I have been enjoying the blog published by Bob of "Pandora," a Saga 43 like "ILENE" at sailpandora.com. Bob, among his many other talents, is a good writer and a good photographer. It is such a pleasure to read his ebullient reports on the things he is experiencing for the first time and that we experienced last winter: The blueness and clarity of the water, the weather-wise eye one must maintain, the balmy temperatures, his wife, Brenda's reactions to their first overnight passage together, etc.
But his reports bring home once again, in case anyone might otherwise forget it, how big the ocean is. Pandora is sailing essentially the reciprocal of the course that ILENE sailed last winter -- headed for Georgetown, Great Exuma Island, in the Bahamas, where they plan to greet their sons who are flying down. But so often they are staying at different spots compared to us. On the way from the Northeast to Florida, they stayed in different anchorages, more anchorages than marinas, so even if we both stayed in the same town, it was in different spots, except in Charleston, and there we visited different historic places, museums, etc. It is like the six blindfolded sages of India who examine an elephant. One touches the side and says it is a wall; another says the leg is a tree, the tail is a rope, the ear is a fan, etc.
In Fort Lauderdale, Florida they stayed at a marina a couple miles up a river. We had planned to go there but stayed in lake Sylvia, which they sailed past. They skipped Bimini and the Berrys and in New Providence (Nassau) they were anchored north of Rose Island while we stayed at a marina on the main island. We skipped Allen Key but we both experienced Warderick Wells. And so it goes. We spent a lot of time on the route, and there are so many stops along the way that remain uncharted territory for us. It's a big Ocean. Smooth sailing, Bob and Brenda!
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Sunday, January 13, 2013
One Small Project: Cabinet Doors
ILENE has almost 20 beautiful cherry wood cabinet doors, each consisting of four side pieces to make a frame and one central rectangle that the other four enclose. Putting a finger into the hole at the left side of the photo you will feel a brass latch. By pulling it, the door opens from the right on its brass hinges visible here on the left.
This particular door (image by {and of} J. Rice, thank you; and feline enhanced, thank you Alphie Girl) is behind a small vanity, a/k/a cat seat, and with its mirror it has given us no problems. But all the others doors have a rectangular piece of cherry wood where the mirror is, which is thick except at its four edges, where it fits into the thin grooves in the four framing pieces.
However, the other doors, with wooden centers, have suffered from a minor defect: the central wood panel was made a bit too large. It's fine, except in the hot humid summers. Then center pieces expanded, pushing apart the vertical sides of the frame. As a result the door became larger than designed and hard to force closed.
What to do? My friend KC, who has sailed with me for at least twelve years years, thought about the issue for months. My thought had been to place a piece of scrap wood against the inside of the frame and tap it with a hammer to force it apart. Once apart we clean out the old glue, sand down the central piece which was too large, and glue and clamp the pieces back together again. KC said: hold on a minute; if you don't tap it hard enough, nothing will happen, but if you tap it just a little bit too hard, you will end of with a mess of cracked wood and the need to build an expensive new door.
After the months of noodling KC invented and built a door pulling tool that has been used, during two winters to fix most of ILENE's doors. It has also been used to fix the doors of Bob and Brenda's "Pandora" during a different winter. But the last two of ILENE's doors "expanded" during the last couple of years in the Caribbean and they needed to be fixed as well.
Here is the inside of KC's tool: In the center of the photo you can see the end of an "L" shaped aluminum extrusion sticking down from the top 4 x 4, and a flat piece of aluminum screwed onto the bottom. Both of these extrusions fit up against the inside of the piece of frame to be pushed out. The top extrusion fits into and against the wide space in the front of the door and the horizontal one fits against the narrow piece of the same piece of frame at the back of the door. Thus the two aluminum pieces are snugged against the inside of the vertical piece of framing, from the front and the back, preventing it from moving to the right in the picture above.
This particular door (image by {and of} J. Rice, thank you; and feline enhanced, thank you Alphie Girl) is behind a small vanity, a/k/a cat seat, and with its mirror it has given us no problems. But all the others doors have a rectangular piece of cherry wood where the mirror is, which is thick except at its four edges, where it fits into the thin grooves in the four framing pieces.
