218 Days and 218 nights

OK, I confess. Yes, I am a bit compulsive about counting things. By recording facts in a log one gains the ability to see patterns that are interesting to me -- and perhaps to some of you. Actually the "log" is more of a diary than a traditional sailing log. It is the source from which the posts to this Blog are drawn, but has a lot more detail. Many have asked where we went and what we did on a daily basis or on a typical day, etc..  So here goes. No photos this time.

The on-board portion of last winter’s return trip adds up to 218 days and nights.  This began with ILENE’s splashdown into the brownish waters of St. David Harbor, on the SE coast of Grenada on November 7, 2011.
And it ended with our arrival at the Harlem Yacht Club, City Island, New York, on June 12, 2012. The 218 exclude our thirteen days in a hotel at St. David's while preparing the boat for her voyage after her summer on land in Grenada.

Where did we go? We visited 17 nations aboard ILENE, which are listed below in the order we visited them. Following each is a parenthesis with numbers in it.The first number represents the number of separate ports, anchorages or marinas at which we stopped for at least one night in each nation. Then, following a dash, the second number shows the total number of nights spent in that nation. Seven of the seventeen nations, those with an asterisk following the parentheses, are nations we did not visit on our way south the winter before  -- “new” nations to us.  An 18^th nation, also with asterisk, would be Saba, Dutch West Indies, but we visited this nation by ferry from Sint Maarten rather than aboard ILENE and we did not spend a night there.

          Grenada                                            (4-20)

          St. Vincent and the Grenadines         (4-8)

          St. Lucia                                            (2-3)

          Martinique                                        (4-9)

          Domenica                                         (1-1)

          Guadeloupe                                      (5-10)

          Antigua                                             (3-7)

          Nevis                                                (1-8)*

          St. Barts                                            (2-2)*  

          Sint Maarten  (Dutch)                       (1-10)*  (ILENE was in French Saint Martin last year)

          Anguilla                                            (1-3)* 

          The British Virgin Islands                (6-9)

          The US Virgin Islands                      (5-9) 

          Puerto Rico                                      (8-25)*

          Turks and Caicos                             (5-10)*

          The Bahamas                                   (14-34)*

          USA                                                (19-45)

We spent six nights “nowhere,” that is, underway, at sea.  (Two nights during which we got underway in the dark of the early morning hours are counted as if we “stayed” that night.)  All of the eight total and partial at sea nights were in the final 43 percent of the days of the trip. We stopped in 84 ports, but Lene spent 19 days in 18 of those 84 ports without going ashore. I had only 18 "stay aboard" anchorages because I went exploring at St. Louis on Marie Galante Island in Guadeloupe while Lene remained aboard there. Most of these stay aboard places were either due to high winds which would have made dinghy rides problematic, or because there was simply no nearby attractions ashore; and one was due to customs and immigration. You don't have to check in and out if you stay only one night and do not go ashore which we did in Domenica.   218 nights divided by 18 nations means an average of twelve days per nation; median - nine.    There are many other places that we would have liked to stay longer and many others that we had to skip, and any return trip would surely also include a return to some of our favorites.

How often and how far did we move?  ILENE made 83 passages which, with overnight passages taking more than one day, means she moved during 89 of the 218 days or 41 percent of the days --about two of five. So three of five days were "lay days."  When I was younger I would have despised such a lazy plan but now  ....  we had lots of sailing, thank you.
Our stays in any one spot ranged from one day, e.g. in Prince Rupert Bay, Domenica to ten days in the lagoon in Sint Maartin. Average duration in each port: 2.6 nights. Interspersed with longer stays in some ports were periods in which we made a new passage each of  four or five consecutive days, as in the lower Bahamas and approaching home.
The length of each passage (excluding the overnight passages such as 300 miles during all or parts of three consecutive days (from Boqueron, Puerto Rico to Big Sand Cay in the Turks and Caicos) ranged from 88 miles -- from Anguilla to Virgin Gorda in the BVIs -- to as little as two miles when we transited from Gustavia to Anse de Columbier, both in St. Barts.
Total mileage (measured by the shortest logical safe route from port to port (excluding additional miles spent tacking,  and searching through an anchorage for a good spot, and rounding each day’s voyage up or down to the nearest whole nautical mile) aggregated 3281 nautical miles. Not so very far – just a bit more than 1/8 of the earth’s circumference as a straight line. Our course, however, was quite jagged and generally was a gentle "S"-- shaped curve northbound up the Windward and Leewards, then west curving to WNW from Anguilla to Florida, followed by a curve to NE and North up the coast of the States. And we averaged 37 miles per day for the 89 days of travel, with a lower median because some long days skew the average.

