifelines and positioning and attaching the whisker pole forward and the wooden poles aft, and snuging the halyards around the mast and shrouds so they would n0ot slap against t hem all winter, Mendy and I did it, with only one false start (with the aft section of the cover backwards) we got it done in near record time and without breaking zippers, or, more importantly: falling off the boat. I also took off the cockpit table and two pieces of molding at the top of the port side of the companionway which had been weathered and need to be sanded and repolyurethaned this winter,mwith more woodwork to come.
I had a nice lunch one day at the Club which finished up my chits. I only need to spend $600 per year in the restaurant, but being away for ten weeks meant I had a bit left to be spent. I visited with two parties were being catered, one celebrating the retirement of a local man and the other a commemmeration of a person who had died twenty years ago. A third such group was not catered but  a la carte. A group of black power boaters who had out a chart kit on the table. They were palaning a cruise to Block Island for next summer. I could not help them with their question: "Which is the best marina?"  having never stayed at any of them, but provised distance and taught them to look up the tide at the race. That was fun.
I had a theater date with Bennett and Harriet; Lene would have been there too except for her broken bones which are mending quite well, thank you. A Club membership meeting was a pleasure, even though I had to leave a bit early. The Officers and Board members presented their reports with well deserved self satisfied glee. Both financially and physically, things are looking up at the Club, due our leaders' countless hours of volunteer hard work over the years.
I attended  a presentation by a professor at the CUNY Graduate Center on a new book he had written about the New York City waterfront during the past 410 years.  How deep water to the edge of land gave New York an advantage over other cities. How the water rights were given by the city to private persons who built the first docks, wjhich were later landfilled and bought back by the City. How the cooperation of four ship owners created Black Ball Lines, the first packet shipping company, which could never guarantee arrival times but did guarantee a departure from New york to Liverpool on a fixed date each month. How the corruption of the waterfront shapeup system worked against the longshoremen (with a plug for the Brando-Kazan-Bernstein-Malden and Eva Marie Saint film "On the Waterfront"  -- which I watched for the first time the next day). How containerization severely curtailed the corruption but required the relocation of longshoreing to New Jersey which had land available for the trailers. And how public-private financing is developing the waterfront today with parks for the people balanced against privileges for the wealthy. Very informative.

How Much Sailing In The 2018 Sailing Season?

Having launched ILENE on May 26 and hauled her on October 26, the sailing season lasted precisely 176 days this year -- not a record. And the first and last of those days are not counted as sailing days in my crazy system of mathematics -- they involved motoring between ILENE's winter the summer homes. Subtracing them leaves only 174 days.

Two weeks for our Alaska vacation in June and one week for the car tour to Quebec and Portland
during the Maine cruise (though most of these 21 days were water-related "Other " days, leaves 153 days for potential living aboard and or sailing.

The next subtraction is for ten Work days during the period ILENE was afloat but that I neither lived aboard nor sailed but worked on the boat, leaving 143 days for potential sailing.

We enjoyed 27 "Other" days during the period afloat, relating to sailing but off the boat. Subtracting them leaves only 116 days available for sailing.

Other fun activities unrelted to the water, obligations-- social and otherwise and bad weather took 24 days. This means we had  only 92 "sailing" days in 2018. adding back up the other way, only 24 of the 176 days of the season were unrelated to sailing, about one in seven. I like the high "utilization rate".

Dividing the thousands of dollars spent this year on maintenance, repairs, improvements, insurance,  summer storage and winter storage by 92 means that the cost per day of getting ILENE underway for a day was, let's just say: "a three figure number". Most boat owners, I believe, do not want to know that number -- too painful -- even more painful for many, who use their boats far less than we do.  But this per diem cost is a misguided way to look at things: one must add in all of the Work and Other days, for which boat ownership is the prerequisite, which lowers the per diem cost markedly. Still, our life style is out of reach for people without money.

On the other hand, we lived aboard without sailing during nineteen of the 92 days (eleven lay days during our cruise and eight after we returned from it).We love living aboard but while counted as sailing days, it is not actually sailing. Subtacting the nineteen from the 92 leaves only 73 days of being underway for sailing this season: 8 before the Maine cruise, 52 during it and 13 after we got back.

Four of those 73 days, were on other people's boats: two on Mark's "Deuce of Hearts" with the Old Salts and two with Rhoda on "Jazz Sail". I love sailing on other boats and learn from them but this means I actually got ILENE underway on sail days only 69 days this season.

We used 151 engine hours this year. Seventeen of them were for the refrigeration system during our seventeen "Live Aboard" days, leaving 134 engine hours for the 69 days of actual underway sailing aboard ILENE. This means an average of just about two engine hours per day which seems surprisingly low to me. But some of the sailing days we were underway only an hour and on the good days were up underway  to eight hours with only 1/4 hour of engine use at the ends of the passage.

