Wow No posts Since Feb 4! Its Catch Up Time AND the amazing Sonya Baumstein

Well time off from boating for a pleasurable trip to Atlanta and another in Portland, Oregon, both with family, plus a LOT of cold weather this winter has slowed progress. When the daily high temperature does not reach 40, I do not do boat work. At the end of this post is Sonya Baumstein, well worth waiting for.

The fourth day of the removing of old anti-barnacle paint from the bottom (3.25 hours is a days work according to my by then achy muscles) has gotten the aft 1/3 of the boat scraped off. Now the sander comes into play to really clean and give a "tooth" to the bottom before a couple coats of ridiculously expensive "barrier" coat paint and then equally expensive bottom paint. Only the aft 1/3, you ask? Yes, alas, Rome was not built in a day; the complete bottom job will be spread out over at least three seasons. And because we will go south next winter, the next two winters out of the water for this will be 2015-16 and 2016-17. The parts not done "right" this winter will be spotted out (sanding at the bare spots and then painted over, before the entire boat gets its last coat.

Also, I have spent more time working inside the pumping mechanisms of the two marine heads. And Ive obtained all the replacement parts I need. Now all I have to do is call the friendly helpful techie at Groco to get a couple of hints on how to put humpty dumpty back together again. Here is more than you ever wanted to know about the inside of a Groco head, with its white porcelain bowl removed. The extreme left black piece at the bottom of the photo is the rubber Joker valve and its round flange fits between the two parts of large white hose to the left and forms the gasket sealing them and creating the passage for sewage to leave the head, for either the holding tank or for overboard discharge, out at sea.

The large black disk at the bottom is the rubber gasket between the unit you see and the bowl. The most extreme right round looking piece is the piston for the pump with two white plastic rings that seal it, and just to its left is a valve, currently upside down that sits above the piston and lets water from the bowl to the pumps chamber. Have you had enough yet? I thought so. Too much? Sorry about that.

Other work has involved snow and ice removal. While in Atlanta, a thick crust of ice had formed atop the blue canvas winter cover-- a lot of weight up so high. And I surely could not get at it from the top because it is too far off the ground. So I crawled into the airspace between the deck and the bottom of the cover and pushed up and out to shake the snow and ice off the cover. And I threw out my back a bit in the process. Also, despite the cover, water enters the boat through its top and collects in the bilge and freezes. This had to be chopped up with the ice pick and then access to the water beneath the ice was available for the manual pump into the bucket. All in a days work.

In Oregon we visited the Historical Society Museum which has a full room devoted to the history of the Battleship Oregon, nicknamed the "Bulldog of the Sea." She served our nation from before the Spanish American War through and after WWI and was much beloved by her home state (though she was built in California). Battleships were the largest and proudest of the navy, though they became relatively obsolete with the advent of air power projected from aircraft carriers. The most amazing thing about the Oregon, to me, was her size -- 346 feet! This is tiny by todays standards. Big compared to ILENEs 43 feet, but the USS Hammerberg, DE-1015 was 306 feet long. A tiny thin hulled Destroyer Escort almost as big as a heavily armor-plated mighty Battleship!

And we had the pleasure of a visit to the Harlem YC by Sonya Baumstein. Who is Sonya Baumstein, you might ask? Well she ROWED, with three men who she recruited as her crew, across the Atlantic from the Azores to the West Indies in a 23 foot rowboat.

This 57 day adventure was choped into two hour shifts: two for rowing and two for eating, cleaning, repairing and sleeping -- continuously, for 57 days. Thats twelve hours of rowing per day! Sonya had dinner with us and then presented her slide show.  I dont know how old she is but her poise and intelligence made her an absolute pleasure to be around.  Her ease in presenting her story and her self deprecation while speaking was endearing because it was a display of natural humility...and this coming from a young woman who goes so far beyond what any of us in the room has ever done!  I think I speak for all who attended when I say she was a big hit!