How did we secure ILENE at night?

Six nights we were underway.              Three percent  

38 nights we were on docks.                 Seventeen percent

43 nights we were on moorings.           Twenty percent

131 nights we were on our anchor.       Sixty percent

We used docks more as we got closer to home:
First 81 nights, zero docks.              Zero percent
Middle 84 nights, twelve docks.      Fourteen percent
Final 53 nights, 26 docks.                Forty nine percent

Where did we eat our 218 breakfasts, lunches and dinners?

We ate three breakfasts off the boat, 52.5 lunches (a half is used when one of us ate out and the other stayed aboard) and  60.5 dinners (11 of the 60.5 dinners were on other people’s boats or their land homes rather than in restaurants. And we had 16 meals aboard ILENE with people from other boats: mango pancake breakfasts or dinners, in addition to many meals aboard with others during the 14 days that three sets of guests voyaged with us during the trip. These “social meals” aboard with others are simply accounted for as meals eaten aboard.)  So 26 percent of all lunches and dinners were off  ILENE, mostly in restaurants. Figure about one lunch or dinner "out" each two days.

So there you have our great adventure, statisticalized. I would be happy to try to answer any questions. 

Sixteen Out Of Thirty

It has been a long time since my last post. Amazing to me, in the 23 months since this blog began on October 18, 2010, readership has gotten to more than 20,800 page views, for which I am grateful; though I am not sure what a "page" or a "pageview" is. Anyone know?

The period from August 25 to and including September 23, inclusive, was a period of 30 days,  sixteen of which included boating activities. 

Five of the sixteen were work days, actually not whole days but days on which a few hours of work were done such as: visiting various places at which I might keep ILENE this winter; working on the boat of a laid up friend to charge her batteries, check if her engine would still start (it did) and pumping fresh pink antifreeze (propelene glycol) into her engine to protect against the winter; replacing the impeller in ILENE’s waste oil pump I had broken back in Boqueron; and flushing her watermaker to protect it for the winter. An abler mechanic would have gotten a lot more done but ….

And one of these "work" days involved a visit to our home for a few hours one evening by a young couple, Paul and Tami, who live near us in Greenwich Village and who are planning to head south this winter on their canoe-stern 37 footer. They were given our name by our vet, Jill, who visited us during the "Welcome Home ILENE" party; she gave them our name because they are bringing their dog. What fun to be able to recount our adventures as a way to help others. Next day I learned from another Saga owner, who I have never met, that he plans to visit Nova Scotia next summer -- and promptly asked for the benefit of what he learns about charts, cruising guides and routing there.  Subtracting the five work days from the sixteen leaves eleven sailing days.

Three of these were with the O_d Fa_ts club, on two different Catalinas and lastly on ILENE. Our Yacht Club’s restaurant, what with the waning of the boating season, has closed the restaurant on Wednesdays. So we convened at a local diner one time and brown bagged it to the Club’s sundeck for the most recent of these sessions. Mike and Sandy on "Pas de Deux":

Regrettably, the last meeting was the day after a brief but punishing storm had hit Eastchester Bay on Tuesday, September 18. None of our boats broke off from their moorings, but a boat from a club upwind did break off and careened through our mooring fleet, damaging half a dozen of out boats, including two Catalina’s. So the last O.F. session involved a sail with Richie and Mike, on ILENE, during which we stopped off at Consolidated Boatyard to pick up Howard and Morty, who had driven Howard’s boat, "Power of Two" there, so that the damage (extensive) could be repaired. Power of Two is not an expensive boat, but one I had greatly enjoyed sailing; the cost of the repairs may exceed the value of the repaired boat. If so, the insurance company will declare it “totaled”. A sad day, but the O.F.s plan to continue to meet, weather permitting, through October, probably mostly on ILENE.

