January 1 - 16 -- New York Boat Show and One Work Day

This was a really crappy boat show, for sailors -- not even one sailing dinghy! It was purely a power boat show and even the large vendors of electronics and other chandlery supplies had given this show a pass. But the Club manned a booth. Like most clubs, we need new members and use the show to strike up conversations, invite the prospects to an open house and permit the Club, with it's great location, it's facilities and its friendly members to sell itself. Last winter I was in Florida  and not able to help. So I volunteered for a double shift - noon to nine. I used New York City's newest, one month old, extension of the number 7 line from Grand Central Station to get to a new station, a block from the Javits Convention Center -- at Eleventh Avenue and 34th Street. The show was not in the large southern pavilion of the Center as in the past, but in its central pavilion.

Peter, our Rear Commodore, who has a ton of leadership ability and energy, worked with me the first half, replaced by Phillip, our Race Chairman and Jill at around 4:30.  In these shows we always have more than one person at our booth so everyone an get relief periods to eat and explore the show a bit. PC Art was working on the other side of the hall, selling power yachts, but came over to say hello, and Bill, our Board Member responsible for the Restaurant and Bar, helped for a while too.

                                Bill, me, Jill and Phillip at the booth.
And while there was a long line of folks waiting to be let in at noon, the crowd had thinned so I was released at 8 p.m.

One of the only two things I did for ILENE at the show was to figure out how to send our EPIRB out for a battery replacement, after five years in readiness - which I call use. This being the toy that alerts the Coast Guard to come rescue us, we are fortunate not to have actually "used" it. And it's the kind of thing you want to have a nice strong battery, in case. I have to send it off in time to get it back before we leave for Nova Scotia in June. The other thing was to contract for the installation of a faux teak deck to be measured, cut and installed on the swim platform. This area is quite small and rather ratty looking and I figured out how to install it by removing the folding retractable swim ladder and reinstalling it atop the new decking.

The reasons for only one day of boat work during this period were first that my back had gone out a bit and second that winter has indeed finally arrived in New York. But the one warm day I worked with mechanic Ed, for six hours. That's twelve man hours. The results: both it ILENE's two large "primary" winches were disassembled, all parts had all old grease scraped off and then scrubbed with a toothbrush in a bucket with paint thinner to get what couldn't be scraped. Once clean, the parts were dried, regreased and reassembled. The book says this should be done annually! After 17 years, the last five with heavy use, these workhorses were overdue for the TLC they got. The other two winches that I'm going to do are those on the coach roof. (I don't think I have to do the fifth winch, the one on the mast, because it gets so very little use.) The next two are smaller and with the benefit of our learning curve, should not take as long.  Having learned a lot from watching Ed, I'm thinking of trying to do these myself, taking off the parts and cleaning them in an indoor location. Then will come the steering and some electrical work, with Ed.
And here is a picture of ILENE's mate, just cause I like looking at her.

An Invitation From Halifax

The following intriguing comment was posted in response to the most recent posting on this blog:

    "Hi. I am a long time reader of your blog and enjoy it very much.
      I see you are planning to visit Nova Scotia this year and would
      like to invite you to visit Armdale YC in Halifax NS. Anonymous"

Well:
Ahoy Dear Mr. or Ms. Anonymous,
          First, I am grateful for your readership and your praise. I am always interested in how people discover my blog and what they like about it -- and dislike.
          Lene and I are pleased to accept your invitation. (The kitties have no say in the matter.) I looked at the Armdale's website and it looks like a very nice club.
We would like to meet you, because the best part of such an invitation would be the opportunity to speak with real Canadians, especially ones who sail.
           I'm trying to figure out how we can get in communications beforehand without one or the other of us posting his or phone number or email in the blog. Here is my plan: I could send an email to someone on the Committee of Management of your Club, who you would designate by his title.I would send my information to this individual at his or her club email address, not personal email address. You would alert that officials to expect such and ask him to forward it to you. Sound like a plan? Or you could send your info to secretary@hyc.org asking her to forward it to Roger.
         Our current plans would get us to Halifax sometime in July and I will have a better fix on the date as it gets closer.
         We visited your city for a day from a big 2000 passenger cruise line (it was simultaneous with the destruction of New Orleans by hurricane) and saw the maritime museum and the big fort atop the hill. We learned of the history of your city and the aid it gave to survivors of the Titanic and the explosion. This was before I had started the blog.
Best wishes,
Roger

December 25 -31 -- Final Work Day and 2015 ROUNDUP -- A Great Year!

