October 6 Oriental to Morehead City 19 5 Nautical Miles

We had to get our sea legs back. But while it was calm in Whittaker Creek, it was blowing hard, though probably not as hard as our new wind measuring instrument shows -- calibration needed -- once we left its shelter.  We could have beat the first five miles crossing the Neuse River, but after that is was mostly canal-like waterways with the wind strong in our faces from the southwest and we motored all the way and did not set a sail.  Approaching Morehead City/Beaufort a pod of perhaps 20 dolphins passed us, going upstream, in groups of two or three at a time, their black fins, and later their backs revealing them. Sorry I could not catch a picture; I was at the helm. This military assault landing vessel was going out Beaufort Inlet to the sea while we were approaching it from the north.

Our first stop was a fuel dock, which was tricky getting into, and back off from with all that wind, but we took on 45.8 gallons, our first refueling since Annapolis. I figure that since Yorktown, we have been burning .66 gallons per hour.
We had several choice anchorages picked out but with all this wind we took a spot on the dock of Sanitary Fish Market and Restaurant for $25 if you eat here.
We were joined for dinner there by Deb and Terry of "Island Time," a 42 foot Brewer cutter-rigged cruiser, the boat that is tied up behind us and enjoyed good conversation but sadly, very mediocre food.

They are from Midland Michigan and plan a five winter campaign to cover the Caribbean, all the way to Panama and the Central American coastal nations, leaving the boat for the summers. He was an engineer for a chemical company and she retired as a professor of biology.
           For tomorrow I planned two options. The first is to go out of Beaufort Inlet and back in at the Masonboro inlet near Wrightsville Beach. This is about 75 miles, but 69 of them a straight shot in the ocean, where we can go straight and fast. They predict 20 to 25 miles of wind from the NW, so it would be a speedy beam reach and close to shore so that the big seas will not have had a chance to build up and winds diminishing by five knots in the afternoon.  The alternative is a two day passage to Wrightsville Beach via the Intercoastal. The problem with this second alternative is the midpoint anchorage -- Mile Hammock Bay located in Camp Lejeune. Specifically, the Coast Guard is advising that the ICW will be closed tomorrow for military exercises involving firing live ammunition in the direction of Mile Hammock Bay. So the inside route may require us to spend another day here. A variation on plan B, mentioned by our new friends during dinner, would be to anchor at Swansboro, about ten miles short of Camp Lejeune with a rather longish run in the ICW the next day.  After dinner, while we walked four blocks to the postoffice and back Lene prevailed upon me to forego plan A for fear that even if we left at first light, we would have only 11.5 hours before it got dark, meaning that we would have to make 6.5 knots to get there before dark. Plan for the worst is her mantra. And Lene did not relish rising before daybreak and a rough passage and I like a happy crew. Lets check the weather again in the morning.

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Leading Up To The Departure Sept 22 to October 7

Time to say goodbye to the Harlems mascots -- though these birds can get nasty when not given what they want. They come every summer. The white ones are the parents, and the darker ones were born this year and are full size but not yet white. God willing, they will return to the Harlem in 2015 before we do.

During the period of this post I had only three sails totaling only eight hours and all in light to nonexistent winds. One of these was aboard ILENE, with Stu and Barbara. Stu is a Past Commodore and they recently sold their power boat so, being boatless, I was able to seduce them to sail with me. We went to the fuel dock in Port Washington to fuel up, round trip about six or eight miles, and it took us four hours of pleasant conversation, with a delicious lunch, except we motored half of the way.

I had planned to participate in the Harlems annual Take Veterans Sailing Day, and with Ilene away had slept aboard in anticipation of that event the next day. But the engine would not start, probably because I had burned up all of the four gallons of fuel in the starboard fill fuel tank in the process of removing the final water from that tank. Howard, in his mid eighties and very intelligent and spry, helped me "bleed" the air out of the system and change the Yanmar fuel filter, which had a bit of water in it and no fuel. Howard had spent a harrowing, storm tossed ill fated week aboard ILENE in the fall of 2010 during which major damage was done, which will be the subject of a post some day when I have no current news to report. Yet Howard was willing to sail with me again! We sailed his 28.5 foot Hunter, "Covered Call" for a few hours, and because both of us are veterans, we "sort of" fulfilled the mission of the day, though all of the American Legionnaires, our Clubs actual guests, had been taken out aboard other boats by then. The boat moved very well in light air and was a pleasure to sail. I was able to better attach the tack of her genoa and pull it closer to the furling foil to give that sail a better shape using bits of light line that Howard had aboard.