So there were eight other day sails:

One was on Bob and Jeanette’s “Sea Leaf”, a huge 72’ Ocean Alexander powerboat that I helped bring up from Florida (reported in May 2011 blog). This time we were about 15 folks including Ilene and her brother, Ken, and lots of food and drink. We motored out from New Rochelle to Oyster Bay for lunch on the hook, and then went back. Having steered her up from Florida, I was appointed and gladly accepted the appointment as Second Mate, to bring the boat back if both Bob and his paid crew member were incapacitated. Neither of them were, fortunately, but this "appointment" gave me an excuse to stay up on the flybridge.

A trip with Ilene and her friend, CarolAnn, in 8 to 15 knots, was fun and uneventful except that somehow in dropping the mooring we managed to run over the pickup stick and were moored by the rudder on its line. By the time I changed into swim trunks and was about to jump in to the water to clear her, the problem resolved itself and the rest of the trip was fun.

I sailed with Howard and Dave on Power of Two one beautiful Monday. These are OFs but it was not a Wednesday so we were just out enjoying. Dave, a fellow retiree, is embarking on a great adventure of his own next week, with three other guys: bicycling from San Diego to St. Augustine.

A day sail with Ellen, the racer, so she could see how we cruisers live. We went out past Execution Rocks, over to off New Rochelle and back – further from the mooring than Ellen, who races a lot, in Eastchester Bay had gotten this season.

We sailed with Jane, a friend of Lene’s from the same place where she met Judy and Medidel (who joined us in Turks and Caicos), and her husband Jack, who had done a lot of small boat racing on Long Island’s southern shore in his youth. 

We picked up Bennett as well.  A good time of schmoosing and noshing was had by all, but very light wind made the sailing that day very underwhelmingly exciting.

For the Vice Commodore’s Regatta, the Club’s rules require that each sailboat crew of two have two non-sailing members along. It is designed for fun and to comingle our sailing and non-sailing members as well. We were fortunate enough to get our Commodore and his wife, Art and Carolyn, who have a big power boat, to join us. Art said all they hoped for was “a nice sunny day sail” and from my viewpoint, it was unfortunate that this was all they got. ILENE is a fast boat with a strong handicap to overcome.In moderate wind and due to mistakes (I left the binoculars home and we were passed by the winning boat while looking for the third and last mark while going in not the right direction) we finished second across the finish line and fourth after application of handicaps – of five boats. Not ILENE’s best day, but a pleasant day on the water with good food that our crew provided.  On our last boat, ILENE I, a Tartan 34, we won the first two of these annual races.

We had a group of friends out for another day sail. This is mostly Ilene’s friends and their husbands, who have all become my friends too. Here are Ricky and Joel while the next has Linda, Ellen and Lene:

Rudy was also with us for a fun day.  We enjoyed so much noshing afloat that we had to cancel our dinner reservations: no one was hungry. Ricky was one of the four guys who helped me bring ILENE up from Baltimore in June 2006. He was not a sailor but cheerfully did everything he was told, and did it well. And here is the saddest news ever to appear in this blog: On September 21, at 11 a.m., having recently arrived at the gym in his building after an AOK stress test from his cardiologist about a week before, Ricky collapsed and died of a heart attack without regaining consciousness. Rest in peace Ricky; you will be greatly missed by all who knew you.