I had planned on more than one final work day before the end of the year, what with such good warm weather so late this year but a wrenched back put the end to that. The last work day was devoted to the cabin sole. I want to check out how good the pieces I have done look, before committing to do the rest. I have been doing the bottom side of this flooring to encapsulate the wood in plastic to avoid a softer surface on which mildew could potentially grow, not that mildew has been a problem for ILENE.

Another non-boat day for calling Dave to make an appointment for January to work with me on cleaning and lubricating the winches and steering gear and fixing some pesky wires that no longer transmit sound to the cockpit speakers, etc. And then I had to figure out what parts and supplies I need for these jobs which involves a lot of calling and computer searching before ordering. But the non-boat water relatedday involved some play too: While my two favorite ladies, ILENE the boat and Lene, her mate, are thoroughly land locked on the hard in New York in late December, I had fun with Dames at Sea:

And while laid up resting the lumbar-sacral region I have been reading this month's selection of my book group (all right, it was my suggestion): Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea". So avid readers may expect another book report soon.

So what can I say about 2015. I sure got a grand dose of sailing and boating related activities - a lot of water under our keel. It was a very satisfying year, the year that my beloved Lene finally lost her ability to continue to claim "I'm really not a sailor.".
We began the year in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to which we returned on March 5, after a lovely multi-stop visit to Key West Florida and 20 miles past that. Next were a lot of great passages and ports until we got back to the Harlem on May 26, the 146th day of this calendar year. Also: a two day trip down to Gravesend Bay to sail with L'Hermione, 17 days on the Club Cruise to Block Island, five days with Bob on s/v Pandora from The Connecticut River around Montauk Point to Hampton Virginia and 22 additional days of day sailing from our mooring and back for a total of 190 sailing or living days. My career high total, and possibly a number that what with aging, may never be equaled or exceeded. And as they say in the infomercials: "But wait, there's more! Add on 21 days involving the water that are not related to living, sailing or working on a sailboat, and 25 work days on ILENE. (Or course, many of the cruising or living days also involved some boat maintenance and repair, but those are not counted as lowly work days.) So the grand total this year was 236! A goodly percentage of the 365 available. I have nothing to complain about.

The way I have looked at it, sailing is a social activity with much of the fun coming from sailing on other peoples' boats and inviting them onto ours. Most of the sailing days, including the first 146, were aboard ILENE. But 5 were on Pandora, 4 on Deuce of Hearts, 2 on Ohana and 1 on Pas de Deux, totaling 12 -- 178 out of the 190 were aboard ILENE.

Continuing my lifelong desire to share my boat with present and future friends, a total of 38 different people in addition to Lene sailed with me on ILENE, at least once day this year. Some sailed multiple times and others, not counted among the 38, did not sail, but came aboard for meals. Friends of mine, of Lene, from the Yacht Club, from our Synagogue, and from our condo.

And 2016, with a three month cruise to Nova Scotia as a goal, starts in a few hours. Before Nova Scotia comes after both a week with Bennett and Harriet (in whose home we will celebrate the New Year's arrival) on s/v On Eagles Wings in the Virgins in early April and a week with Lene's family on a cruise liner from Galveston Texas in the Gulf of Mexico in early June.

On the macro level, the world may be going to hell in a hand basket with democracy threatened by big money at home, climate change destroying the world, gun nuts (both domestic and foreign) running amuck, a certain redheaded egomaniacal reality show star trying to move us from love toward hate, educational standards low and sliding, etc. But all I can say is that focusing in on the micro level I am blessed to have such a great life. And I recognize and am very grateful for the bounty bestowed upon me and my family.