Still only 151 hours is pretty good, in my opinion. Some folks say I should put in a new refrigeration system that would work off the batteries, to avoid "using up" the engine, because engines are admittedly very expensive to replace. Not for ILENE! Battery operated refrigeration for a boat like ours, that is rarely at the dock, would be a constant source of worry whether we were getting enough juice and would require that we runthe engine anyway, so its generator would charge the batteries or the addition of a wind generator or carbon powered generator which are themselves expensive and are noisy and complicated to install and maintain. Meanwhile, with only 3593.9 engine hours on her, our Yamnar 4JH2E diesel is still young, and at the rate of only 150 hours per year, the engine is likely to live longer than we will!

Another view: ILENE was new in 1999; she has completed 20 seasons, some of them quite long -- to the Caribbean. Average engine use: 179 hours per year.

I have noted before, sailing is one of the few life activities in which the more you give it away to others, the more enjoyment of it you derive. So I've taken a look at how much I have been able to give away this year.

Three of the   sails on ILENE were with the Old Salts, (plus the two days on Deuce of Hearts). Salts who sailed with me aboard ILENE at least once this year were Mike and Sandy, Morty and Clara, Peggy, Bennett and his new daughter in law, Claire and Virginia and Sarah: ten folks.

Lene sailed with me during the entire Maine Cruise plus seven day sails from the Harlem. Three of those seven were with a total of ten people from Wedrepco, her theater group. The other four day sails during which Lene graced me with her presence were with: (1) Greg and Wanda from Nova Scotia, (2) Tom and Marie, who we met touring the Rockies along with Roz and Bert from the gym in our building, (3) nephew Mendy with Christine and Heather of Westchester and (4) Sid, a former colleague in the law, and his wife Jan. Twenty one more folks.

And finally I had seven more day sails on our boat, without Lene or the Salts, with: Gene from the Harlem, four members of the J-24 Fleet of racers let by PC Jeep, four members of the New York Map Society, Bill, a retired professor who wrote a book about sailing his catboat through New York's waters,  Alison, Patrick and Ian from our Congregation, and Fred from our building. Fourteen guests.

Adding them all up, I sailed on ILENE with 45 different folks this season, 21 of them for the first time. A good year overall and the fall work season is now in effect through December 31.

October 17 to 27 -- No More Sails This Year; ILENE Is Hauled

My sail with Fred described in the last post, as it turns out, was the final one of the year. There were two frustrating days during which I tried to winterize the Spectra Ventura Watermaker, with five calls to the installer, Headsync, in Newport RI, but he was not able to talk me through the problem and I will have to pay for a visit to get this done. Otherwise, a very expensive toy will be ruined by winter frost. On one of the days I dined with a rump caucus of the Old Salts, but did not go out with them.

And then a weekend with Lene's friend, Lianne, in the Berkshires which ended at the beginning when Lene fell down the stairs to the basement and broke many bones. (Were the sailing Gods punishing me for wasting perfectly good sailing says in the mountains?) The effect was that I became a private duty nurse instead of a sailor for the next week. The surgery to reconstruct Lene's right elbow was successfully accomplished. I did take off one day, October 26, during which our nephew, Mendy, who is very strong and a trained medical professional, took care of the patient.
That day I got a lot of the winter stuff down from the lockers and loaded aboard, and motored to the Huguenot YC. There, after stripping her headsails and tying them into bundles (that I will transport to the ballroom floor of the Harlem where the sails will be properly folded and then stored in the locker), ILENE was hauled. The professional crew there did a very good job of power washing her bottom, and she was blocked and secured with jack stands. I saw a few spots where I should have applied an additioal coat of bottom paint last spring. They were festooned with barnacles but by scraping them off on the spot, before they calcified, I saved a lot of time next year. Thanks to Dave, who sails with the Salts and lives by the Huguenot, who drove me back to the Harlem where my car was.
It is a good thing I got hauled on the 26th, during which almost zero wind made stripping the headsails easy. A Noreaster blew through on the 27th, blowing

the water into LI Sound and preventing the tide from going out. The water submerged the Harlem's dock!

October 3-16 -- Fifth and Sixth Weeks after the Cruise

Five sail days of the fourteen, though one was for only an hour, during the longest day related to boating. That Saturday began at the Club at 9 a.m. for the Harlem's annual Fall Work Party. But work did not get underway until after coffee and bagels at, about ten. I attached myself to PC Bobby. Our team's primary job was attaching sheets of plastic, which Bobby had obtained and cut to size, around the dozen tall wooden columns that are at the second floor level of the Clubhouse and seem to hold up the its third floor. I remember scrapeing and painting the columns, a huge job, but that was maybe fifteen years ago and again they looked like hell.

This time the plastic was wrapped around, held in place temporarily with straps while the seam was caulked and then also held firmly with nails every three inches. After the tradional free lunch, we completed our team's second project for the day. This was creating racks for the oars of the Fordham women's crew team which practices from off our docks and gets off to their studies by 9 am, before most of us get to the Club. And they pay a good rental for the privilege.  There were concrete pilings on the north side of the house, where no one goes or sees. They hold up the air conditioning units. We placed two by fours against the concrete pilings by drilling holes in the wood and  placing threaded rods with washers and nuts on both ends through the holes which compressed the wood against the pilings.