The last of the sails in this period was with my daughter, Devra 

and two of her friends. Jen goes back a long ways with Dev, was at Sharyn’s wedding, does IT for the NY branch of a big Chicago law firm and has sailed to Bermuda. (Her photo did not come out.) Ashley is renting a room in Dev’s new apartment, sells cosmetics to spas up and down the East Coast and enjoyed her first sail. 

I got to ILENE at ten and had two hours to set her up for sailing and clean her, take off the barbecue and bag it for transport home for cleaning, etc. We left the mooring at 12:15 and were back 4.5 hours later, having sailed out to Matinicock and then into Manhassett Bay to a good view of Louie’s.

I no longer have the same burning urge to go sailing every available minute of every available day. But I enjoy every day that I do sail; a gift from God. 

A Bit Of Racing On The Side

I have previously told the people at the Harlem Yacht Club that racers and cruisers are different breeds of sailing cats (and again distinct from the feline sailing cats).

For racers speed is the thing and competition. There are defensive moves in racing -- techniques to slow down the opposition.  And racers spend a lot of money on high tech racing sails which cost quite a bit more than our dacron non-racing ones but do not last as long. Why? Because until racing sails useful lives expire (at which point they will literally fall apart) they maintain their near perfect shape to utilize the wind and make the boat go faster. Non racing sails last longer but get stretched out of shape a bit when they get older and as a result, become less effective in maximizing the propulsive power of the wind to the optimal extent. Racers have also been known to motor to the area of the race, rather than sail there, so as to not be "using up" their sails. They also strictly control weight, which slows a boat down, by leaving gear ashore, emptying water tanks, and taking minimal fuel, etc. Legend has it that the crew of one raceboat was ordered to cut off the bottom half of the handles of their toothbrushes to save weight. Serious racers also use a much more expensive and slicker bottom point than we use to reduce friction.

Cruisers like to go fast too, but endurance is the thing and the joy is in the journey. Lene and I are definitely cruisers, not racers. And yet, there is fun in seeing how the other half live and enjoying their sport. In fact we have raced ILENE a few times and have even won a race back in 2010. But ILENE is better for ocean racing than for "around the buoy" style racing here in Long Island Sound, in which the ability to make numerous tacks and gybes quickly and efficiently is a key to success. Our big genoa  must be furled before tacking, and then unfurled again after the tack, which takes a few minutes, during which the rest of the boats will have pulled away.

But I have recently engaged in three racing activities in one way or another and they reminded me how much fun racing can be.

On  Monday nights the J24 fleet engages in training races. The J24 is the most popular raceboat, at least in the Northeast; small, light and fast. http://www.jboats.com/j24/  There are seven of them in our club. They were teaching a group of young architects how to sail and I was invited to join for the night and assigned to "Panic Attack" owned by Ellen and Roy. Ellen, pictured below on ILENE, was captain and Roy was elsewhere but Robin had the helm. Robin sailed on a 48 foot Saga during the Caribbean 1500 Rally with which I sailed ILENE to Tortola. But that rally involves so many boats with so many people that I had not met him them. He is an excellent helmsman, sensed every puff of wind before it arrived and continually talked about what each crew member was to do so they would be ready for the next move. The wind was light but J24s are so light that we moved at a nice speed. The two architects, under Ellen's expert tutelage, were on the foredeck handling the spinnaker pole and sail. I sat in the tiny cockpit with Robin and was the genoa trimmer and also handled one of the spinnaker control lines, called the spinnaker guy, which runs from the outboard end of the pole back to the cockpit -- with the objective to keep the pole at a 90 degree angle to the wind. This being practice, we did not have a committee boat. Rather one of the boats used a horn to count down the time to the start. No handicaps were necessary because all of the boats are ostensibly identical. And was not an official race so there were no losers or winners.