However, the other doors, with wooden centers, have suffered from a minor defect: the central wood panel was made a bit too large. It's fine, except in the hot humid summers. Then center pieces expanded, pushing apart the vertical sides of the frame. As a result the door became larger than designed and hard to force closed.
What to do? My friend KC, who has sailed with me for at least twelve years years, thought about the issue for months. My thought had been to place a piece of scrap wood against the inside of the frame and tap it with a hammer to force it apart. Once apart we clean out the old glue, sand down the central piece which was too large, and glue and clamp the pieces back together again. KC said: hold on a minute; if you don't tap it hard enough, nothing will happen, but if you tap it just a little bit too hard, you will end of with a mess of cracked wood and the need to build an expensive new door.
After the months of noodling KC invented and built a door pulling tool that has been used, during two winters to fix most of ILENE's doors. It has also been used to fix the doors of Bob and Brenda's "Pandora" during a different winter. But the last two of ILENE's doors "expanded" during the last couple of years in the Caribbean and they needed to be fixed as well.
Here is the inside of KC's tool: In the center of the photo you can see the end of an "L" shaped aluminum extrusion sticking down from the top 4 x 4, and a flat piece of aluminum screwed onto the bottom. Both of these extrusions fit up against the inside of the piece of frame to be pushed out. The top extrusion fits into and against the wide space in the front of the door and the horizontal one fits against the narrow piece of the same piece of frame at the back of the door. Thus the two aluminum pieces are snugged against the inside of the vertical piece of framing, from the front and the back, preventing it from moving to the right in the picture above.
Here is the rest of the tool. The other two 4 x 4s are clamped tightly to the top and bottom horizontal pieces of the frame with the rubber matting pieces (shown siting at the bottom) to grip the wood and prevent marring. Each pair of 4 x 4s is clamped tightly to the door.
And then the fun begins. By tightening the nuts next to the inside right right side, one turn at a time, the distance between the pairs of 4 x 4s is extended, very, very slowly. The left side can't move to the right, and the right is slowly pulled to the right. One half turn on each of the four nuts, and then again and again until eventually you hear a popping sound, the glue has given way and and the frame has come neatly apart.
So: one trip up to New Rochelle to get the doors from the boat and another to put them back on. These were sandwiched around the fun day in the power tool laden basement of KC's lovely home out in Somerset County NJ. There KC's lovely wife, Helen, fed me on KC's famous 99 percent crab meat crab cakes. A great day and the doors are now back in place aboard ILENE. Ah the pleasure of generous friends with skills and tools!
Friday, January 11, 2013
Boat Show Special?
A boat show is the next best thing to sailing? Nah!! Not even close. But at least it keeps you thinking.
The 2013 New York Boat Show, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, was called the Progressive Boat Show. Not because it was progressive -- with only two Hobie Cats and one Sunfish to represent the sailboat manufacturers, it was a REGRESSIVE power boat show! But it was "sponsored" (whatever that means) by the Progressive Insurance Company -- hence the name.
I went on Friday and Sunday to work at our Club's booth. Some of our members are retiring and moving away. Others stop boating due to illness. And the recession has unfortunately forced some of us to give up boating due to economic pressures. So the number of our members, as at most all clubs, is down -- and our fixed costs are, well, fixed. Our way of soliciting folks is to ask them to sign up to receive an email inviting them to come to the Club for a free "open house," drink some of our wine with cheese and meet some folks. So it is not a hard sell. We cast our wine upon the waters. The problem is that 95 percent of the people at the show are either (A) power boaters who can't conceive of joining a club which keeps boats on moorings or (B) live near their boats but far away from City Island. But the show was crowded and we got a number of prospects. The only problem was too many volunteers at the booth. It is a small booth and six volunteer members behind it makes the space crowded and perhaps intimidates prospects.
So I gallantly absented myself from the booth for substantial periods of time during my four hour shifts and toured the show. I focused on how to sell a friend's boat, and bought stuff like riggers tape, hand tools, and a doughnut shaped container to store the 30 amp shore power cord more efficiently. I also checked out some electronics upgrades and the use of a faux teak product to cover the flat surface of the swim platform, about two square feet, at the stern of the boat, to dress it up.
