Feb 20 to April 3 — A Very Long Time Without A Post

Yes, I apologize to you, dear readers, for the long drought of fresh news but the good news is that ILENE should be operational and afloat within three weeks. 

I. TRAVEL

Thirteen of the 42 days in this period were out of state. First a family wedding in landlocked Gainsville, FL. We saw some puddles but nothing to write home about. Next was a visit to our friends, Marie and Tom, in Las Vegas NV, again landlocked but near enough to Hoover Dam for a visit to that behemoth engineering miracle which created Lake Mead behind it.

 The lake had some marinas but unfortunately a real drought, caused by both lesser western rainfall and greater human and farm extraction of water has left the lake/reservoir only 38% full with a 140 foot high white stripe around its rim.

The third destination was Portland Oregon, to visit my daughter and the town of Astoria, near the mouth of the mighty Columbia River with its frequently shifting bar making it a killer of ships trying to enter or leave during storms when wind and tide oppose. We drove into Washington State on the two lane bridge (one each way) across the River, with a high arch over the channel on the Oregon side and then a much longer low causeway the rest of the way across the flats. (Think Tappan Zee Bridge). The highlight, other than being with my daughter, was Astoria’s Columbia River Maritime Museum. Good display of the exciting things about that particular waterway: fishing, navigation, history (think of Lewis and Clark’s destination) shipping and rescue work. Not much of sailing — though they did have a full size sailboat used for fishing. This was not my favorite of the 20 or so maritime museums I have visited, but provided a pleasant informative few hours. 

I also took in the Portland Art Museum where I “curated” for my own pleasure, a show of three paintings in different rooms of the permanent collection. I called it “New England Places I Have Sailed”.

Isles of Shoals, 1907 by Childe Hassam.

After the Hurricane, 1938, by Marsden Hartley, with lobster pot thrown up onto the Maine rocks.

Provincetown Bay, 1950 by Helen Frankenthaler.

Also taking time and attention in this interval was being mindful of the horrific news out of Ukraine where Vlad,  the destroyer, started a modern mechanized war of aggression against his neighbor to conquer the land and its people. And when the war news was south for his war machine he decided “well if I can’t possess it, I’ll destroy it.” Our wonderful president has been able to unite most of the free world to stop the aggression without getting us into WWIII, at least so far. This is how we won WWII: despite the horrible loss of American lives in that war, our losses were tiny compared to the losses of our Allie’s. We supplied the materials but they did the dying.

II. BOATWORK

Only seven days (only four hours per day) of boat work. It has been a light winter for boat work compared with years past. And made lighter by my willingness to pay others to do work that would likely have wrecked my rotator cuff, still healing from last summer, and thereby ruined the summer of 2022, had I done them myself. Chief among them are tasks that David of Marine Detailer and his crew will be doing next week: prepare the bottom for painting by scuffing up its surface with a maroon 3M plastic scrubbing pad, and compounding and waxing the freeboard. I will tape the waterline and apply the bottom paint (which cost more than $300 per gallon with tax this year!) The rear broad navy blue boot stripe that was carefully painted on a few years ago with Awlgrip has spots where the slapping of the water against the flat near horizontal surface has beaten away the “new” paint. My proposed solution is to obtain some scrap navy blue vinyl sheeting used to make boat names and, leaving no sharp corners on each patch, place the patches of this vinyl tape over the paint holes. I’m hoping that from five feet away, no one will notice the patchwork nature of this fix.

The prop and shaft, seen in the last post were sanded quite clean, primed and covered with three coats of ridiculously expensive Marlin, Velex Plus anti fouling paint — imported from Italy!  The bleached out port side interior woodwork was sanded down, stained to its original vivid cherrywood color and has gotten its first coat of protective polyurethane.

The winter covers were removed, the forward half, with its hole for the mast (to the left in the photo) was folded up neatly and placed in the locker in exchange for the small jib which is now aboard and has to be bent on in case of emergencies with the potentially balky Diesel engine during the short passage from the Huguenot to the Harlem.The lighter color in the center of the cover is where it has lain flat in the bleaching winter sun for 20 of the last 23 years. The darker parts at the sides are more vertical, at ILENE’s sides, where the cover gets less direct sunlight. The aft half of the cover suffered a zipper casualty: I could not remove it from the boat without cutting the zipper, and I took it to Doyle’s for a zipper transplant.