For my next racing adventure I went to the Club to race on somebody's boat in the annual Treat regatta.  The Treat family donated the perpetual trophies for this annual race and it is divided into two classes for faster and slower boats. I was invited to join Vince and his never-been-on-a-sailboat-before friend, Phil, on Vince's "Adagio" a 35 foot Beneteau. An adagio, in music, is a slow and stately movement; and Adagio is a cruiser, not a racer; but with an appropriate handicap she could be competitive.
During the pre-race Captains' meeting someone asked how long the race would be and the answer was given that a course would be selected of such length that with the predicted wind, the race, which would start about 1:30 would be end about 1 - 2 hours later. I made a mistake at the start. The wind was light to moderate during the 45 minutes that we were sailing before the start to get our roles down and give Phil some practice, but it died at the start. I steered close to the start line and parallel to it for almost its entire length on starboard tack during the four minute period before the start. The plan was then to trim in the sails and then head upwind, across the line. And it almost worked. But the wind totally died and we drifted a few feet past the end of the line without crossing it and had to make a 360 degree turn to come back at the line. The next time we touched the plastic buoy at the end of the line and accordingly had to make another 360 degree turn as a penalty. On our third attempt to start, we touched the mark again, but by now we were so far behind that I did not do another circle. We tried to find tiny patches of wind and get to them and actually were catching up on some of the other boats which were sitting in windless holes. But at 4:15 we had completed only about two thirds of the first one of the five legs of the race course and, all of us having evening plans, we radioed in that we were dropping out of the race and would be recorded as DNF: "Did Not Finish". The winners were those who stuck it out and finished in the 5:30 to 6:30 time frame. So it was frustrating, but still a nice day out on the water, though Phil has yet to experience the true "joys" of sailing.

My third racing experience was not as a racer but as volunteer captain of ILENE as the Race Committee boat. This was for the last of the series of Friday evening races that the Club ran this summer. The photos below were taken during that experience. Fortunately, Ellen was aboard because I would never have gotten the job done correctly by myself.  The first trick is to get the Committee Boat anchored in such a place that an imaginary line, the start/finish line (between an orange flag tied to ILENE's shroud and fixed a racing buoy) is perpendicular to the direction of the wind so that the start will be an upwind leg. Ellen also tied up a big flag with "RC" on it and lettered flags indicating the course, see photo below. Then I held aloft various flags, mounted on the ends of sticks, that got raised and lowered at specific fixed intervals, 5, 4, and 1 minute before the start, and at the start, for each of two divisions. At those instants, Ellen also announced the time via VHF radio.

Five of the eight boats of the slower division, pulling away from the starting line. The nearest one has racing sails.

"L", "C", "2". This means to go from the starting line to buoy L (which was southeast) then to  buoy "C" (which was northwest) and then repeat a second time (back to L and then to C) before coming back to the finish line. The buoys are all marked with their letter designations on a little chartlet so the racers can know where to go.

Ellen listing the boats so we would know when they had all completed the course

The Rear Commodore's boat, "Deuce of Heart", a catamaran, which alas, got a five minute late start and finished last; better luck next  time, Mark.

We ended up anchoring three times. Shortly before the race the wind came in from the south so we had to reset ILENE to draw a different start line to be perpendicular to the new wind direction. And after the race started the wind died down quite a bit so we moved ILENE to near mark "C" to shorten the racecourse by one of its five legs and end the race closer to home. As each boat crossed the finish line, I tried to identify it by its shape and or sail number and tooted the horn when Ellen, seated under the orange pennant on the shroud, saw the first part of it cross the line and recorded its time.  The bottom line: all boats finished, no one hurt or damaged, but it was not until well after dark that the Committee Boat got back to its mooring.

Conclusion: racing is fun too.

Sailing With The Game Night Group

Lene and I belong to a Game Night Group. we meet in each others homes perhaps once every couple of months. We'd meet more often but its tough to coordinate peoples schedules! We eat talk and well....  play games. This has been going on for perhaps ten years now.  Games include anagrams, charades, fictionary, electronic versions played on a wide screen TV, trivial pursuit, card games, truth telling, and even once a jig saw puzzle contest. In my mind, the games are the least of our fellowship but I play along with the games part. We have gone through each other's life cycle events together and when I had my craniotomy, the gamers visited me in the hospital.  That's when it dawned upon he how important they are in my life.