Deember 8-24 -- Slow Steady Progress But There Is a Lot Left To Do

Three visits to ILENE for a total of 14 hours during this period.  I lowered the chain from the boat to the ground, loaded it into a yard cart, and from there to a cardboard box in the cargo area of our mini SUV. An estimated 200 pounds, but easily movable, a few feet of links at a time. A few days later I drove to Jersey City and located Nicholas Galvanizing, in a thoroughly industrial area by the Hackensack River. Its staff slid the box off the back of my vehicle onto a wooden pallet to be moved by fork lift. The chain should be nice and shiny and protected for another 16 years soon after 2016 starts. While in Jersey I enjoyed a delicious, leisurely, Thai lunch in Berkely Heights with Jim, formerly of s/v "Aria", who is now sadly too disabled to sail. He gave me three excellent sailing books including Nigel Calder's maintenance bible.
On the first of my three boat visits I also took most of the three bladed feathering propeller off its shaft, to be sent to its manufacturer, PYI, on the west coast, for refurbishment. Before going, I watched PYI's how-to video -- four times -- took notes and called the company to speak to the demonstrator, three times. But he demonstrated the disassembly of a shiny new prop and the video left out some pre and post steps. The parts are held together with ten Allen Head bolts. These are locked in place with tiny cut-off half length cotter pins inserted through holes in the sides of their heads, which pins were encrusted in place with layers of paint. By use of the scraper, ice pick and needle nose pliers, the pins came out. Also, I knew that unlike his model, my prop was loaded with heavy grease because I had pumped it in each year through zirc fittings. So I had a lot of rags and paper towels and Fantastic to get the grease off and into a plastic bag. And after the end of the video, the prop's central hub has to be removed by first removing two rods that hold a locking bolt on the tail end of the shaft in place, unscrewing that bolt, which required no tools, and then sliding the hub aft, off the shaft. The bolt removal was accomplished during my second visit, and that is when I ran into a problem for want of a tool that costs several hundred dollars but that I needed to use only once: a prop puller. But I met with Fernando at the boat to plan a big job that he will do with me: sanding off and spraying on primer and two coats of Awlgrip paint to renew the dark blue decorative boot stripes around the boat, just above the water line. Fernando did excellent work in repairing ILENE's stainless steel and fiberglass which were damaged by a hit and run at the mooring one night in the fall of 2013. In addition to telling me that the bottom is not ready for barrier coating but requires thorough sanding, a lot of sanding, he put me onto the man who does the diving work and other work for many folks at the Huguenot, Brian McCauley, who was present and who has a prop puller. The job will take only ten minutes and of course I was prepared to pay for his services, but he said he would just leave the tool under ILENE, so I could do the job myself and would pick up his tool later -- at no cost! Thanks Brian!
On my third trip the tool was there but I had to loosen the Spurs line cutter to fit the forward end of this tool at the forward end of the hub. This required a spraying of penetrant and then heat from the heat gun, but was accomplished and then the puller did its job, easily. Here are the pieces of the prop, except the bolt, at home, awaiting shipping.

I have also taken out four of the smallest pieces of the cabin sole, and done two of them, the ones that collar the mast. I sanded them down on the sides to make them a bit smaller so they will fit better, let them dry thoroughly and applied two coats of spray-on low-gloss polyurethane to their sides and bottoms, to seal out water, which drips from the mast boot, making this a damp area, and finally, lightly sanded their top surfaces, and applied the plastic paint. It looks good, so I can now do the rest of the cabin sole, piece by piece.
Also, the new teak flagpole, to which I had previously applied many coats of varnish, is finally complete: I got a 5/16th inch Phillips head bolt and after first using the Dremel tool to grind a flat spot on the side of the chrome plated brass base into which that bolt goes to hold the pole in it, I drilled a hole through the base at that flat spot,  and into the wood. A snug fit resulted, but removable, so that the new flag will not get torn to shreds in storms. And pole and flag will not be blown away again, as the combination did during a windstorm in Fort Lauderdale last winter.

I had two other ashore days in addition to the day of the drive to New Jersey. One consisted of about six hours at home on the computer and phone. In addition to learning from PYI about the prop disassembly, I called three potential sites for this winter's Harlem winter excursion. The US Merchant Marine Academy's Museum at Kings Point, directly across Long Island Sound is not available this year. The other two candidates were the National Lighthouse Museum, a short walk from the ferry terminal, and the Noble Maritime Collection at the Sailor's Snug Harbor, about a ten minute bus ride from that terminal on Staten Island. After reading as much as I could and talking with all three places, I spent a day on Staten Island checking out both sites for that I have now called "The Harlem Yacht Club's Fifth Annual-ish Dead-of-Winter, Out-of-Clubhouse, Salt Watery/Maritime Learning/Social/Dining Excursion".  The Lighthouse Museum is planning a major expansion over the next couple of years so I decided to wait until it is complete. For 2016 The Noble Maritime Collection is the winner and the event is being offered with an additional attraction -- two optional free boat rides -- on the Staten Island Ferry! For those who prefer to drive, it requires getting to Long Island and then crossing the Verranzano Bridge with its $15 toll, though parking is free.
The Noble Maritime Collection is a little gem of a museum located on the site of the Sailors' Snug Harbor, formerly an old age home for destitute, family-less, worn-out seamen. The Snugs, as residents were called, were offered a comfortable somewhat spartan free ride. I have characterized it as a way station on their route from their life at sea to Fiddlers Green. Ciro, the Associate Director, opened the place for me on a weekday, when it is normally closed, so I could scope it out to describe it to the Harlemites. More on this place after Sunday, February 21, when the excursion is now scheduled. Ciro also put me onto Blue, a nice waterside (to the Kill van Kull) restaurant less than a quarter mile away, where the dining portion of our excursion will take place, at prices that are comparable to those at the Club's dining room.
I checked out my friend Bob's blog: SailPandora. When I left him in Hampton, VA he was excitedly planning his cruise to the Caribbean. But a delayed start due to weather and then possible mechanical problems early on the route to Tortola forced him to divert to Beaufort NC; he had lost the availability of his crew and the good weather and was compelled to change his destination to Florida and the Bahamas, where he has been the past two seasons. He did find friends to help him jump the boat from Beaufort to Florida and is now back in CT with Brenda and family before rejoining Pandora in the first days of 2016. As a man of my own passions, he likes to have new horizons in his sights. Currently he has an application pending with the US Government for a permit to visit Cuba. He is applying under the journalism category and has submitted his blog as the journal in question with the hope that the government reviewer of his application has a sense of humor, because he injects a lot of humor in his postings; would that I could be so witty. He also hopes that the reviewer is a sailor who can understand the difference between beating into the wind and letting it push you from behind; due to the prevailing winds being almost always from the east, he prefers a clockwise circumnavigation of Cuba, departing from the Bahamas and returning to Key West. However, the regulations seem to suggest that at a U.S. registered boat he can only visit Cuba leaving directly from a U.S. port, without a stop in another nation. I sure hope Bob's plans work out.