Doyle also has the Bimini. It needs patching along its front edge, not just for appearances but to prevent it from ripping out and flogging us at the worst time in a storm far from home. Here too, Doyle got some zipper work. The Bimini is held in place with seven stout zippers. But they need to be lubricated with special zipper grease (fancy Vaseline in a tube that emits a thin bead of it when squeezed). These zippers had been attached and zipped up maybe four of five years ago and I neglected them. By applying both the grease and elbow grease I was able to unzip five of them. The last two were more stuck and I used WD40 as well; but no luck and I had to pry (break) the slider off. Tanks to Dave for his help on this. The good news is that I think Doyle can slide new sliders on a lot less expensively than cutting out and replacing the entire zippers.

III OTHER RELATED ACTIVITY

Dinners 1) at home with Bennett and Harriett, 2) with our club member/cat sitters, Dave and Christine, 3) with our nephew and frequent sailor, Mendy at a steak house to celebrate his being licensed as an RN., and 4) with my book group, all but one of who have sailed with me, at our home to discuss a book set in Trieste, Italy, with foods and wines of Triestian design. Also a lunch in NJ with Roy, who lent me his Maine chart book after mine went missing. His is newer, having been obtained the day we departed from Robinhood Cove to the Harlem last spring on his ketch MS GALSJM last summer.

I enjoyed an extremely informative Free Zoom lecture about “The Bronx During The American Revolution. The speaker was the historian of the Bronx Historical Society and the heart of the action was very close to home. The British tried to capture what was left of George Washington’s army in Washington Heights, Northern Manhattan (where I grew up) before he could escape across the Kingsbridge, a narrow bridge a block from where Broadway crosses the Spuyten Duyvel from Manhattan to the Bronx, to go up to fight the battle of White Plains.  The first amphibious landing was on Throggs Neck, where the NY State Merchant Marine Academy is now. The 4000 men were set to hike west across The Bronx to Highbridge, but they were unaware of the swampland they would have to cross, got bogged down, backed off, regrouped, and landed on the west side of Rodman’s Neck. That is the peninsula of land directly in front of our dock, where the Police firing range is today. The 4000 landed, again without opposition, but were confronted by about 750 colonists under John Glover with orders to retard their progress. His men hid behind a series of parallel stone fences. When things got too hot for them at one fence they repeatedly fell back to the next fence.  This battle of Pells Point delayed the British advance long enough for Washington’s army once again to effect a Houdiniesque escape. This map shows the action: The red line points to the Harlem YC on City Island. The blue circle is Kingsbridge, the escape north from Manhattan. The Yellow lines point to the site of first landing and the green lines point SW to the second landing site in Eastchester Bay. Finally, the black circle is where the battle of Fells Point was fought.

Back yard history that I had never known!

A membership meeting at the Club which almost did not come off due to a lack of a quorum, which in turn was due to the lack of controversial business, in fact the lack of any business at all. But our hard working Officers and Board had prepared reports on their recent accomplishments and near term plans. So we had the meeting anyway, without the quorum (except that “approval of the minutes of the prior meeting” — everyone’s favorite part of a meeting, right! had to be defered).

We had an open house to show the Club to anyone who might think about a good place to keep a boat. They drink our wine, taste our food and experience friendly members. I’m a lousy salesperson, except when I’m convinced of the superiority of the product in question. Met some interesting new members.

Our hard working Board member, Erin, tasked with both the social committee and the restaurant and bar committee has come up with some interesting events. Erin is a “social” member: lower dues, no boat -yet and no membership vote. We wisely amended the Bylaws a few years ago to permit up to two members of the Board (also known as “hard working unpaid servants of the members”) to be Social members. I’ve tried to pay Erin, in praise in lieu of cash, by telling her that with her dual portfolio she is, “Doing the work of two men!”