And they have sailed on ILENE about once a season. Indeed, Ricky and Bruce were part of ILENE's crew on her voyage from Baltimore to the Harlem YC in 2006. And they and Joel and I have a men's division, with Bruce, which gets together for a dinner out a few times a year.

Only seven of us were aboard for this day sail. We got underway at about 1:30 and were back on the mooring at about 6:30, having noshed so extensively that we decided not to have dinner together after all. The wind was strong from the east at first so we headed into Little Neck Bay and made speed of up to 7.5 knots with full main and small jib. This was the exciting part of the trip and Ellen was able to learn how to steer. Then the wind moderated and came from the south so we went east, almost to Execution Rocks, then to the Long Island side of the Throggs Neck Bridge, back to Hart Island and back to the mooring, with Auto doing most of the steering. A quiet peaceful day of making grooves in the water.
From left to right: Ricky, Joel, Linda, Ellen, Lene and Rudy.

Sailing with Israeli Youth

Two pleasant sails recently were with Israeli youth. Both of our nephews, Mendy, who readers of this blog met during the Club Cruise, and his older brother, Ariel, a veteran of the Israeli Army and now a student at Ariel university, attended the second sail.








 So did Cynthia

and her granddaughter, Shoshana.

The earlier sail date was with Cynthia and her other granddaughter, Shira.

The US and Israel were tied at the Olympics this year in the medal race in sailing competitions.  Neither nation won even so much as a single bronze medal (I refuse to verbify the noun “medal”, as the TV does), though both have won medals in sailing in the past.

On Shira’s day, the wind was rather light so a bit of swimming was enjoyed.  On Shosana's day , however, we started with less than the predicted light wind, but for most of the afternoon the wind was in the teens and we were able to furl the genoa, fly the small jib and visit deeply into Little Neck Bay, drive through the channel behind Stepping Stones and up through Hart Island Sound, and enter Manhassett Bay before beating back to the mooring.

I am pleased to report that all four of the youths, dual US and Israel citizens, seemed to pick up steering the boat quite well.

A Blast From the Distant Past

One benefit of saving old papers is that you may someday find them. Below is a letter I wrote for the signature of the Captain of the USS Hammerberg (DE-1015). My primary job on that ship was Anti Submarine Warfare Officer; but all the officers had secondary assignments as well. One of mine was PR man for the Captain (and the Navy in general). I must admit I rather enjoyed the task.  Rereading this letter, dated more than 45 years ago, both its content and style may remind you of the postings to this blog these last two years. In those days it was typed by a Yeoman (secretary), mimeographed and sent out in envelopes that every man (there were no women serving aboard in those days) had addressed to those of his friends and family who he wanted to receive such letters. This posting covered the last part of UNITAS VII, a good will tour through the Panama Canal and around South America during the fall (up here) of 1966. 

Hammerberg was (past tense because she was scrapped in the early 70's) 314.5 feet long with a beam of 36.9 feet and drew 18 feet. She had  a single screw, powered by either or both of two boilers.

“Dear Families and Friends of HAMMERBERG,

“Much has happened since my last letter. I am glad to have time this afternoon to sit down and write to you about what we have been doing, and plan to do in the near future.

“The remainder of UNITAS was much like the first part described in my last letter. Rio de Janeiro, our last major liberty port, marked a midpoint between two weeks of operations with the Brazilian Navy. As the most modern and richest city we visited, Rio had a lot to offer. We tied up at the tourist piers with the Uruguayan Navy, and were also joined by the French Cruiser-Helicopter Carrier, Jeann De Arc which was escorted by a destroyer. Most of us went swimming at Copacabana or Ipanema beaches. Others went on an excellent bus tour all around the city, or purchased souvenirs such as trays made of butterfly wings under glass.   Our second Brazilian city, Recife, was a short stop of only two days. There was little organized activity there.