One of the two "dogs," the fasteners by which one "battens down the hatches," at one of the six side opening ports (portholes) is broken, so we have kept that particular port closed -- for the last two years. During this period I have tried to find who manufactured the thing so I can buy a replacement dog, but every lead has turned into a dead end. (So you will note: ILENE sails with both dogs and cats! Sorry about that one.) At the show I passed a big Marquis power cruiser and noticed that its opening ports seemed like those on ILENE. Anyway, the designer of the boat was kind enough to give me his email and has promised to send me info on how to contact the manufacturer of his opening ports.
And oh yes, I signed up to take a nine day course. When I pass the Coast Guard exam they administer, at its end, I will have a so called "Six Pack" Captain's license -- the lawful right to take out up to six passengers and charge them a fee. I have had hundreds of people sail with me these past 20 something years, sometimes more than six at a time, but never even one for a fee. I do not intend to get into the paid sailboat chartering business. And there is a lot of stuff that they will be teaching me that I already know. After all, we did get the boat down to Grenada and back, which is evidence that I must know something. But learning and the review of learning is always good, and my insurance rates may go down after I become a licensed captain.
The 2013 New York Boat Show, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, was called the Progressive Boat Show. Not because it was progressive -- with only two Hobie Cats and one Sunfish to represent the sailboat manufacturers, it was a REGRESSIVE power boat show! But it was "sponsored" (whatever that means) by the Progressive Insurance Company -- hence the name.
I went on Friday and Sunday to work at our Club's booth. Some of our members are retiring and moving away. Others stop boating due to illness. And the recession has unfortunately forced some of us to give up boating due to economic pressures. So the number of our members, as at most all clubs, is down -- and our fixed costs are, well, fixed. Our way of soliciting folks is to ask them to sign up to receive an email inviting them to come to the Club for a free "open house," drink some of our wine with cheese and meet some folks. So it is not a hard sell. We cast our wine upon the waters. The problem is that 95 percent of the people at the show are either (A) power boaters who can't conceive of joining a club which keeps boats on moorings or (B) live near their boats but far away from City Island. But the show was crowded and we got a number of prospects. The only problem was too many volunteers at the booth. It is a small booth and six volunteer members behind it makes the space crowded and perhaps intimidates prospects.
So I gallantly absented myself from the booth for substantial periods of time during my four hour shifts and toured the show. I focused on how to sell a friend's boat, and bought stuff like riggers tape, hand tools, and a doughnut shaped container to store the 30 amp shore power cord more efficiently. I also checked out some electronics upgrades and the use of a faux teak product to cover the flat surface of the swim platform, about two square feet, at the stern of the boat, to dress it up.
One of the two "dogs," the fasteners by which one "battens down the hatches," at one of the six side opening ports (portholes) is broken, so we have kept that particular port closed -- for the last two years. During this period I have tried to find who manufactured the thing so I can buy a replacement dog, but every lead has turned into a dead end. (So you will note: ILENE sails with both dogs and cats! Sorry about that one.) At the show I passed a big Marquis power cruiser and noticed that its opening ports seemed like those on ILENE. Anyway, the designer of the boat was kind enough to give me his email and has promised to send me info on how to contact the manufacturer of his opening ports.
And oh yes, I signed up to take a nine day course. When I pass the Coast Guard exam they administer, at its end, I will have a so called "Six Pack" Captain's license -- the lawful right to take out up to six passengers and charge them a fee. I have had hundreds of people sail with me these past 20 something years, sometimes more than six at a time, but never even one for a fee. I do not intend to get into the paid sailboat chartering business. And there is a lot of stuff that they will be teaching me that I already know. After all, we did get the boat down to Grenada and back, which is evidence that I must know something. But learning and the review of learning is always good, and my insurance rates may go down after I become a licensed captain.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Farewell 2012 -- A Great Year
Not much boating activity in December.
I have been enjoying the blogs of two other boating couples: Bob and Brenda on a Saga 43 at www.sailpandora.com, and Dean and Susan on their CSY-44 at www.sailblogs.com/member/autumnborne/. But both couples have left their respective boats in Florida for holiday recesses from their cruises so their current news is not so sailing related either this last week or so.