 The Club’s St Patrick’s Day traditional Irish dinner — you know the menu — but more varied, plentiful and excellent. Thank you Chef Anne!

Before dinner, Erin arranged for a troop of young people and their leaders to entertain us with Irish Dancing. This picture shows the most essential element of their uniform: the smile. After their performance each dancer picked a partner from among us older sailors and we danced some square dance moves to the Irish music they brought. I believe that the last time we were entertained by such dance was perhaps 25 years ago, when Sean Doran was social chairman. The Club’s floors, underfoot, were recently refinished.

“Knot Night” was, to my knowledge, a never-before event that Erin dreamed up for us. Free admission and each person received a coffee mug decorated with knots and with a cleat for a handle, two lengths or line, a booklet prepared for the event from a thick treatise, illustrating how the most essential sailing knots are tied as well as a delicious Dark and Stormy and a tray featuring Anne’s Hors D’oeuvres.

Rear Commodore Doug led the class with John assisting at the rear, and several others who “know the ropes”,  like me, unofficially assisting as well. Social, educational, eating and drinking: this event had it all!

My next post will be LESS than 42 days from now; I promise!

Feb 1 - 19, 2022 — Only One Work Day On The Boat But Lots of Activity With Sailing people

 The one work day was Feb 18, a beautifully warm uncharacteristically spring-like day. I got supplies from our locker at the Harlem and spent 3.75 hours at the boat st the Huguenot. There I connected our boat, Bennett’s, Roy’s and David’s to shore power. Roy had connected ILENE twice, for a total of 2.5 hours in the interim, but she was not hooked up with the battery charger on, as she is now, so those hours were wasted and her charge was low. Next time I’ll get her batteries filled to the brim. 

Primary activity was final scraping and first sanding of ILENE’s prop and shaft, and lubricating her prop.

This picture shows one side of one of the three blades of the prop sanded. I did the other five as well. It also shows Roy’s boat to ILENE’s starboard side, coated with grey barrier paint. Before I finished, the merry cheerful ban of five Hispanic coworkers had returned and Roy’s boat’s bottom is now barn red. I was somewhat envious of the jollity of the painters, though my prop work is a one man job. But my constant companion, National Public Radio, makes the time fly by.

Lubrication consists of pressing fresh heavy yellow grease into the prop’s hub. It is an annual springtime ritual. Three Allen nuts are removed, one at a time, and replaced with a zirc fitting. Placing the discharge end of the grease gun over the protruding end of the fitting and squeezing the gun forces fresh new yellow grease into the propeller hub, which forces the air, seawater snd dirty brown grease out of the hub between the two sides of the hub and through the three holes in the hub from which the blades protrude. Then I remove the fitting, reinsert the Allen nut, tighten, and it’s done. Only problem this time was dropping one of the Allen nuts from my greasy fingers onto the camouflaging blanket of gravel on the ground. No problem, because I have a spare, but a diligent search discovered the errant nut.

I also brought the last two Dorade cowls home for painting the inside white and shining the stainless of the exterior. 

   

Lene’s birthday and Valentine’s Day occurred during this period, the first with a good steak dinner at Quality Meats steakhouse in midtown, and the latter for a good home cooked and home baked dinner at our home with sailing friends, Bennett and Harriett.Two lunches out with gentlemen from by book club and a meeting of the club to discuss our February read: “How The Word Is Passed” by Clint Smith. A very worthwhile book, it tells a lot of facts about the history of slavery in our nation by describing what the author learned during visits to eight sites that exemplify the horrors. One of those horrors was the dreaded “middle passage” in the holds of slave ships. (a nautical angle). Also, Lady Liberty, the gift from France to celebrate immigration, was first intended to celebrate emancipation: she held a broken chain in her hand rather than a book. And the chains are still in the version of the statue that has stood in our harbor for 150 years, but they are at her feet, visible only from the windows of a helicopter. Why the change?  Fund raising to build the pedestal was not successful with a racial theme. Nowadays it would not have worked out with a pro-immigration theme.  A zoom meeting of the Map Society of New York featured the presentation by its author/illustrator of her book showing the development of Manhattan over the past 400 years through maps.