“Enroute from Recife to our last port, Trinidad, we conducted exercises with the Venezuelan Navy. During our final two day stop in Trinidad, we were detached from UNITAS VII operations and steamed back for Newport [RI – our home port] with the USS Van Voorhis (DE-1028). Stopping only in St. Thomas Virgin Islands for a few hours, we arrived in Newport on the 15^th of December and commenced a well deserved leave period.  Almost every man who wanted it was sent on leave either over Christmas or New Years. I was very happy that your friends and loved ones could be home with you this year, and not, like some of our friends on other ships, patrolling off the coast of Viet Nam.

“The second week in January we started a much needed tender [repair ship] availability. During the next two weeks extensive work beyond the capacity of the crew was accomplished with the assistance of the technicians on the … USS Yosemite (AD-19).

“On January 23 we departed on “Springboard ‘67”, our first exercise of the year. It was conducted in the waters around the eastern end of Puerto Rico. The first two weekends were spent in San Juan, the last in St. Thomas VI. During each week we had a full schedule of operations culminating in an operational readiness inspection the last week. 

“I wonder how many of you realize how hard your friends and loved ones really work. On one typical Wednesday morning Reveille went at 0500 in order that everyone could be up and have breakfast by 0600, at which time the Refueling Detail was stationed. Refueling is really an amazing operation. Every man is required either to control the ship and carry on all of its normal functions, or to pull the heavy fuel hose over to the ship from the oiler, control its insertion in the ship's fueling trunk, or control the flow of fuel into the ship's tanks. This operation was completed by 0800. While cleaning up from refueling, we made a top speed transit to another operations area for an anti-submarine exercise. The rest of the morning was consumed in the pursuit of the elusive submarine.  Attacks were made with exercise torpedoes from the DASH helicopter as well as from the ship's torpedo tubes.

"After a hasty lunch the ship again went to General Quarters, this time for a surface to air gunnery shoot. Our target was a 15 foot long nylon sleeve towed by an airplane at the end of a mile long wire. Those not involved in the shooting were busy as members of repair parties. They constantly practice during General Quarters to increase their efficiency. In the event of war damage their job is to shore up the holes, put out the fires and maintain communications throughout the ship. Others practice how to keep the ship moving and the electrical power flowing when simulated casualties to the boilers, turbines, generators or associated equipments are imposed. 

"General Quarters was secured at 1630 (4:30 pm), just in time to conduct a small boat transfer of personnel, official mail and repair parts with other ships in our Squadron. After the boat transfer we took part in a maneuvering drill. This drill really taxes our watch standers. They must figure out where we are ordered to maneuver and then quickly and precisely answer all ordered course and speed changes, monitoring the ships progress as we proceed to the assigned station. Sometimes we have other general exercises such as ASW in the evening. This particular day we had only a radio frequency shifting drill which did not require the whole crew. At the end of such a day almost every man on the ship can look forward to a four hour watch sometime during the night. So if your sponsor seems tired when he comes home, you now know why.

[skipping some paragraphs about plans and how to write to the Captain]

" Finally I want to say how proud and pleased I am to be serving with your friend or loved one. My crew is one of the finest in the fleet; they are proud of their ship and its accomplishments. Their skills and leadership coupled with your encouragement and understanding, will safely and successfully see your HAMMERBERG man through his present tour of duty. .... If you are in Newport please come and visit the ship. You will be given a grand tour.

"Sincerely yours,      [Lt. Cdr.] S. D. Browning"

Our Love is Treacherous

Two reports in the last couple of weeks from friends. Each is a  boater and has been so for 40 years.
Both drove their boats on the rocks. Each through a moment of inattentiveness or misperception.

The good news: no one was hurt and insurance will pay for the property damage. But the real damage, and I know this because I have been there too, is to the self confidence and ego. We like to think that we are experienced and careful sailors -- and we are.

But our Love, the sea, is a treacherous one, always lying in wait to harm us. Sailing is great relaxation, but don't get too relaxed.