The third and final sail of this period was on "Jazzsail" with Lloyd and Rhoda. I had a good time working most of the time aboard whipping the ends of their lines.

As contrasted to the three brief sails and two days with overnight sleep aboards, there were six work days (totaling only 23.5 hours), including two with Ilene as helper. Her forte is organizing and things are now put away. Hopefully I will be able to find them! We loaded a lot of stuff aboard, cleaned inside and out, took her to the dock to fill water tanks, readjusted the davit bar, finally figured out a way to add air to the dink (using the old foot pump from the prior dink with the nozzle of the current dinks pump) and did miscellaneous bits of electrical, carpentry and marlinspike work including rigging a true preventer (of accidental gybes) system.

As of October 7, the last day of ILENEs "first season" of 2014, I have 66 "Work" days, and 27 "Other" days but only 50 "Sailing" days (on which I sailed and/or slept aboard). But during our second season, October 8 through December 31, God willing, we will add 85 more sailing days, bringing 2014s total sailing days to 135.

Key West, Here we come! Im psyched!!

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October 24 Yorktown to Portsmouth 43 Miles

We were underway from 9:15 to 4 pm, and under sail except for the first ten minutes and the last hour after the wind died. This was quite a contrast from when we made the reciprocal passage in late may or early June 2012 when we had no wind at all. We went from a deep broad starboard reach to a more beamy port reach after the jibe, out in the Bay.
But first we were approached, fast, by an orange machine gun toting RIB. The Coasties aboard told us, politely,  that we must keep 500 yards distant from a vessel they were escorting. We barely saw it at first,  but it came up on our starboard beam with another orange dinghy escort.

Other VHF announcements to the world from the Coast Guard said that they would use force, including the possibility of deadly force, on  any vessel that got too close.

It was a clear cold brisk day out on the Bay. Lene resorted to MANY layers; me, a few less of them. we crossed a lot of water on banks that had depth in the teens before entering the deep water of Hampton Roads and later, the Elizabeth River, which divides Portsmouth from Norfolk. The Roads was the site of the battle of the Monitor and the Merrimac.  This big guy passed us,

going slowly out. We were properly outside the channel, but not far enough outside to make Lene happy.





The water is deep here virtually wall to wall. And this area remains a center of Naval activity. We expected to see these guys,

but not the Battleship Wisconsin, which I had thought had been retired long ago. Note the nine huge 16 " diameter guns, each capable of hurling a one ton projectile 20 miles.

Once out of the Bay -- yes we are now south of Chesapeake Bay -- despite shaking out the reef and switching to the Genoa, we did not have enough wind and hence resorted to motoring.  We took the free dock by the Renaissance Hotel. No water, no electricity, no hands to help us with our lines -- you just get what it says, a free dock for the night - the same spot in which we spent two nights in 2012. It is across a little basin from the ferry that will run you over to Norfolk for $4 round trip. Luckily that noise and the resulting wakes stop at night.

Lene made a perfect landing and I rigged up the fender board to keep us off the pilings. We took a short stroll through town on Lenes successful search for coffee and met up with folks from four boats that are traveling together, and, since the canal is narrow here, with fixed times for lock openings they will be with us as well.  Back to our boat for a good home cooked meal. Here is Norfolk, across the river from our boat.

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October 25 Portsmouth VA to Elizabeth City NC 43 8 Nautical Miles

Today we traversed the Great Dismal Swamp, one of three inland routes between Norfolk and North Carolina. This is the westernmost route and most of it is a very straight and narrow (about 50 feetwide) canal

that is not very deep (about eight to ten feet).A new route to a new port.
One thing about it is easier. Normally I piece together many legs of a days journey, measure the length of each lag and add them together. But in the ditch, the charts show the mileposts from mile zero in Norfolk to over a thousand miles later in Florida. But these are in statute (land) miles and so one must take only 85 percent of them to get the nautical miles. Today we started half mile north of mile zero and Elizabeth City is at mile 51, leading to 43.8 nautical miles. And describing "legs" would have been difficult after we exited the canal proper into the Pasquatank River, which is nothing if not sinuous. Oops, upside down. Eliz. City is the black boxes (streets) toward the upper right, the old down town.