And speaking of plans, I also spent some time learning more about ILENE's proposed summer cruise to the Bras D'or Lakes at the NE end of Nova Scotia. The SCCA's journals include one account of a voyage to Nova Scotia from Mount Desert Island, Maine, in 2002. Old, but while the shoreside amenities may have changed, the waters and rocks do not change that fast. The 18 foot tides of the Bay of Fundy, which we experienced on our voyage to Eastport, Maine in 2013, do not extend to the ocean or Atlantic side of that Province, where six foot tides, comparable to those at the Harlem, prevail, I am told. And  the distance from Northeast Harbor in Mt. Desert Island to the check-in town in Nova Scotia is 165 nautical miles, which I compute as about 24 hours at 6.5 knots. So an overnight sail is in order. With tidal currents running swiftly around Nova Scotia's SE cape, it's a passage that has to be carefully timed and on a good weather day. I think we can get nearly a month in Nova Scotia between our scheduled arrival in Maine in late June and the beginning of the Corinthian cruise in Mt. Desert Island starting July 25. My mate is not yet totally committed to this summer float plan

(the other two crew members do not have votes) but I am continuing to plan for Nova Scotia and my gal usually comes around once she can see the fully thought out plan with enough safety lay days to avoid problems. Wish us luck, both Pandora and ILENE.

November 15 to December 7 -- Mostly About The Anchor Chain and Next Summer

Four trips to the boat but only eleven hours work, scraping rust off the anchor chain. It is hard work with a stiff paint scraper and I cut myself one day after which I wore heavy work gloves. The problem is that it takes almost an hour to do a foot of chain and and ILENE has 300 feet, over 100 feet of which are heavily rusted. The guys at the yard told me to buy new chain but I priced it at about $1300 plus tax and shipping. Wow. Keep scraping, Roger! Here are

rusted links draped over my denim clad knee, with "cleaned" links in the upper right. But another guy in the yard suggested a "hot dip" regalvanizing process that can be done by a firm in Jersey City. I checked it out and they will do the job for $350, first using acid to remove the rust and then dipping the chain in  molten zinc to get a good solid coating of it on the chain. So no more scraping for me.
I attended the Interim Board Meeting at the Harlem; a nice dinner as a way  the Club rewards its hard workers with good fellowship and a good meal "on the house!" And they gave out fire-engine-red fleece vests with the Club's logo. I felt a bit guilty because as outgoing Fleet Captain I did not do much work for the Club in 2015.  I have been searching out a locale for our annual dead-of-winter outing, to take place in February.  Another scraping day was followed by a good brunch at the Club before a visit to the City Island Maritime Museum.  Its collection has evolved a bit in the last couple of years but the highlight was a lecture by the unofficial"Official Historian" of City Island, who is a sail maker by profession. His knowledge of the numerous businesses, their owners and craftsmen and the boats that were built here over the past couple of hundred years is intense, with slides to illustrate most of it. Big names in the history of boat building and sail making worked here. I met two couples of Harlemites and there were about a dozen Corinthians, who invited me to join them for dinner after the lecture. But after brunch and refreshments at the museum, I went straight home and had an apple for dinner.
I renewed my Corinthians membership and signed up for their one week cruise in the Mt. Desert Island region of Maine next July and August. I also joined the Seven Seas Cruising Association, after Bob, of Pandora, had encouraged me to do so for years. It appears that I'm eligible for "Commodore" status based on the mileage I have logged off shore and the time spent aboard, but the third requirement for that status is that one be a member in the lesser class for a year. They do a lot of information sharing and I responded to two requests for information, about Angelfish Passage through the Florida Keys and about sailing in Turks and Caicos. I simply referred the questioners to the relevant posts in this blog. And I have spent some time trying to get the Nova Scotia portion of next summer's vacation organized. I asked the other members of the SSCA to share their experiences with me and called Landfall Navigation, an excellent chandlery in Stamford CT, who sent me information on the relevant paper charts, published by the Canadian government, that we will need, and cruising guides. And I selected the right electronic chart, but I will not buy charts until next spring; you want them to be as up to date as possible. And I contacted Fernando, who did stainless steel and fiberglass work two winters ago, to get him lined up to repaint the blue boot stripe when it gets warm enough next spring. So work is continuing apace.