At the Harlem clubhouse, we had a work party, ripping out the first floor flooring that got waterlogged during the hurricane and has to be replaced; a small army of willing workers. I also assisting some guys with tremendous carpentry skills who put the seaward wall of the "greenhouse"-like structure of the dining room back into place with shims, inserted in many directions to get it true. I handed them screws, learned and had fun. There was also the interim Board meeting for incoming and outgoing officers to which I was invited in my capacity as outgoing Fleet Captain. Outgoing because since we will be "Down East" this summer, we will not be able to be on the cruise. As the old Yiddish saying goes: "With one tuchus (booty), you can't dance at two weddings." And despite the absence of a usable first floor there was a holiday/staff appreciation party catered on the second floor. The highlight of this lunch party was when my wiry friend, Howard, of the Wednesday afternoon sailing group, padded to the nines and wearing a red suit, white beard and his own white mustachio and jolly personality, was delivered to our dock by the red TowUS towboat with its red light flashing, climbed the steps with a big bag of gifts and distributed them to the 30 or so squealing children whose grandparents had name-labeled the gifts and put them in his bag.
I made one visit to ILENE, late in the month,to charge up her batteries, put back all of the lines which had been removed, washed and dried, take some stuff home, check out the repairs that Precision Marine had done, and snug up the lines that secure the canvas cover under her keel. We have some things to fix, to improve and to buy for her, but I'm taking a break from that.
And three days of land excursions with sailing friends Jim, Josh, Bennett and Harriet.
We have decided, sort of, that while we will go to Maine for the summer of 2013, we will not go the much further distances to get to the northern Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia.
Final tally for 2012: 189 days on the boat sailing or living or both,
22 days working for the boat but not living on her or sailing,
22 "other" days relate to boating such as hanging with boating friends ashore.
It all adds up to 233 days and this does not include the days on the Library chart project or just thinking about boating, which is actually an everyday thing. A great year. I have so much to be grateful for.
I have been enjoying the blogs of two other boating couples: Bob and Brenda on a Saga 43 at www.sailpandora.com, and Dean and Susan on their CSY-44 at www.sailblogs.com/member/autumnborne/. But both couples have left their respective boats in Florida for holiday recesses from their cruises so their current news is not so sailing related either this last week or so.
At the Harlem clubhouse, we had a work party, ripping out the first floor flooring that got waterlogged during the hurricane and has to be replaced; a small army of willing workers. I also assisting some guys with tremendous carpentry skills who put the seaward wall of the "greenhouse"-like structure of the dining room back into place with shims, inserted in many directions to get it true. I handed them screws, learned and had fun. There was also the interim Board meeting for incoming and outgoing officers to which I was invited in my capacity as outgoing Fleet Captain. Outgoing because since we will be "Down East" this summer, we will not be able to be on the cruise. As the old Yiddish saying goes: "With one tuchus (booty), you can't dance at two weddings." And despite the absence of a usable first floor there was a holiday/staff appreciation party catered on the second floor. The highlight of this lunch party was when my wiry friend, Howard, of the Wednesday afternoon sailing group, padded to the nines and wearing a red suit, white beard and his own white mustachio and jolly personality, was delivered to our dock by the red TowUS towboat with its red light flashing, climbed the steps with a big bag of gifts and distributed them to the 30 or so squealing children whose grandparents had name-labeled the gifts and put them in his bag.
I made one visit to ILENE, late in the month,to charge up her batteries, put back all of the lines which had been removed, washed and dried, take some stuff home, check out the repairs that Precision Marine had done, and snug up the lines that secure the canvas cover under her keel. We have some things to fix, to improve and to buy for her, but I'm taking a break from that.
And three days of land excursions with sailing friends Jim, Josh, Bennett and Harriet.
We have decided, sort of, that while we will go to Maine for the summer of 2013, we will not go the much further distances to get to the northern Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia.
Final tally for 2012: 189 days on the boat sailing or living or both,
22 days working for the boat but not living on her or sailing,
22 "other" days relate to boating such as hanging with boating friends ashore.
It all adds up to 233 days and this does not include the days on the Library chart project or just thinking about boating, which is actually an everyday thing. A great year. I have so much to be grateful for.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
A November to Remember
Caution: Not much in this posting is about new boating related activities.