But this path is more challenging because there is no sailing allowed, and the road is so narrow, requiring constant attention as when driving a car. Also there are hazards above and below. Below are "deadheads" -- water soaked tree stumps that lay on the bottom and give us a thump when we hit them. We know they are there and that we will take a few hits (four today) but unlike coral heads in the Bahamas, they do not sink your boat. The peril above is tree branches that overhang the canal and get whacked by our mast (about three times today).

Here is some of the flora we harvested with our mast and shrouds, showing also the straightness of the canal, the diagonal to the lower left corner.

It was a long day, but warm at last and sunny, and windless. Normally we dont like windless days but no sailing is possible in the canals so no big loss. We got underway at seven in morning mist, and headed up the Elizabeth River to make it to the first lock, at the northern end of the swamp, at its 8:30 scheduled opening.


Here we are, all five boats, locked up together.

The lock business and the associated bridge took an hour and we timed the next 22 miles at five knots to arrive at the second and last lock for its 1:30 opening, and arrived in Elizabeth City at about 5 pm. A long, slow, ten hour day.
Yesterday we crossed paths with a mammoth container ship; today a more modest craft.

Eliz. City calls itself "The Harbor of Hospitality" and this billboard

is 50 feet from our slip. It proves this true by providing seventeen free guest docks, and we took one. In the morning, a man and his daughter offered us a ride, three miles, to the supermarket and Judy and Rich, who work for the Coast Guard, gave us a lift back. Yep, a friendly town. We are bow in. On the way in we looped our starboard stern line over a piling and  then ran forward to hand a bow line to one of the friendly volunteers who secured it to a piling near land on the port side. Easy, in the absence of wind. The other two lines loop around pilings off the other two corners and I added a spring line to keep us from crashing into the street ahead of us if there was a surge (but no surge tonight) and we were totally secure. Black line is starboard aft line and white is spring line.

The last step was loosening the starboard forward tether and tightening the port one to bring our bow above the short stubby dock so that we could climb down from the bowsprit onto it.

On arrival we took free shoreside showers

and had dinner ashore before returning for the evening. There was a very easy camraderie among the crews of the boats here, all enthusiastic about their similar but individual adventures. Next to us, separated only by our biggest fender, is a beautiful Shannon, "Whisper", whose three very young, very blond children came aboard to play with our crew. Witty was not really a happy camper in this, but he played along well enough. I missed the photo op.

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October 20 Solomons to Cape Henry 41 Miles

It was cold in Mill Creek last night, in the low 40s -- a two cat night. We have no heat except when plugged into shore power so we closed off the doors to the forward head and the salon, making the pullman cabin small, and with all three blankets, two cats and two humans, had a comfortable night.

The morning was warmer and calm in Mill Creek and we set out for Deltaville, which we had somehow bypassed on all of our prior trips.  On the way out, Lene got us onto the sand at the right side of the channel but we dropped the sail and were able to back off in reverse.

Out in the Bay, we were close hauled on a starboard tack but true wind was only ten knots and we were able to make our way close to the turn west for Deltaville using full sails.  It was early so we decided to continue on to Yorktown. But then the wind came up and we had to use the smaller head sail and the chop came up so we needed to use an assist from the engine, and the wind veered a bit forcing us further east than we wanted.  I saw that we would have to tack near Virginias Eastern Shore and would have another twenty miles on a port beat, westward across the Bay and up the York River to Yorktown. We ended sailing almost seven hours, I was getting tired and the idea formed: Why not stay the night on the Eastern Shore?