October 27 - November 14 -- ILENE Is Ready for the Winter

White, unpainted bottom.  Six work days took place during this period, (totaling 30.75 hours - so I'm not working too hard) and two fun days as well.
Why not start with the fun. There was an emergency meeting at the Club because of a failure of a quorum at an earlier meeting. This one took only five minutes and we accomplished two ministerial tasks so they can be acted upon at the next meeting. And then a delicious Moroccan style buffet was served. So this not being a food blog, I will refrain from telling you about the menu -- except for the apple cake, which, based on the flavor and moistness and icing I would have called a carrot cake, except the moistness came from chopped apple instead of grated carrot. And I ended up sitting at the table with the Club's book group, twelve women and three men, and enjoyed their discussion of "A Man Called Ove" even though I had not read the book.
The other fun event was the 20th Annual Gow Dinner, sponsored by Tex and Maria, who we dined with in Marathon Florida last winter. Tex pays for the whole meal so the full price of the tickets, $50/capita, goes to the Dow School to sponsor a scholarship in memory of their son, who was a student there, until he tragically died in a motorcycle accident. Tex and Maria flew up from where they had left their boat on their way south. I have contributed the cost of two tickets every year for the last twenty, including those when we were south and could not attend in person. Tex is a PC at the Harlem and also a member of the Huguenot, and this year the event took place at the Huguenot. Tex and Maria have a large circle of friends at both clubs and elsewhere, so attendance was good. Somehow, I had forgotten to send in the check so they had no reservation for us, but another PC, who did have reservations could not come at the last minute so we were seated at a table of Harlemites. Tex made a speech, and in his tradition, cried.

Basically the work involved winterization of the water systems and installation of the blue canvas cover with a few other chores started or completed. I had a big problem with the winterization, having sort of forgotten one important ingredient: It is a two man job, one to pour in the pink propelyne glycol and the other turning on and off swtches and faucets and waiting till the discharge appears pink. I got stuck and called upon Ed Spallina, who came in from Connecticut to help me. I used four of his very inexpensive hours and had the pleasure of taking him to lunch at the New Rochelle diner, sort of hidden in plain sight near the Home Depot. Ed is not "certified" as a technician, but he is magically able to figure out how things work. I had drained the raw water strainer, of its sea water through a screw at the