When I was in college my fantasy life was: professional work by day and enjoyment of some sort of theater or other cultural event once a week. Well it didn't work out that way for a long time; work and other responsibilities consumed all of the time and cultural recreation got lost in the muddle of life.
But retirement changed that calculus and I've been making up for lost time. While I still get up between five and six, post-retirement life means the first two hours of the day are spent with the New York Times; what a luxury. And then there is my correspondence, mostly by email these days; and Facebook.
But what a November! The first two days we were still in the dark following hurricane Sandy. Six were spent getting the boat prepared for the winter (as reported in my last posting). Three involved traveling to and spending time with my family in Atlanta. Three were used in planning, shopping for, cooking and eating Thanksgiving dinner. One dinner meeting of the Book Group. Three events, including services, at my Temple in New Jersey. Two doctors appointments, one work party at the Club to start cleaning up the damage the storm caused to the clubhouse and one Club membership meeting. Five afternoons in the Map Room of the New York Public Library working on my volunteer project, making sense of some 6000 nautical charts published by the United States Navy's Hydrographic Office from the 1850's the the 1950's. The map room is another water related project; about which you will hear more when I get it done, this winter.
And the rest: Three lectures, two concerts, three movies, and ten stage plays. Eighteen events altogether. We get tickets to some broadway and most off-broadway events from playbyplay.com at $4 per ticket or clubfreetime.org, for free. Not all of the events are great, a few are fantastic and all are well worth the money. To many of these cultural events we can walk!
I count my blessings; in fact, those from November are counted above. It sounds to me like bragging but it is actually a sharing of gratitude.
When I was in college my fantasy life was: professional work by day and enjoyment of some sort of theater or other cultural event once a week. Well it didn't work out that way for a long time; work and other responsibilities consumed all of the time and cultural recreation got lost in the muddle of life.
But retirement changed that calculus and I've been making up for lost time. While I still get up between five and six, post-retirement life means the first two hours of the day are spent with the New York Times; what a luxury. And then there is my correspondence, mostly by email these days; and Facebook.
But what a November! The first two days we were still in the dark following hurricane Sandy. Six were spent getting the boat prepared for the winter (as reported in my last posting). Three involved traveling to and spending time with my family in Atlanta. Three were used in planning, shopping for, cooking and eating Thanksgiving dinner. One dinner meeting of the Book Group. Three events, including services, at my Temple in New Jersey. Two doctors appointments, one work party at the Club to start cleaning up the damage the storm caused to the clubhouse and one Club membership meeting. Five afternoons in the Map Room of the New York Public Library working on my volunteer project, making sense of some 6000 nautical charts published by the United States Navy's Hydrographic Office from the 1850's the the 1950's. The map room is another water related project; about which you will hear more when I get it done, this winter.
And the rest: Three lectures, two concerts, three movies, and ten stage plays. Eighteen events altogether. We get tickets to some broadway and most off-broadway events from playbyplay.com at $4 per ticket or clubfreetime.org, for free. Not all of the events are great, a few are fantastic and all are well worth the money. To many of these cultural events we can walk!
I count my blessings; in fact, those from November are counted above. It sounds to me like bragging but it is actually a sharing of gratitude.
Sunday, November 18, 2012
ILENE Is Under Wraps Until Spring
Yes, after six more work days (well, average of only 4-5 hours per day) ILENE is finally all trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey, under her blue canvas cover. (Starboard quarter look an starboard bow look)
Her oil and filter have been changed, her water systems winterized, her fuel tanks filled, her deck washed and she is ready for winter and winter projects.
Amidst those work days was a trip to Atlanta to visit my brother and my Mom, which provides the excuse for me to post a picture of my really cute grandniece and grandnephew.
No more sailing in 2012. Only 164 days up to and including our arrival back in New York on June 12 and 50 more sailing/living aboard days thereafter for a total of 164. Plus, with a month and a half to go, 19 "boat work" days so far and 16 "other boat" days. So it has been 189 days related to boating this year. I can no longer complain about being boating deprived.
As thanksgiving approaches, one is reminded how blessed we are in so many ways; we have so much to be thankful for.
I hope to have things to say on this blog during the winter, but of course the posts will be less frequent.