Our Club’s fifth land cruise of this winter came off last week. We visited the Queens Museum, with its vast 1” = 100” scale model of the city built for the Worlds Fair in Flushing Queens and last updated in 1992. (So the Twin towers still stand on the model, not the Freedom Tower.) Above is the apartment house where Lene and I live, in the red circle with the green of Union Square to the left.

But we discovered an error in the diorama which purports to have a scale model of every structure in the city. City Island is of to the side but zooming in we saw that while the clubhouse and locker house are standing, but not our dock — and it has been there, on the same concrete pilings since way before 1939.

But why get upset. Delicious lunch was partaken at the nearby Parkside Restaurant.

WELCOME BACK TO BLOGSPOT! Dec 28, 2021- Jan 31, 2022 —It’s Slow as Molasses in Winter

Thirty four days with only one visit to the boat! Almost five hours that day to charge batteries and clean up a few things, bring things from home and take others home to work on there. I took the three sheets of plastic that can mostly enclose the cockpit on cold and rainy days into our shower at home to give them a thorough soap and fresh water cleaning. The dorade cowls and stanchions need to be touched up here as well. 

In my last post I reported that the Huguenot YC was taking an apparently unreasonable position about the charging of batteries. I’m pleased to report that, as usual, they do listen to reason; that problem has gone away.  Thanks, guys!

Another trip to the boat was to heave the heavy snow off the winter canvas cover (enroute to a shopping trip with Lene in Westchester). However, on arrival we could see that the wind had blown the snow off; no need to even exit the car.

A lot of days were devoted to visits with Ilene to her doctors, in the hospital for pre-tests, the surgery itself and post surgical visits, plus duties at home for Nurse Roger during her recovery from the removal of a tumor. But all is good, the margins are clear, the lymph nodes show no migration and she has a zero count of cell division.  So I’m blessed to be having my mate hanging around for a while.

Two nights out alone at off-off Broadway theater and one on Broadway with Lene and Bennett and Harriett.  Three good dinners, two at the homes of sailing friends, one with Tom and Marie and the other with Fred and Rebecca, and the third with Ken and Mendy  here in our place.

I enjoyed my visit to the NY Public Library’s exhibit of selections from among its treasures: e.g.,  a Gutenberg Bible, Charles Dickens‘ writing desk, Virginia Woolf’s walking stick and hundreds of other “things”. 

Another day saw my first visit to the Queens Museum, in Flushing, the former New York City “Pavilion” of the World Fair of the mid 1960’s. Admission and parking are free but I took public transportation. It features a 1” : 100’ model of almost the entirety of the New York City land mass, studded with scale models of almost every building. But because it has not been updated since 1992, it still has the twin towers and not the new Freedom tower. Here is a section of Manhattan featuring Central Park. I hadn’t planned it that way but this section happens to include the locales of three of the Harlem’s prior winter excursions: to Randall’s Island (near to the left) and Central Park (in the center), both last year, and Roosevelt Island (the narrow one, two miles long, in the East River, to the right). (Rikers Island is in the extreme upper left.)

It was fun seeing the apartment house where I grew up in Washington Heights (3 miles to the left) and the one where we live now in Greenwich Village (2 miles to the right). City Island is on the map, in the corner, off the upper left. They turn the lights off for a few minutes every once and a while to show sunset, night and sunrise. A little model airplane periodically takes off (on a wire) from LaGuardia Airport. I had such a good time by myself that I’ve organized a visit there by the Harlem on February 19. (By the way, these excursions are available to all members of the Club and their friends; the later category includes you, my dear readers, so if you are interested, contact me for details. Lunch will follow at an ethnic restaurant for which the neighborhood has become famous.)
This will be our fifth winter excursion this season, including Sunday hikes organized by Dave of the HYC,  with more to come. When I announced it at the very pleasant, efficient and short first Club Zoom membership meeting of 2022 I prefaced it noting: If NYC can call itself “The City That Never Sleeps”, well then the Harlem can be called “The Yacht Club That Never Hibernates!”