bottom, but had never been able to remove its stainless steel filter basket, because I did not know how to get it open. Well now I know that the top screws off and it is a good thing we looked inside because the basket was substantially corroded away. With this picture and a few measurements, I expect to be able to get a replacement basket that fits. Without its straining, particles are likely to be sucked through the engine causing major problems. Ed also bypassed the hot water heater after draining it, by detaching the two hoses that (1) feed cold water to the heater and (2) take hot water from it and connecting them to each other with a black plastic piece with hose barbs at both ends. I had the piece but had not figured out how to use it. Also, we detached the hose that takes fresh water from the tanks to the fresh water pump, and inserted a three foot long piece of hosing cut from the spare hose left over from the water maker installation job of 2010, and inserted a funnel at the top end. So now I do not need to pour so much of the pink stuff into the tanks, but can pour it directly into the pump. This year I used 14 gallons of the stuff. Next year, half that amount!
The cover comes in two pieces and installing it is a bear. On the day before, I scrubbed the topsides, and removed most of the stains in the fiberglass deck caused by the decay of fallen maple leaves -- they put ILENE under a big maple. I'm on deck, about 14 feet above ground with the life lines removed and have a lot of lugging and heaving to do to do to get the cover into place and zip the two halves together. It took me four hours. And the problems involved the zippers. In the spring of 2014 when I took the cover off, I noticed that the aft most zipper on the port side was broken. I meant to take the big piece in to Doyle Sailmakers to get it fixed but I forgot. So at the end of the day, the cover was on, but with one inoperative zipper, about ten feet long. I was too tired to take it that half off, fold it up, put it in the car and take it to Doyle. Plan B was to sew across the gap and that took several hours the next day, with a tough job of pushing the needle into the fabric, using the palm to get it most of the way through and then pliers to pull the end through. Good exercise for the core muscles, doing this while balancing on the top of the step ladder. And at the end of the day I noticed another bad zipper, the one that closes the cover up above the swim platform, through which we enter, though it will hold this season.
I could not remove the sensor that measures speed through the water from the through hull where it had been painted in over the years. But Ed had a pliers with a large enough jaws to grab it and that is done. And I bought butt connectors and shrink wrap tubes and spiced the five wires from it to the five that lead from there to the power source and display. Final test: I asked a man working on a nearby boat to spin the wheel that protrudes from the bottom of the boat after I turned on the instruments and got to the cockpit where I could observe the display for boat speed. When he spun the wheel with his finger the instrument changed from zero to showing speed. Hooray! Then I took the tube with the wheel out and replaced it with the attached plug. The reason that the wheel kept breaking until now was the pressure of the heavy lifting strap against it. And the boat has a little plastic sign saying "Strap" telling the yard guys where to place the straps, so that the boat will be balanced in the two straps. Yep! -- right where the speed instrument is. So next spring, after the boat is back in the water, I will pull out the plug and then quickly insert the instrument into the hole through which the water will then be spurting.
The last part of the work involved the anchor and chain. The anchor was where the gap is in the cover at the bow.

I lowered anchor and chain to the ground using the windlass. Then I used (1) rust penetrating oil, (2) heat and (3) a hammer to break the seal and detached the anchor and its shackle and took them to the locker. The surprise was at the bitter end of the 300 feet of stainless chain, the end where it it attached to a "D" clamp it the locker. It was tied on with a square knot in 3/16 inch line, and not that strong Spectra stuff either! When I put it back, this attachment will be made fast with a stainless steel shackle. I have sawed off a large part of the horizontal 3/4 inch thick plywood platform on which the former Lectrasan was seated. This gives me better access to the chain locker and, I hope, will reduce the problem of the chain piling up and jamming the windlass while we raise the anchor. By sawing this off I got the vacuum cleaner hose and my arm into the locker to remove accumulated sand and rust particles and then scrub the rust stains of its interior walls. The half of the chain that goes into the water with each anchoring, is heavily rusted but otherwise still in good condition. The other 150 feet that have lain in the locker is white in this photo.

First I tied loops of it up behind the car and dragged it several blocks through the streets to grind off the exterior rust particles. The remaining work, in addition to installing the new brackets in the spring, is to scrape off 90 percent of the rust on the interior surfaces of each link.





Below is part of the boat, with its cover. At the top is the bottom of the blue canvas. below that, to the right is the aft portion of the bottom with its several coats of grey barrier coat, partially covered with what is left of the blue anti-barnacle paint. To the left, going forward, is the white gelcoat, after the paint was removed. After I touch up this surface it will put on several coats of barrier coat and then several coats of bottom paint. But that will take place in the spring.

October 22 - 26 -- Sailing Pandora, an Aerodyne 47, From North of Essex CT to Hampton VA

This was the third time I have crewed on passages for Bob, the first aboard his new love, Pandora. Before we get to the passage, let me describe her, by reference to his old one, which was a Saga 43, like ILENE.
                        Pandora              ILENE
Length                  47                      43
Beam                    14                      12
Draft                      6'6"                    5'8"
Mast Height          64                      63.5
Displacement         11.5 tons           10 tons
So Pandora is the big sister, with a lot more room inside, but not much heavier; due to both longer waterline length and lighter weight she is faster.