Her oil and filter have been changed, her water systems winterized, her fuel tanks filled, her deck washed and she is ready for winter and winter projects.
Amidst those work days was a trip to Atlanta to visit my brother and my Mom, which provides the excuse for me to post a picture of my really cute grandniece and grandnephew.
No more sailing in 2012. Only 164 days up to and including our arrival back in New York on June 12 and 50 more sailing/living aboard days thereafter for a total of 164. Plus, with a month and a half to go, 19 "boat work" days so far and 16 "other boat" days. So it has been 189 days related to boating this year. I can no longer complain about being boating deprived.
As thanksgiving approaches, one is reminded how blessed we are in so many ways; we have so much to be thankful for.
I hope to have things to say on this blog during the winter, but of course the posts will be less frequent.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
We And Our Boat Were Spared
My last post had a "Perils of Pauline" or "cliff-hanger" ending. So I began this post with the resolution right in the title because I dislike being kept in suspense.
The weathermen had predicted a 13 foot "storm surge" and I feared that 13 feet on top of the normal high tide would have "floated my boat," and its dock, off its pilings to their probable destruction. But it seems that I had an inaccurate definition of "storm surge" in mind. The apparent definition is the height of the water from "mean low water", the normal level of the water at low tide, up to the crest at the top of the storm-caused high tide which was thirteen feet. This definition ignores the fact that the first six feet of the rise of the so called storm surge is unrelated to the storm itself but happens normally, about every twelve hours, every day, even on the most tranquil days. So the portion of the "storm surge" that I would have give that name, is only that portion the rise above mean high water. So the storm surge, the increment of additional tidal rise caused by the storm, above the normal high tide was only seven feet, not thirteen and not high enough to cause destruction.
Other docks at the Huguenot YC were not as fortunate as the remote one they assigned us to. Pilings bent over
and having floated part way off the top because the diagonal shortened the height of the piling, crashed through the dock. The square of rollers in the lower right is what this piling used to come up through!
This dock, at which our friends' boats: "J-Erica" of Bruce and Linda, and "Windsong" of Jerry and Louise, had been tied, are rather wrecked, but those two boats and many others tied to it, were relocated to other docks where they apparently survived.
The club let me use a nice twin ended rowing boat to get out to the dock to inspect and load a few winter things aboard. One of the three fenders I had hung at ILENE's port side as cushions between boat and dock was lying on her deck and someone had hung a fourth small one at her side during my absence. The seven lines seemed a bit looser than I left them. A six foot branch of a tree was lying on the dock and what appears to be a large blue plastic port-a-potty booth was floating just beneath the surface of the water between the port quarter of the boat and the dock.
Meanwhile, at the Harlem, there was storm damage. Two boats, including Bennett's "Defiance", on which I enjoyed the Club Cruise during the summer of 2011, is lying on her side on a sandy beach of Rodman's Neck, awaiting the insurance company's appraiser to determine whether she shall be repaired or scrapped. [Note: Defiance was spared with only superficial damage!] At the Clubhouse, the steps and ramp from the lawn to the dock was ripped off from its proper place and moved about two feet inland. The patio deck had wrenched about two feet seaward, away from the clubhouse and one of the concrete pilings on which it is mounted was bent over; two ground level windows of the water-facing greenhouse-like restaurant were broken and the several inches of water that had warped the floorboards and the rug, had receded; there was debris throughout the parking lot; a ramp to the locker house had been ripped away from that house a few feet (The metal ramp and the wood platform used to abut the locker house).
One boat, Tom's "Odyssey", with a retracted swing keel, which consequently was sitting very low on its cradle had floated part way off this cradle and is hanging on but not my much, very near Jim's "Aria". The blue carpeted wooden blocks in the foreground were holding the boat in place until it was washed about six feet backwards!
I will undoubtedly go to a work party to help clean the place up, but not until the insurance company gets a chance to assess the damage.
All told we all fared a lot better than the large square rigged "Bounty" replica, lost off Hatteras, and have lots to be thankful for.