1. I should have taken a picture of the racks but here is one of larger team installing the diagonal supports so the rails of the dock do not get blown away in the next hurricane. And the good looking columns make the gutters above them look like they need to be painted, come spring.

After the work ended I accepted Rhoda's invitation for a sail aboard "Jazz Sail". We only had an hour underway but it was great to be out on the water, with good wind. We used only the genoa. Next, back to back, was a lecture on how we must wash and scrape our boats' bottoms to comply with the environmental rules followed by a Club membership meeting. A very constructive meeting, without rancor. The Club is getting by financially, holding its own,  and bylaw changes were read reorganizing the duties of several board members as was the nominating committee's slate for 2019. Peter, a very hard worker is moving up to the Rear Commodore slot and one of the new trustees will be Claire, a frequent old Salt. The acrimony that existed during my early years at the club have receeded, almost out of memory; I need no longer bring along WD40 to spray upon the roiled waters.
The final event of the day (I told you it was a long one) was Octoberfest, featuring a profusion of German foods. Our Caterer, Anne, did a great job, but I have to say it was not as good as Mom used to make. I seated myself with Claire, Ginny and Ginny's friend John. I was home by 10, fourteen hours after I had left.
The day sails:
1) The Wednesday before the work party, the Old Salts sailed: seven folks on ILENE and five more on Dave's boat, "Lady Cat". Dave invites strangers who want a free ride with the hope that some of them will want to become members. When we got back to the moorings after about 2.5 hours tho,se wi)h other committments had to leave, and there were nine folks on ILENE for refreshments. I missed the next outing with this group caused my a stiff neck that laid me up for a few days with muscle relaxants.

2) I enjoyed sailing with Alison, Patrick and their younger son, Ian.

They belong to my Congregation and I tried to do this in the spring of 2017, only to embarrass myself by running over the pickup stick and needing to replace the bridle. No such problems this time. We were underway for 5.5 hours with light westerly winds to start and it got us to six knots over ground. Ian has a keen interest in airplanes so we headed west, tacking under the two bridges. I made a long detour south, to sail in waters where I had never been before: The channel past the east side of Rikers and LaGuardia all the way in to CitiField, home of the Mets.

This was to honor Ian's keen interest in airplanes and my interest in going into new places. It is hard for me to imagine that I have been sailing these waters for over 25 years but never into this long wide channel. Retracing our track north, out of that channel, we continued west to The Brothers Islands, the northern one of which held the still visible ruined sanitorium where Typhoid Mary was confined over a hundred years ago. We broad reached back from the Bothers as the wind got lighter and lighter. Having a bit more time, we went through the channel off Kings Point before turning to port, around Stepping Stones Light to the mooring. At this time it was slack tide and the wind was zero. We lost steerage because we had no way on through the water for the rudder to bite. At that moment another result of my stupidity occurred. I had not filled the fuel tank since Portsmouth, New Hampshire and we ran out. I heard the engine sputtering and shut it off before it finally stopped, thereby avoiding the need to bleed the system. We had two gallons of diesel in the jerry can which proved more than enough to get us the two miles back to the mooring.
The next day I worked for about 2.5 hours on the boat: looking for and finding things to take home, cleaning, especially in the aft head (Lene had closed but not dogged down the ports in that head and during heavy rains water had seeped in), checking out the watermaker so I can service it next time, and pouring four more gallons of diesel into her tank that I bought at a shoreside gas station on my way. It made my neck worse.

3)A day sail with Bruce, Lene's acting teacher, his wife, Valerie, and gheir two sons, Gabe, age 7, and  Sam, twelve. Four hours making grooves and the wind picked up so they got to see what six knots felt like. Val grew up on the Chesapeake and was a good helmsperson. The rest of them had never sailed with us and little Gabe was an avid learner: He started sitting on a cushion on my lap but ended standing astride the helmsman's seat, where he could see where he was going. They had won the outing in an auction for the benefit of WEDREPCO, Lene's theater company. Gabe, himself an aspiring actor, learned his lines and called the launch to request our pickup.

4) I also sailed for four hours with Fred of our Coop. He had sailed with me in September 2017 and belongs to a sailing club that uses J-24s from a marina in the Hudson at the World Trade Center. About four hours out to near Mamaroneck and back, passing on both sides of Execution Rocks and through the channel off Great Neck's King's Point. A problem when a sudden wind shift occurred as we were rounding The Blauses, with the big genoa that takes time to tack. We were close to being blown onto the rocks but we used the engine for about one minute to avoid the problem. Again the wind got stronger as the day wore on and when it was time to beat back, we used the small jib and still achieved six knots.
Hauling to occur soon.
.