Lene checked the cruising guide and the town of Cape Charles, with its Harbor of Refuge, a man-made basin cut into the coast line, containing its municipal marina, was close. It was approached by a well marked 2.7 mile long channel heading east and then NE. I love well run municipal marinas; they are a reply to those who think that government is the source of our problems rather than the solution to many of them. The town is about nine miles north of the actual Cape for which it is named -- the southern tip of the Delmarva peninsula. It is a quiet town especially when we explored it, late on a Monday afternoon, after giving ILENE her bath. We strolled the main drag and saw signs indicating new businesses were opening. The port is still largely for commercial fishing and barges for the cement factory across from us. But the sunset, looking across the Bay isnt shabby. Note the tanker on the horizon at the left; more on this later.

We had dinner at The Shanty, the restaurant located in the marina and I wont describe each dish (this aint no food blog) but the cooking was imaginative, well executed, delicious and inexpensive. We bought this PVC and driftwood egret there, to add to our aviary sculpture collection.

Speaking of sculptures, here are two mermaids, seen during out stroll through town.

Two sad things happened out there today. We saw several boats, close together, off our port bow, one giving off a plume of white smoke. We heard some incoherent VHF radio chatter about a fire. Normally, such chatter is about nautical events tens of miles away. We saw a helicopter overhead. We called to offer further assistance but got no response. Then, after we had passed, the flames ranged 30 feet high and great clouds of black smoke emanated.

Someones dreamboat is no more. News reports state that the boater was rescued by a good samaritan who got there before us; no one was injured.

The other sad event was the probable death of my Ipad. It fell out onto the swim platform and there was bathed in salt water. A smaller loss than of an entire boat, but more personal. It put a crimp in Lenes relationship with me for a while. "I told you not to leave it up here!" she said. She was in a foul mood; stewing in her anger. A few hours later I reminded her that after I had told her not to carry her cell phone in the dink unless contained in a zip lock, or stronger, plastic bag, she fell in the surf at Grand Turk Island. On that occasion I simply let her use my cell phone. Memory of that earlier comparable sad event of 2012 cooled out her anger.

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We Are OFF! NY to Annapolis October 8 10 268 Miles

Our first problem was discovered when we had to use the dinghy to go to dinner on City Island because the Clubs launch service ends at 6 pm in the waning days of the season: it started right up but stopped in five seconds. So we paddled.  And the night of the seventh was unpleasantly rocky on the mooring due to strong SW winds kicking up big chop in Eastchester Bay, impeding sleep.

The passage was from 9:45 am on the eighth until 7:30 am on the tenth, 45.75 hours with a two hour "stop" to be discussed later, so 43.75 hours underway. The first of the two days (NYC and the Atlantic coast of New Jersey) was warmer than expected for the season, both day and night, with sunny clear skies and a big full moon; the second of the days (Delaware Bay, the C and D Canal and Chesapeake Bay) was raw and cloudy but not frigid and not rainy. This chart, created by Jims Spot device shows our route, except that it connects the dots every four hours or so and hence cuts off the corners and shows us crossing land. [Image to be added.]
We actually left, after mango pancakes, about an hour too early due to my impatience so we did not experience the favorable tide while we fought strong headwinds until near Hellsgate when the tide started flushing us out of NY Harbor. A tug with four barges (2 x 2) came up behind us near Hellsgate and called ILENE by name to advise that we would apparently be going through Hellsgate together and that his four barges would be swinging to port. I did a short 360 degree loop to let him pass and observed that his tow did indeed sweep far to his port side and "crab" through the most problematic tidal strait of the passage on a diagonal. We passed parallel to the FDR Drive with its snarled traffic on which I drive so often to get to the Club.

Here is the Freedom Tower to the left, currently New Yorks tallest structure, and a tower of the Brooklyn Bridge to the right, which held that title in the 1880s.

We put up sails, starting with double reefed main and small jib, after we passed Governors Island and we were on starboard tack all the way to Cape May, though we gradually shook out the reefs and changed back and forth to the genoa when passing through periods of apparent winds of 20-25 knots and periods where they were in the mid teens. The Verranzano Bridge, our ninth of the passage, was emotionally my last point in New York until around May, 2015.

Unlike the similar passage on Pandora about two weeks before, on which the wind was never forward of the beam, on this trip it was almost never aft of the beam, though rarely close hauled and predominantly about 60 degrees off the bow. 