And how about the home front? We do have a land base, seven floors (six flights of stairs) above the streets of Manhattan, but near Broadway, "high" on the island's north-south spine. No water, salty or otherwise, entered our apartment. Fresh water was cut off as a consequence of loss of electricity (which powers the pumps that bring the water up). Power went out below a non-straight line that crossed Manhattan from east to west somewhere in the 30's and 40's. This started in the height of the storm's fury at about 8:30 Monday night and was not restored until about about 5:30 pm Friday, about 93 hours later. A Ginko tree planted outside our window, its branches having been cropped off at about our level, was whipping back and forth during the high wind but the tall remaining branches neither broke off not broke our windows. Another tree, planted in a small piece of unpaved ground at the curb, had a huge limb torn off which blocked the street but was quickly pulled to the side of the street where it lies, awaiting final removal in due course.
Many huge old trees went down in parks, which were closed to all but parks employees.
It was eerie to walk on a deserted Broadway in broad daylight. Usually it is crowded with cars and people even at night. Here are view north and south from Tenth Street on the morning after the storm.
We had an old battery powered portable radio and the NY Times was delivered after the first day, (not to our door as normal, but to the lobby). The corridors and stairways have no windows and were completely black. We had one not very strong flashlight (plus a detachable Kindle reading light) and no way to charge phones or other devices, which did not work from home anyway, probably because power to our local cell phone tower was out. Until Thursday, our refrigerator retained its cool and we used matches to light the stove to make tea; no coffee because our brewer here is electric. We had set out two huge multi-gallon pots of water for washing, but it was not enough to flush the toilets, except once, so we used a bit of bleach to retard odor, but the place was a bit stinky for a while. Each morning we went out and headed north to get coffee and from Wednesday on we visited friends and restaurants and theaters north of the no-power zone. We brought towels and were permitted to take showers -- just like on the boat when we frequently go ashore for showers. My objective was to stay out well past 7 pm, at which hour we would have gone to bed and listened to the radio had we stayed home. We are young and fit enough to handle the six flights of stairs. Many older people in the building, especially those who would have had to climb as many as 19 flights of stairs, were more stuck. Our large and friendly building staff performed heroically in helping them. We got to know the busses that serve our city even though until the last night, they terminated at 23rd Street after dark because of lack of street lights below there, out of safety concerns. So we had to walk the last 13 blocks in darkness. The fare during this period was zero -- a free ride -- and folks were friendly.
We had an available more comfortable alternative to our apartment, one with light, water and heat: ILENE, but Lene could not be persuaded to go there. I believe that her months of living aboard had accustomed Lene to the more rugged life style we enjoyed for four days.
We are so blessed to have been spared and think of friends and strangers in New Jersey and elsewhere who are still without power, and some of who were killed.
The weathermen had predicted a 13 foot "storm surge" and I feared that 13 feet on top of the normal high tide would have "floated my boat," and its dock, off its pilings to their probable destruction. But it seems that I had an inaccurate definition of "storm surge" in mind. The apparent definition is the height of the water from "mean low water", the normal level of the water at low tide, up to the crest at the top of the storm-caused high tide which was thirteen feet. This definition ignores the fact that the first six feet of the rise of the so called storm surge is unrelated to the storm itself but happens normally, about every twelve hours, every day, even on the most tranquil days. So the portion of the "storm surge" that I would have give that name, is only that portion the rise above mean high water. So the storm surge, the increment of additional tidal rise caused by the storm, above the normal high tide was only seven feet, not thirteen and not high enough to cause destruction.
Other docks at the Huguenot YC were not as fortunate as the remote one they assigned us to. Pilings bent over
and having floated part way off the top because the diagonal shortened the height of the piling, crashed through the dock. The square of rollers in the lower right is what this piling used to come up through!
This dock, at which our friends' boats: "J-Erica" of Bruce and Linda, and "Windsong" of Jerry and Louise, had been tied, are rather wrecked, but those two boats and many others tied to it, were relocated to other docks where they apparently survived.
The club let me use a nice twin ended rowing boat to get out to the dock to inspect and load a few winter things aboard. One of the three fenders I had hung at ILENE's port side as cushions between boat and dock was lying on her deck and someone had hung a fourth small one at her side during my absence. The seven lines seemed a bit looser than I left them. A six foot branch of a tree was lying on the dock and what appears to be a large blue plastic port-a-potty booth was floating just beneath the surface of the water between the port quarter of the boat and the dock.