Otherwise, in addition to lots of TV: 
— the movies - Licorice Pizza (save your money), 
— an interesting Zoom presentation from my alma mater on employment law, economic and ethical issues relating to the gig economy and the great resignation, 
— a zoom meeting of my Book Group, lively, by and large, because we did not enjoy the book,
— the transfer (with professional help) of the contents of my aging lap top to the iPad I’m now using to write this blog, 
— a ride with my nephew, Mendy up to Goshen NY where he bought a part from a junk yard to install on the car he bought at auction to fix up and flip,
— visits by two interior decorators one of whom Lene wants to engage to redecorate our apartment.

So it’s not nothing, but it’s not a lot of sailing. I will be posting more often now that I’m back at Blogspot, all the news that’s fit to print.

SV ILENE’s SAGA INTERRUPTED FOR ALMOST A YEAR BECAUSE OF MY MISPLACED TRUST IN A VENDOR.

[THIS WAS THE ORIGINAL TEST IS THIS POST BUT BELOW IS THE UPDATE] 

This was supposed to be the final post  to ilenrtheboat.blogspot.com:

“Yes, due to increasing technical difficulties with my using Blogspot, the continuing saga of the sailing vessel ILENE will henceforth appear at ILENEtheboat.com. The same name except without blogspot in the middle. The first post is already there. Blogspot was totally free, but my mate, Lene, got tired of hearing me cursing at the laptop (I don't curse at people, except for rubberneckers). And this blog is my hobby so I've spent a few bucks to make it easier for me, and hopefully for you as well.

I'm told that the 730 posts at blogspot will continue to be available to be viewed here, and a banner at the top of the new blog will be advising folks to go to blogspot for descriptions of the events of 2010 to 2020.” 

BUT AFTER ABOUT 40 POSTS UNDER THE NEW TITLE, COVERING ALMOST A YEAR OF SAILING, THE FIRM THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HELPING ME GOT MORE AND MORE RAPACIOUS, DEMANDING MORE AND MORE MONEY FROM ME UNTIL I HIT ON MY ONLY REMEDY. I WENT BACK TO ILENETHEBOAT.BLOGSPOT.COM.

FOR ALMOST A YEAR, MY ADVENTURES AND ACTIVITIES, APPROXIMATELY 40 - 50 POSTS, WERE REPORTED AT ILENETHEBOAT.COM.   WHEN I STOPPED PAYING, THEY NOT ONLY STOPPED HELPING BUT THEREAFTER ERASED ALL OF THOSE POSTS. 

I’m sorry for myself and for you my dear readers.

Feb 8 -- 21 ---- Two Winter Walks, Two Snow Removal Days And the Electrical Work Finally Done

As more and more snow makes the wooded trails impassible (or at least unpleasant) with shush or ice,  Dave has scheduled more "urban expeditions". Six us us, including Lene and I, met at Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard (originally Sixth Ave) and 110th St, in Harlem. That is the Manhattan neighborhood where our Club was first located, when it was founded in the 1880's, We made the loop of the closed and plowed road, counterclockwise around most of the interior of Central Park. Well Lene and I got off at 59th Street to take the subway home. but the rest of them were more intrepid. 

The next week ten of us met at the Staten Island Ferry terminal at the Battery for a free boat ride to the United States Lighthouse Museum. a seven minute walk from the S.I. terminal. Here are all of us except your photographer (Lene had other plans that day) listening raptly to the excellent talk by Jim Sarlo, the Museum's enthusiastic and knowledgeable Supervisor. His card describes him as an "Avocational Historian" and he jammed his free illustrated talk with many little known facts about lighthouses and Staten Island.

Following our time in the museum we repaired to a nearby inexpensive Italian restaurant for lunch before the return ferry ride and a planned walk up the Hudson's shore path. But various of our group detached themselves along the way until only Dave was left alone. 

I have to hand it to Dave. For several years I had been considering the Lighthouse Museum as a venue for the Club's annual-ish winter land excursions for learning and lunch that I have been leading since 2009. But I was deterred this year by Covid. David pulled it off with much less planning and anxiety than I put into such outings, and it came off perfectly; everyone had a good time and learned.