Jim, who made the trip on both boats is a great man to have aboard. He is a fellow Cornellian, an engineer and very knowledgeable as a sailor though he wears his experts mantle lightly, without a trace of the arrogance that some experts have -- laid back and a pleasure to sail with. He agreed to my request to sleep the earlier part of each night and stand the later night watch.  During our first night I was "racing" a green light that started off our port bow. At times he would get ahead and by changing sails, at times, I would get ahead. Our speed varied from 3.5 to 8.1 knots depending on the wind. When very close I hailed the "sailboat with another sailboat on your port quarter", identified ILENE and thanked him "for keeping me awake last night". He reciprocated the thanks and identified himself as "Momo" a Valiant 40, here shown off  Wildwood,

bound for Florida with a planned stop for a day in Cape May harbor. I told him I hoped we would meet up with them in Florida or along the way. He is a very good sailor because ILENE is a faster boat but he kept up.

Jim took the watch for most of the passage up Delaware Bay, in which we avoided the worst of the adverse tide. Having rounded Cape May at about 9 a.m., using the inside passage a hundred yards off the beach, with main and engine but no headsail, Jim suggested a diagonal course, away from but toward the shipping channel at Miah Maull light, after which we stayed just outside the channel on its right side almost all the way up. A tug with barges ran near adjacent to us most of the way and we put up the headsail when possible to gain speed and sailed without engine, close reaching on port. Unfortunately, when the tug got ahead of us during lighter winds, we got long doses of his diesel fumes. About 5-10 miles before the Canal, when we are slightly ahead of him, I called on VHF and told him our plan to cut across his bow to get to the other side of the channel in anticipation of our left turn into the Canal and he replied "OK".

As we entered the canal Jim came up with the good idea to stop for a couple of hours to avoid the worst of the adverse tidal flow. We would tie up for free at a dock in the Summit North Marina on the north side of the Canal to have dinner in their excellent Aqua Sol Restaurant. And we shared a bottle of red and a nice assortment of appetizers while motoring in the canal. This is the same marina where ILENE spent a night on our last trip in June 2012 and where Pandora went in for fuel two weeks ago. But on our way in, going slowly, of course, we went aground. We used the preventer to swing the boom, with Jim sitting on its end, out to port, in an effort to tilt the boat and break us free. No luck, we were stuck hard. And we created this lead line, the old fashioned depth meter, out of a green divers weight, a wire wrap, a length of light line and red tape to mark where the wet part old the line ended.

Yep, we were stuck alright and it was mud, which you can see,  dried on the bottom of the weight. What to do? Wait for the tide to come in and float us off. I took the watch and two hours later, at about ten, I saw us drift, turned on the engine and woke Jim.  We motored to the inner end of the cul de sac, turned in the deep turning basin and headed out of there.  Then I slept for four hours until 2 a.m. while Jim took us out of the Canal and into the Bay.  I took the watch from 2 until 7:10 a.m., when GPS put us ten minutes from the red daymark guarding Back Bay harbor of Annapolis, where Jim lives with Ann and where we docked at Bert Jabins Marina -- where ILENE had stood on the hard during the winter of 2005 in which we bought her.
Ann came over to take us to breakfast at Grumps, an Annapolis breakfast institution, where no two coffee mugs ever match. But the Captain ordered another batch of pancakes and put Jim to work peeling mangos for the three of us.
Then how to best utilize the time before Lenes arrival at about 4 pm. Well the most critical task was fixing the outboard, the engine of our car. And it being Friday, when mechanics are at work, I searched and found Steve of A and B Yachtsmen, who disassembled the carburetor, cleaned the rust from it, and emptied our fuel tank and line. She runs again! We are across the dock from a beautiful Tayana 55, "Karina"

owned by Dr. Miles (both M.D. and a boat doctor) and Ann, who are leaders in the Caribbean 1500. Ann gave Ilene a lot of good advice about sailing with cats in 2010 and unfortunately their cat has gone to heaven. I introduced myself as a graduate of the 2010 run and he pretended to remember me and invited us to an Alumni reunion we attended that night.