Since her Atlantic adventure she paddled a stand up paddle board, across the frigid waters of the Bering Strait from Russia to Alaska in eleven hours, this time wearing a drysuit and accompanied by a small fishing boat.  She also bicycled from San Diego to Seattle and paddled a kayak from there to northern Alaska. Many exciting, scary and funny incidents on each adventure.
Her next adventure, planned for April 2015 -- is a solo row in a newer, better designed boat from Japan to the US, scheduled to take from four to six months. And she does a lot of marine biology research along the way. For more info, google sonyabaumstein.com. As she told her story, including her graduation from College and Graduate school and her recovery from being hit by an automobile which took three years of multiple surgeries to recover from, before these adventures began, we could see how much she has learned about the seas, currents and winds since she set off from the Azores. I predict greater success for her next crossing.A portion of the enthralled Harlemites:

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May 26 to June 21 Its Been A Long Time with Little Sailing But

Normally the summer time is the busiest blogging time, but after 146 days afloat this calendar year before May 27, this is a decompression time. I do not feel the urgent need to get out on the water every day, not that nothing water related has taken place.

I have gone on two of the Wednesday afternoon sails with the Old Salts, the new name for the revived Old Farts. First on PC Marks "Deuce of Hearts", a catamaran, and then on ILENE.  Mark has been instrumental in reviving this group this year. Four people came the first time and seven the second (me, Mark, Mike, Richie, Dave, Morty and Clara). And the G and Ts are just as good as ever. Both days we were graced with moderate light wind after lunch at the Club. The food at the Club is a bit pricier than last year, and the portions a bit smaller (which is good for our health). The food is simply much better quality and better prepared. On ILENE we cut through the channel behind Stepping Stones Light where there was very light wind and we were near a run, before heading to the Throggs Neck Bridge and back to Hart Island before heading for home. The wind changed direction with the result that we only did one jibe and one tack.

I also had a pleasant afternoon with Ilene, and Bennett and Harriet aboard their Beneteau, "Ohana". She moved nicely in very moderate air. Come to think of it, we have had a lot of very moderate air for June. The four of us had a good dinner at the Club after, trying out our new chef, Ann, who does good things to food.

And I crewed for PC Mark on Deuce of Hearts

with PC Erwin, visiting from Florida, and PC and Ms. Bob and Laura in the Clubs annual Rear Commodores Regatta, which was set up as a pursuit race of slightly less than five miles.
Lene and I had won this race on ILENE back in about 2008, on a pursuit-destination race to New Rochelle with, miraculously, only one jibe. In a pursuit race, the handicaps are computed for the given course in advance and each boat starts at a different time, reducing the collision-inducing madness when several boats want to be at the favored end of the starting line at precisely the same time. So, if everyone sails as projected, all of the boats should arrive at the finish line at the same time. ILENE had the biggest handicap back then and hence started last and passed every other boat in the fleet on the way to the win.
Alas, this year we came in tenth of twelve boats because we made two mistakes. The first was not getting to the starting line until almost a minute after our time. Stuff happens and this has happened to me. The second mistake was using the small jib until the third leg of the triangular course. Deuce of Hearts is set up like ILENE, with a larger headsail set forward of the jib; it has to be furled between tacks. With the smaller headsail we were just too slow. Another great feature of Deuce of Hearts is that the tack of the big headsail is mounted on a track and can be moved to port or starboard  from the cockpit to catch wind without messing up the wind in the main. We were untrained crew and the PCs figured out how to use this neat trick, but too late. I think Deuce of Hearts has a lot of potential to be a fast boat on the race track.

Part of the reason for relatively little sailing was the visit by Lenes niece, Barbie, her son Trevor (who we hung with in Amsterdam last June) and Anna, a 16 year old exchange student from Denmark who lived in Barbies home for the school year. So we had five folks in our apartment and they made it very clear that their jam packed week in NYC did not include sailing. But we did see sailboats  -- at the MOMA -- Seurats pointillist masterpiece.

And there were several days of planning for the Club cruise plus a Club weekend excursion to Sheepshead Bay in August, and Club participation in the July 4th parade up the Hudson with a full wooden replica of "Le Hermione", which brought LaFayette to these shores and participated in winning the battle against the British fleet that was intending to re supply and reinforce General Cornwallis at Yorktown. When deprived of such aid, Cornwallis surrendered to General Washington, thereby ending the military operations of our war of independence.

And four workdays, pickling the water maker, which we will not need this year, cleaning out the refrigerators and the bilge, putting up the new plastic enclosure to the cockpit for measurement for straps to tie it up out of the way in the rolled up position when needed and snaps to mate it with the sides of the dodger. Finally I did work on the solid cherry batten that holds up the ceiling in the salon, to accommodate the new hatch screen enclosure.

And arranging some sail dates, sending back the new stainless steel snubber line hook which was replaced with a smaller one that fits and holds onto the anchor line, reducing the cruising area of our insurance policy to save money and other boating related chores.

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