Many similarities: Both have the Solent rig for the two headsails, though Pandora's jib's foot is secured to a Hoyt boom, A nice feature is two amidships cleats so that each spring line has its own cleat. She has a solid glassed in hard dodger which is perhaps five feet long, so there is plenty of shelter under the dodger against waves and wind. Unfortunately, that dodger is less than 6'3" above the deck, resulting in some close encounters with my clumsy noggin. And Pandora has the larger more sophisticated and newer Raymarine instruments with four displays of the chart plotter: (1) at the helm, (2) on the starboard coach roof at the forward end of the cockpit, (3) at the nav station and (4) in the port side pullman berth so the captain can check up on things from his bed! And, like ILENE, she had a head forward of the pullman berth but aft of the chain locker. She has two large lazarettes on the bow, one for the fenders and dock lines and she also has a bow thruster that lowers down from inside the hull when needed and then pushes the bow from side to side. At each side of the cockpit, just aft of the dodger, are two powerful Anderson electric winches to tame the lines which are all led there, and further aft is another pair of winches.

for greater control while still self- tacking. Both boats have the greatest weight at the bottom of the keel, though Pandora's is a bulb rather than a shoe. Pandora has no toe rail and no bolts fastening the edge of the deck to the hull; rather these two major structural parts, both vacuum molded, are glassed together into one very solid piece with a small curve at the edge of the wide side decks. A very clean look.
She has a radar arch and at its port side, on fore and aft sliding tracks, is a davit block for lifting the outboard from the dink.
Friday, October 22
Bob picked me up from the Old Saybrook railroad station about 4 pm. The first thing we did was secure the 15 hp outboard to a pad on the aft rail and hoist up the Caribe fiberglass RIB dink by its nose, over the lifeline and laid it upside down, facing forward under the boom. We deflated it and tied it to itself to make it smaller in order to avoid chafing the lines and increase visibility around it a bit.

Then a delicious dinner at Bob's home cooked by Bob and Brenda, punctuated by the arrival of Gregg and his wife, son and future daughter in law, just in time for desert. After which, we all headed back to the boat so Gregg's family could see it and I hit the rack early. I was assigned the quarterberth which is to starboard and has a separate entrance to the aft head. I think I got the best berth on the boat, roomy with no need for a lee cloth, as were rigged for the other berths, and the greatest privacy and shelter from potential cold drafts, while it also boasts three opening ports to catch a breeze in port, though it has two electric fans. Plenty of room for two.
Saturday October 23
In the morning we had to secure the nicely trussed dink to the boat so that potential big waves would not wash it away, rig the lifelines and preventers and deal with one small problem: no autopilot!! Bob did not panic but recalled that the workmen had opened the pod that contains its controls while working on something else. We reopened it, reinserted the plug and voila, the most reliable member of our crew, Auto, was back in action and we were underway at 7 am amidst the fall foliage on the Connecticut River.

Gregg had the helm until we transited Plum Gut and I  took over until we had rounded Montauk Point.

Then Bob set the waypoint as the buoy off Cape May. During our days together I learned that Gregg is a great guy. He has long experience with cat boats and currently has a Nonesuch 33, which he aptly calls a modern cat boat, based on its large sail set on a mast that is forward. He keeps her at a club in Stratford on the Housatonic River. I have never sailed on that river but plan to remedy that deficiency this summer. Gregg also races extensively and wins a lot, on other peoples' boats, mostly a Saber 35 in the summer and dinghys during the winter frostbite series. Gregg is also the Director of Bridgeport's municipal zoo where he has worked for near four decades and has a great eye for seeing and identifying wildlife, at sea and on land.
We used the main and small jib which provided plenty of power on our port tack broad reach out in the Atlantic with the winds from the northeast. We had one encounter with a Russian freighter which overtook us on our port side and crossed in front of us. It appeared that he would pass less than half a mile from us but Bob called him and he agreed to alter course about five degrees to port and thus passed 2.5 miles away. We enjoyed big ocean rollers, perhaps eight feet high but 100 feet apart that we glided over gently, the most lovely ocean sensation. We were averaging better than eight knots and peaking at more than ten.
Today was our coldest day, and the coldest part was during the day. I kept putting on more layers and ended up with pajamas under my jeans and four heavy long sleeve shirt, all under heavy duty foulie tops and bottoms, two pairs of heavy socks in my sea boots, two pairs of gloves, a watch hat and a scarf. But the chill did not get bad at night.

Bob fed us well on this trip. Today it was toasted muffins with our coffee, Grilled cheese sandwiches and in anticipation of the cold, two large bowls of tortilla soup which included all of the meat of a rotisserie chicken.

Sunday October 24
Not many photos at sea so we take sunrises and sets when we can. I requested and was granted my favorite off watch time: 8 p.m. to midnight, when I usually lose steam. But while I slept the Captain's orders were wisely amended. We did not need two watch standers at all times during darkness because we were harnessed and tethered to a jack line in the cockpit, mostly under the dodger except when we periodically scanned the horizon and it was not stormy. As a result of this change, I enjoyed the unexpected and unusual luxury of more than seven consecutive hours off at night, taking the watch again from 3:30 a.m. until about eight.