Before that I washed Ilenes salt crust and New York grime and freshened our water supply, cleaned up the interior a bit and took a shower and a nap. Lene and Witty look happy to be here and we got a good nights sleep.

The adventure has begun!

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October 10 21 ILENEs Floating Season Ends

All good things must end. Having lived aboard during the first 146 days of 2015, during last winters Florida adventure, 2015s boat days will be a good number. (See next post.) The twelve day period reported on in this post saw (A) ILENEs final three sails, (B) four work days and (C) GOC.
Lets start with the sails. One was with Rhoda and Lloyd, of the Harlem. We have sailed with many times in the past. We were underway about four hours, and I confess that due to poor note taking, the wind and our course regrettably escape me.
Next was with four residents of my apartment building. I started out planning to sail with Dorothy, who is a fellow client of our personal trainer. That morning he mentioned that another couple in our building who trained with him, Mort and Rollie, had said they would like to sail some time. "Call them right now and ask about today; we leave at noon!" He did and they are in! But Dorothy was not feeling up to it today and requested a rain check for next season. "Sure." And now, including me, we are down to three souls. But on my way back to our apartment I saw Max, who shares a wall with us; he is in the next apartment.  He had to check with Ellen and two minutes later, my bell rang and our party had grown to five. Max purchased a picnic lunch for us all and we ate aboard, before getting underway -- while waiting for wind. Then there was only a ghost of wind, but it built, out of the north, and we got almost to Execution Rocks before heading back. We enjoyed four hours underway and three of the four guests took a turn at the helm. Mort is a professional oenophile who praised the bottle I served aboard and brought another to my apartment to replace it. Rollie, Mort, Max and Ellen:

ILENEs final sail of the season was also the final gathering of the Old Salts, including several of the regulars, and two special guests. We were underway for 3.5 hours, and got about a mile past Ex. Rocks, peaking at 7.4 knots. This was rather amazing given how foul ILENEs bottom was. (See below.) Thanks, Larry, for the next two photos. Here are Dave, Marti and Marcia:

Next is Dave, doing what racers do: checking the sail trim, with Art at the helm

Readers of this blog will recall Marti, who I have named The Goat Lady of Grenada. She has a long history of animal care and is volunteering there to help raise goats to develop a chevre cheese industry. She showered us with such great hospitality there during 2011. I had known that she was coming to the Big Apple for a visit and saw that she had arrived via a Facebook posting. It turns our she was staying in a friends apartment only a block away. I did not have her phone number but instant messaged her at about 10 a.m., and picked her up an hour later. She fit right in and has the ability to do that wherever she is. Our other honored guest was Dave, an excellent racer and now in charge of qualifying members who want to use the boats that the Club owns. I have long desired that he sail on ILENE, figuring I would learn something, and I was not disappointed.

With Lene in Israel, I had no date for the Clubs annual end of season gala, and Marti was able to gin up a suitable outfit despite having left all her dressy clothes in "The G," as she calls Grenada. It was a cool Saturday evening, warmed by the camaraderie of our members. Memorial plaques were set in the flag pole base for Al, a loyal Old Salt who moved to Florida two years ago, Tom, whose death I had not heard about, and Vinny, who I sailed with up the Hudson at the end of the season, perhaps ten years ago. The cocktail hour was long and delicious with good quality wines, and the sit down dinner was also great except for the perennial problem we experience: our kitchen is just not adequate to serve that many people at the same time. Our servers brought eight plates at a time to serve all the people at one table at the same time, but the last table was not served until amore than an hour after the first. The trophies to the winners of the races were duly warded. As Fleet Captain, I described the highlights of the Clubs cruising activities, thanking Bruce and Diane for designing the Club Cruise itinerary. I regret that I forgot to summarize the Old Salts season and to thank Mark for his help in reinvigorating the group.

(The next day was chilly and I escorted Marti on a tour of lower Manhattan via rented CitiBikes, my first experience with this program. I got an appreciation for the problems of cyclists in the City, with the paint marking the bike lanes significantly worn away and motorists infringing them even when marked. The thirty minute time period causes tension - finding the docking stations, though they let you take another bike two minutes after you drop off the last. We used three bikes to get from Tenth St to the Brooklyn Bridge and Chinatown, to the Hudson and Freedom Tower and back, stopping for a warming lunch in Chinatown.)