 The two snow days were different from each other. 

The first involved a lot of powdery snow, most of which had blown off. Getting off the remainder took only five minutes. But I stayed a total of four hours to complete the electrical projects.  As previously reported, I replaced the sockets behind the switch plates in the salon because plugs inserted into the old ones frequently fell out -- way too easily.  The other two electrical projects were the battery tangs and the wires to the water maker switch. Neither were broken; this was preventive maintenance before the damage could occur. I made the battery job a bit more difficult for myself  by not taking photos before taking the tangs off the battery posts of the seven batteries. This caused me to worry at night about how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. But years ago I had drawn a map showing all the wires attaching the batteries to the boat and to each other, which I was able to find at home. It saved the day. I crimped a new small ring tab to one thin wire of the pair connecting the solar panel regulator to the batteries; thin wires because they are short runs and do not carry much electricity at any one time, just a steady flow charging the batteries whilst the sun shines. And I took off, emery clothed, vaselined, reattached and bolted down the many battery cables involved for the four aft-most of the six six-volt house batteries. Then its just putting  away all the tools, replacing the boards atop all the batteries upon which the aft cabin mattress lies and that job was done. 

Next, we go forward to the other end of the boat: to the forward head and its hatch leading even further forward to the anchor locker. Strong task lighting and the small portable electric space heater moved into that small confined space with the door between the head and the forward berth closed most of the time (except for the times when I had to go aft to find a replacement nut for the one that I dropped into the anchor locker and again to turn on and off the water maker switch by the electrical panel to make sure that the new electrical connection was solid) made for a warm enough work environment, even without the short bursts of concentrated heat from the heat gun that shrank the shrink wrap tube over the new splice to keep out water.

The heat gun did its work and I rotated a fastener 90 degrees to accept a wire tie to pull the top of the heat shrunk closed joints to the top of an inverted "U". The red and yellow on the right side come from the batteries, while the red and black to the left go to the switch. 

For those that don't remember, here is what the connection looked like before:

Two other small matters. The new carbon monoxide alarm squawked and it is LOUD. A good test for me because the sound was unfamiliar and it took me a few seconds to locate the source and turn the alarm off. Then opening hatches for a few minutes and all was clear. The alarm goes off when a tiny fraction of a lethal dose of CO is detected, to warn us before it gets lethal.

And I had put one of the small cabin sole boards in backwards: detectable because the thin holly strips separating the wide teak strips did not line up with the strips in the adjacent boards. An easy fix: unscrew, turn around and re-screw.

The second snow day involved no boat work other than removal of the snow, but this time it was not powdery but heavy and wet and without wind it had accumulated atop the cover. It took half an hour, not five minutes, while Lene waited for me in the car, but it is done. Thus was the third snow removal so far this season, a new record.

Jan 10- 24 --- Three "Other" Days and Two Work Days

The three Other Days first. One very nicely done memorial service for our late member, Hadley, presented by his widow and three adult kids. There was no minister and no religious ritual of any faith. Rather the so-called Sailors Psalm was read and John Masefield's poem: "I Must Go Down To The Sea Again".  And each of his family spoke about how much they loved, missed and had learned from him. Also, one of those slide shows that are de rigueur these days, over sailing music, again very well done. Then open discussion  in which I shared my many warm memories of him as did many others. 

The two other Other Days were Sunday walks in the woods. One along the ridge of the Palisades from the Stateline Lookout north to the state line

and the other in Westchester County at the Kensico Dam and nearby Cranberry Lake where the quarry from which the stone for the dam was cut (which reminded me of Maine). Both days were chilly and the later breezy as well but we all bundled up and the exercise kept us warm. The crew is becoming more regular, about seven to ten folks who gain masked outdoor exercise and sailing fellowship. Bravo to David for organizing these events week after week.

The two Work Days, totaling 5.5 hours of work, were mostly electrical. Before I get to that, I did attach a longer piece of wood to the cylinder of the new plastic hand operated bilge pump to permit easy uptake from the bottom of the bilge, but the damn thing then fell apart and needs to be fixed.