With just the two of us aboard ILENE, we relieve each other more often.  Bob called the weather guru, Chris Parker, via SSB and we learned that the potential stop in Cape May for a day due to  potential bad weather would not be needed. While the wind would eventually come to our bow, it would not be strong and we could just power through it. So we changed the waypoint from off the Cape May harbor entrance to a buoy off Cape Charles, the northern end of the entrance to Chesapeake Bay, and altered course a few degrees to port.  Checking we saw that the dotted line took us very clse to shallow water off shore so we altered course a few more degrees to port to create a buffer. The GPS computed our arrival at about 11 a.m. and I figured another four hours to get from there to the dock in Hampton.
During the afternoon I did what I like to do on friends' boats and put about 20 whippings in the ends of Pandora's lines. The wind got lighter and came around to the port beam. We put up the genoa for a while and later used a motor assist, turning it off when the winds looked like they would let us sail. Some hours we made only six knots and that seemed slow on Pandora but many boats can't go that fast at any wind speed. And we did not get the opportunity to see how Pandora does when heeled because this was a no-heeling trip.
Today's menu: gourmet honey-drizzled boat-baked drop biscuits with the coffee, tuna salad for lunch and a pasta with onions, sausages and cheese for dinner, all with chocolate chip cookies, snack bars and fruit. Like I said, no one went hungry. Bob is both cook and captain, and if the crew is not vigilant he washes the dishes too.
Monday October 25
When I came on about midnight, we were motoring and close hauled under main alone. A peaceful watch until the end when I almost damaged Pandora and made a big bang that got Bob out in a hurry. The wind had come further around so that it was now directly on our nose. So I winched in the mainsail to lie directly fore and aft to serve as a stabilizer. But I did not realize that the preventer was still attached and the bang was the giving way of the short piece of Spectra line that held its block to the base of a stanchion. Bob was correctly concerned that the block snapped back and hit and damaged the boat but he conducted a close inspection by flashlight, followed by another in daylight, which showed that no damage had been done. Whew! I like to improve my friends' boats, e.g., the whipping, not damage them. I would not have guessed that the preventer, which is used to avoid the accidental jibe on a broad reach, would be engaged when we were sailing close hauled.
At the mouth of the Chesapeake there was a lot of shipping. I learned something about the Bay: there is no inside channel for deep draft merchant shipping heading south through the Bay from let's say Baltimore to Norfolk. What they have to do is follow the channel SE out of the Bay over the northern tunnel of the Bay Bridge Tunnel, and then go back in heading west in the channel over the southern tunnel. We sailed across this while one of the big guys swung clockwise past our stern. Skies were grey today as compared to the sunshine of the prior days. Here is the portion of the bridge between the two tunnels.

We were tied to the dock at 1:30 pm (elapsed time 55.5 hours for the 350 mile course) and celebrated our safe arrival, Bob to the left.

Gregg and I gave Pandora's exterior a soap and water scrubbing while Bob cleaned the interior. Then we showered, accepted a ride from a friend of Bob to the airport to pick up our car, and dined together at a local place and turned in for the night.

Sunday October 26

We rose, packed, breakfasted, thanked and said good by to Bob, had our picture taken and got underway at 8:45 am. Gregg and I took turns and drove across the Bay Bridge Tunnel whose fare has not risen in many years: still $13. The highways of the Delmarva peninsula have improved a lot in the last few decades, however. I had planned to get off at Fort Washington Avenue and 178th street to take the A train home but realized that there was a better drop off point at the Pelham station of the number 6 train. Gregg took over from there and was able to deliver the car to the New Haven airport before the 6:30 deadline.
Bob wrote a blog on a daily basis during out voyage (Google: sailpandora) and has since taken off from Hampton to Tortola, BVIs with another crew.Godspeed! I will read his blog after I post this one. I suspect he will have different observations about our trip together.
This was my last sail of 2015 though work continues on winterization and improvements, so stay tuned.  All told, on ILENE and other boats I sailed or lived aboard on 190 days of the 360 this calendar year. I'm satisfied.
I got home in time to take the subway up to 34th Street for a panel discussion about the history on New York's waterways, at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. I had suggested this program to all Harlemites but was rather glad that none showed up. While I enjoyed it (it was moderated by Russell Shorto, whose book about Dutch New Amsterdam my book group had read) it was rather limited to the Dutch period and would not have satisfied the 21st Century sailor.