The first of the work days was the Clubs annual fall work party. I got enlisted into a group of four who painted the yard car,

by which boats on cradles are transported around in the boat yard (parking lot). After about twenty years of service it looks like new. I love these work parties because you get to know people who you only vaguely recognized before. And a delicious free lunch is always served.
Having loaded the two pieces of ILENEs canvas winter cover from the locker to the cart to the launch and to the boat, I motored from the Harlem to the Huguenot, about five miles, in no wind to speak of, entering through the western passage, passing the NYACs club house. After docking I stripped and bundled up the two headsails and removed the battens from the mainsail.
Next day I stripped off the main and after tying it to itself, heaved each of the three huge sail bundles from the boat onto the dock. Then they are, one at a time, lifted into a dock cart, wheeled about 150 yards to the parking lot, lifted into my car and driven to the Doyle sail loft on City Island, for repairs, cleaning, proper folding and winter storage. That same afternoon ILENE was lifted from the water revealing the terrible condition of her bottom.

Keel is bearded! Too many sandy landings in the last 18 months.
But power washing by Orlando and scraping that I did cleaned it off and she sits blocked and steadied by jack stands. Some of the black bottom paint is completely gone, with the blue paint underneath showing through.

The fourth work day, five hours, began with an inspection of a blasting of the bottom paint using tiny glass particles (except for the aft portion that I barrier coated two winters ago). David, using a powerful air compressor, did the forward three quarters of the hull in two hours for a very well spent $1175. Based on how long it took me to do the back end two winters ago, I saved about 25 days of back breaking, dirty and dangerously unhealthy work. A bargain. A photo of the newly white bottom will be added to this post soon. That same day I tried to winterized the engine, air conditioner, heads and fresh water system, which was very frustrating, because I had done this in the past but kept getting stuck. I also removed the lifelines and stanchions and rigged the "ridge pole" for the canvas cover (whisker pole, boom and a board from the aft end of the boom to the radar arch) in preparation for installing the cover. The next post will describe a sail from Essex CT to Hampton, VA, which kept getting delayed by equipment problems and weather. Many work days are ahead.

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October 18 Cambridge to Solomons Island 34 miles

Underway from 8:45 to 3:15 today.   Would have left a bit earlier but I left my cell phone at Johns house and he had to deliver it to us.  Thanks again John!

After motoring out of the inner harbor the still was supplanted by breeze which built during our passage. It soon became apparent that single reefed main and small jib were enough. The Choptank River has several ninety degree bends which permitted us to beat our way out of the river, but slowly. Once out in the Bay we turned increasingly to port, onto more southerly courses which put the wind closer to the beam and eventually, slightly aft of the beam. With those two small sails we hit speeds of 8 knots and averaged about 7.5  for several hours until we had to turn increasingly to the west again, to enter the Patuxent River, which features Solomons Island (no longer an island due to landfill at the upstream end) close to its mouth, on its northern shore.

We put in here twice before -- in 2006 and 2012. The first time we stayed at a marina and explored the town and its restaurants, supermarket, and museum. Solomons is very popular with boaters and has more than ten Marinas on Back Creek (it  runs in BACK of the town?). This time we motored about a mile up Mill Creek, slightly to the east. which is one of the several creeks that branch out from the harbor. We anchored in Old House Cove, off of Mill Creek, in 9 feet of water with 40 feet of snubbed chain out. NOAA predicted a continuation of todays NW winds at 15 knots tonight so we anchored in the lee of relatively high ground. Our newly found friend, Active Captain, sort of like a "Yelp" for boaters, reports this is a nice sheltered place with good holding and we agree. It is inaccessible to the hotels, restaurants, shops and other tourist attractions of this area but that is alright by us. We did not even lower the dink. We have each other, food, books and work to do. We were about 50 yards closer to the boathouse on our bow, this view upstream in the cove. No company tonight.

The Cove is bucolic; foliage just starting to turn here

Looking out from the Cove to the Mill River. Lots of room here.

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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 Im 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 Clubs 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. Im 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.

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