I got the water out using old fashioned methods.

 The good news is that the ILENE's seven lead acid batteries are not ruined after all. The reading I had gotten was a false one. But they are ten years old and the big bill for replacing them will be coming up soon. In the meantime, by temporarily joining both battery banks I can get the diesel started after which its attached alternator charges the batteries. And I'm planning to get a portable jump start battery for when the batteries get weaker.

After cleaning the oxidation form the lugs, I tried to reattach the wire ends that had been joined at the junction box pictured in the prior post.  But the thing sort of fell apart and Mr. butterfingers dropped a few of the screws which fell under the 300 feet of the anchor line for the ort anchor so I came up with a plan B. A nut and bolt will hold the loops an the ends of the wires to each other, and the juncture will be sealed in a shrink wrap tube, then wrapped in electrical tape for insurance and attached to the bulkhead in the form of an inverted "U" so that any water (there will be water) will, hopefully, flow down past the ends of the "splice" rather than into it. But I had only one heat shrink tube of large enough diameter, so the job is still not done.

Finally to the batteries again, after clearing out and moving all of the "stuff from the aft berth to the pullman berth, forward. Sandpaper scraped off all the corroded oxidized material that grows on the copper battery cable lugs. After greasing them and vacuming up the dust, they are reattached to the batteries. But only half of the lugs are done so far. The benefits of a long winter--time to get these pesky tasks done.

2021 At Last --- Jan 1 - 9 --- One Work Day And A Walk In The Park

 The walk was organized by Dave, of the sailboat "Lady Kat", for Harlem members and their friends. Eight of us showed up for this inaugural winter walk, which was enjoyed by all. More of these events will be planned. An opportunity to get some socially distant but social outdoor masked exercise with your fellow sailors and swap sea stories in this not so cold but very cruel and deadly winter.

The site was the parkland at the northeast end of Orchard Beach, our route essentially the crudely drawn blue line on the chart. Orchard Beach, the yellow sandy crescent, is just northeast of City island, and northeast of the hike is the part of New Rochelle where the Huguenot is.

The red dot I drew in the water is roughly near where we turned back, and marks an off shore rock that the group jokingly called "Roger's Rock" over my protest. Rocks are named after the boats that go aground on them and my groundings have not been near this rock. Here is me sitting in front of "my" rock. Later examination of the nautical chart for the area shows plenty of deep 12' water at low tide almost to the edge of the rock. It is a place to anchor to shelter from a westerly storm.

 Finally here are seven of the eight of us on a crude wooden boardwalk over the marshy land, Lene leading and me next to last.

The work day. less than three hours, was timed so I could order and pick up $100 of takeout food that the Huguenot requires winter members to buy each winter. And I plugged in to shore power to charge both ILENE's and Ohana's batteries. But we only got about one and a half hours of charging because the Club's circuit breaker tripped, shutting off shore power. During that first part I had the electric space heater on and turned on a burner of the galley stove with a reddish clay pot inverted over it to act as a radiator.

I got 1.5 gallons of new rain water from the bilge but the stick cleverly used to hold the pickup hose for the new hand pump is too short to permit the operation to be easily worked with only two hands so I will bring a longer and stronger stick to the next work day. I coiled up a length of two strand electrical wire so it will take up less space, pondered how to get the new pump to pump air into fenders, and examined a junction box that I had installed on the port side of the bulkhead of the anchor locker six winters ago in Florida. I had read on the internet about a new, allegedly easy to use, all plastic, enclosed box for outdoor use. The anchor locker is not outdoors, but it is not exactly dry either. I had coated the terminals of the wires with vaseline, installed them horizontally so water would not run down them, hooded the box with a stiff piece of plastic bag to drain the water off the connection and forgotten about the matter for six years. Well the connection was still secure, but not at all pristine looking.

So I disconnected everything, sanded down all four of the the terminals to good red copper and reassembly will be for next time. 

But another problem is the possibility that one of the battery banks has died. To be investigated.