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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Deciding On A Boat To Build

I finally narrowed down my boat search.I have been tormenting myself with buying or building.After doing the math,I have come to the conclusion that I can build a new boat cheaper and better than buying a used turn key boat.Most of the turn key boats I looked at really needed work.Fiberglass boats are the worst.Most have water logged flotation foam that causes the wood stringers and transom to rot from the bottom up.Ive stripped (and helped strip) and rebuilt a few boats.It is not fun in a big 25+ foot boat.Its faster and easier to start from scratch.

 Most of my boating will be on larger lakes and the ICW around South Carolina,North Carolina,and Georgia.I do plan to take the boat around the Great Loop,so it must be a sea worthy design.I searched for years for a design that was easy for a first time builder with some basic carpentry and boat building skills.There are a lot of excellent boat designers with plans out.Most are more suited to the advanced DIY builder than a first timer with basic skills.Out of all the producers of plans,I decided on Spira International.Jeff Spira is the designer of all the plans.The best thing about his plans,is access to Jeff Spira himself.He can be contacted through his website or on facebook.He always gets back in contact with you within time.He is a busy man tho.So please give him a few days,he could be away.

 My base criteria for a boat is as follows in this order.There are more variables,but these are the main ones.
1)Trailerable behind a full size pick up truck,van,or class C RV.
2)Shallow draft, 12 to 16 inches with the lower unit up.
3)Absolutely no more than 2 gallon per hour fuel burn at displacement speed.
4)Must have sleeping arrangements for four.
5)Must have full head with shower.

In my next post, "The Chosen One",I will review the Spira plans that I considered,a break down of build cost,and the plans I chose.

Honey,Lets get a boat.

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July 3 4 Parade up NY Harbor with LHermione 60 Miles

The New York Times of July 3 had a full page article on the visit of The Hermione. (We learned that while we pronounce her The Her-my-oh-knee, the French call her LAir-me-own.) A replica of the French square rigged wooden gunboat that ferried Lafayette across the puddle to help us win independence from the Brits. She visited Yorktown VA, where the original boat helped defeat the British resupply and re-enforcement fleet, thus causing General Cornwallis to surrender to General Washington, effectively ending the military aspects of the Revolution. We visited Yorktown on our way south and on our way north. Hermione is doing this as a good will tour, to remind us of our friendship with the French and making stops up the eastern seacoast to Boston. 

As Fleet Captain I put this out as a potential Club adventure and three other members joined us for the parade, though only two of us on  HYC registered boats. My friend since 1972, Marty, joined us at ten a.m. at the Harlem and we got underway at 11. But a failure of communication caused us to spend half an hour, drifting, waiting for "Shanghai," a Pearson 31, the other Harlem boat, with CJ and Jenny, while they had gone ahead. During the wait the NYC police burned off a vast stash of fireworks they had taken.

No problem once communications were restored; we caught up with Shanghai at about 90th Street in the East River, making great speed with the favorable tidal flow and engine.





ILENE, shown here passing 25th St.,used mainsail pretty much the whole way, but the wind was so light that except for a few puffs it mostly just prevented rocking.

 We anchored in Gravesend Bay, off the west end of Coney Island, Brooklyn, On the way we were passed by Gandalf 3, another Saga 43 out of Stamford, which I had visited to study its dinghy davit blocks before connecting ILENEs
Gravesend Bay is huge but exposed. But its very near where the parade was to start and there was very little wind at night, so we anchored out on the flat in 17 feet of water, with 70 feet of snubbed chain. There is a deeper channel, 25 to 27 feet, closer to shore, so we stayed further off. Our new smaller stainless steel snubber hook was deployed and it works like a charm. Finally!

Having left at 11:30, we arrived at 3:00 and lowered the dink. You cant miss the spot, Toys R Us put out a big welcome sign. The boats to the left are among the four French flagged Beneteaus,  Waquies [the key for the last letter of the alphabet is inoperative] and hard chined aluminum sloops "dressed" for the parade with their signal flags. They came in after us and anchored far enough away from us. I had expected more boats.

Then came a few hours rest, except I used the time in an unsuccessful attempt to get the cockpit VHF radio to power up. It is so convenient and useful because VHF Channel 8 was used for communications during the parade, but we had to use the inside radio turned up loud.

A shared dinner aboard ILENE for the five of us: Lene, Roger, Marty and CJ. Thanks for your pictures Jenny!

Everyone had brought food that did not need to be cooked and the menu was varied and delicious, starting with a bottle of champagne and cheese provided by Shanghai. We were together from 6 to 9 before I dinked CJ and Jenny back to Shanghai and everyone had a good nights sleep. Jenny, became infatuated with our cats, and can you blame her.

Sunset under the bridge:

In the morning, mango- sweetpotato pancakes were on the agenda, sweetened by honey that we had, and peanut butter that Jenny brought, not that the pancakes really needed to be sweetened much. And I forgot the bacon as well as the maple syrup! And the final system to seemingly go down was the fresh water pump. I can hear it run but it is not bringing water to the tap. So the dishes were rinsed off in a bucket of soapy seawater and will be properly washed once order is restored.

The parade formed up: about a hundred boats at its peak, all at the sides and rear of Hermione once she turned at the start.

I felt bad that I had not yet purchased a new American flag and flagpole after ours went missing during our winter excursion. But marty wore a sweater during the parade which eased my guilt.

The leader had a fetish about arriving under the Veransano Bridge, and at the Statue of Liberty, at precisely pre-scheduled times

presumably for the coordination of a US Navy flyover by two jets, for the media and for fire boat blasts, center in next photo.

But this caused me problems because Hermione did not maintain the five knots speed over ground that had been the plan and was repeated via VHF. I had only the small jib up and engine but it is hard to go straight when you slow down to 1.8 knots and when boats are perhaps fifteen feet away on both sides of you. I should have furled that jib but no harm done.    Here is Shanghai:

 The other expected Harlem participants were Gene, not on "Chandi Nerissa", but on a friends boat out of Stamford, which I did not see, and Rear Commodore Peter, not on "Annandale" but on Ricks boat, now in Jersey City who hailed us immediately after the parade formally ended. Several other Harlem boats rafted up in a rendesvous in Oyster Bay these days so there were plenty of guest moorings available.

I felt guilty for not having purchased a replacement for our American flag and pole, which went missing during our winter travels to Florida. But Marty assuaged my  guilt somewhat by wearing an appropriate sweater.

It was too early to go home when the parade ended because the tide in the East River and Hellsgate were adverse. So we drifted slowly down the Hudson from midtown to the Battery under only the small jib and tide.

The wind was down from the 15 knots out of the north that had faced us during the parade: still from the north but perhaps six knots. And a light rain was falling. When we reached the Battery Lene wanted to go home as soon as possible to see the fireworks from our roof so we did what was silly: we went up stream against the tide using motor, full main and small jib. Unlike the eight plus knots we had enjoyed on the way down, we made speeds that got as high as 4.2 knots, briefly, and as low as 1.1 knots at times.  But we were back on the mooring by 7:30, an hour before sundown. If we had waited two hours before starting, I think we would have arrived only fifteen minutes later, having expended a lot less fuel in the process.
A good time was had by all.

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