Meanwhile, at the Harlem, there was storm damage. Two boats, including Bennett's "Defiance", on which I enjoyed the Club Cruise during the summer of 2011, is lying on her side on a sandy beach of Rodman's Neck, awaiting the insurance company's appraiser to determine whether she shall be repaired or scrapped. [Note: Defiance was spared with only superficial damage!] At the Clubhouse, the steps and ramp from the lawn to the dock was ripped off from its proper place and moved about two feet inland. The patio deck had wrenched about two feet seaward, away from the clubhouse and one of the concrete pilings on which it is mounted was bent over; two ground level windows of the water-facing greenhouse-like restaurant were broken and the several inches of water that had warped the floorboards and the rug, had receded; there was debris throughout the parking lot; a ramp to the locker house had been ripped away from that house a few feet (The metal ramp and the wood platform used to abut the locker house).
One boat, Tom's "Odyssey", with a retracted swing keel, which consequently was sitting very low on its cradle had floated part way off this cradle and is hanging on but not my much, very near Jim's "Aria". The blue carpeted wooden blocks in the foreground were holding the boat in place until it was washed about six feet backwards!
I will undoubtedly go to a work party to help clean the place up, but not until the insurance company gets a chance to assess the damage.
All told we all fared a lot better than the large square rigged "Bounty" replica, lost off Hatteras, and have lots to be thankful for.
And how about the home front? We do have a land base, seven floors (six flights of stairs) above the streets of Manhattan, but near Broadway, "high" on the island's north-south spine. No water, salty or otherwise, entered our apartment. Fresh water was cut off as a consequence of loss of electricity (which powers the pumps that bring the water up). Power went out below a non-straight line that crossed Manhattan from east to west somewhere in the 30's and 40's. This started in the height of the storm's fury at about 8:30 Monday night and was not restored until about about 5:30 pm Friday, about 93 hours later. A Ginko tree planted outside our window, its branches having been cropped off at about our level, was whipping back and forth during the high wind but the tall remaining branches neither broke off not broke our windows. Another tree, planted in a small piece of unpaved ground at the curb, had a huge limb torn off which blocked the street but was quickly pulled to the side of the street where it lies, awaiting final removal in due course.
Many huge old trees went down in parks, which were closed to all but parks employees.
It was eerie to walk on a deserted Broadway in broad daylight. Usually it is crowded with cars and people even at night. Here are view north and south from Tenth Street on the morning after the storm.
We had an old battery powered portable radio and the NY Times was delivered after the first day, (not to our door as normal, but to the lobby). The corridors and stairways have no windows and were completely black. We had one not very strong flashlight (plus a detachable Kindle reading light) and no way to charge phones or other devices, which did not work from home anyway, probably because power to our local cell phone tower was out. Until Thursday, our refrigerator retained its cool and we used matches to light the stove to make tea; no coffee because our brewer here is electric. We had set out two huge multi-gallon pots of water for washing, but it was not enough to flush the toilets, except once, so we used a bit of bleach to retard odor, but the place was a bit stinky for a while. Each morning we went out and headed north to get coffee and from Wednesday on we visited friends and restaurants and theaters north of the no-power zone. We brought towels and were permitted to take showers -- just like on the boat when we frequently go ashore for showers. My objective was to stay out well past 7 pm, at which hour we would have gone to bed and listened to the radio had we stayed home. We are young and fit enough to handle the six flights of stairs. Many older people in the building, especially those who would have had to climb as many as 19 flights of stairs, were more stuck. Our large and friendly building staff performed heroically in helping them. We got to know the busses that serve our city even though until the last night, they terminated at 23rd Street after dark because of lack of street lights below there, out of safety concerns. So we had to walk the last 13 blocks in darkness. The fare during this period was zero -- a free ride -- and folks were friendly.
We had an available more comfortable alternative to our apartment, one with light, water and heat: ILENE, but Lene could not be persuaded to go there. I believe that her months of living aboard had accustomed Lene to the more rugged life style we enjoyed for four days.
We are so blessed to have been spared and think of friends and strangers in New Jersey and elsewhere who are still without power, and some of who were killed.
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