HYC Cruise Day 6 July 30 Lay Day in Block Island

Blasts crew rented a car to tour the Island, by day, dined at the National on a gift certificate and reported that it was excellent.

True North remained aboard during the day to make sure their anchor was holding in the big winds and came in for dinner at The Oar. 

Everyone from Ohana and ILENE (except Ilene) rented bikes from Aldos at the Boat Basin for the big loop of the southern half of the island. First major stop was at the beach at the foot of Mohegan Bluffs. 

There the younger generation went for a swim while Bennett and Roger took a long walk west along the beach. I dont think I have ever been there at low tide before. It reveals where one can swim without fear of being crushed against submerged rocks by the breakers. Then a brief stop at the lighthouse for liquid refreshments as defense against dehydration. There we learned of the imminent plan to build a "U" shaped cup of windmill generators around the southern end of the island a mile or two off shore. We had lunch at Finns, where Bennett satisfied his craving for whole fried clams and Roger ordered this new (for me) treat too. Then marketing at the very pricey local market before returning the bikes -- 1.5 hours late for a half day (4 hour) rental but they did not charge us the extra ten bucks -- and we dinked back, except for Rolo and Chris, who went to the beach and returned by launch later

Dinner on ILENE for eight: from Ohana, ILENE and Shanghai. A weird assortment of foods that somehow came together magically.  A rain shower required us to migrate from the cockpit to the cabin. CJ enthralled us with stories from his interesting life. We eight were from China, the U.S., Guatemala and Denmark, and included speakers of about ten different languages.  Most of our dinner table pics are after the meal; eating seems to always take precedence over photography until plates are empty.

Rolo, Christian, Laura and Bennett

Jenny, CJ, Lene and Roger

Shanghais dink motor failed on the way over so they came in tow. And I towed them back. Maybe we can create one fully operative dink between Shanghais inflatable and Ohanas outboard. But, in fact, it appears that all of the places both boats intend to visit on their ways back -- yes we are at our furthest point away from City Island -- have either docks or launch service. The other alternatives are the blissful solitude of staying aboard a well provisioned boat or getting a lift from strangers.

Stay tuned.

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January 30 31 Marathon to Key West And First Lay Day There 45 Miles

After fueling (33.25 gallons at 2640 engine hours) we cast off at 8:30 and were on a mooring north of Key West by 4 pm.  What a wonderful day of sailing. The wind was from the north and created a nearly beam reach over our starboard side, without big waves -- because the Keys blocked them.

I was impatient to put up sails, as I always am, but the Admiral wanted to put things away, have breakfast, etc. And a good thing because when we turned into the wind to put up reefed main and genoa, we were passed by s/v "Fur Ellise", a Hunter 38.

ILENE being longer, and hence faster, we made friends via VHF radio without having actually met Kevin and Mary Ellise, when we soon passed them. Under sail, our speed increased from about five knots under motor to 7.5, peaks of 8.3, under sail. Later the wind got lighter, we shook out the reef but they augmented their speed with the engine and passed us. But we caught up again when the wind picked up before we both furled sails to head north, all around the west end of Key West, to the large spacious mooring field east of Fleming Key. There we took adjacent mooring balls. During all of this passing and re-passing they took the best pictures of ILENE, underway, with full sails, she has ever had. One of these will go up on the walls at the Harlem, where, until now, we have not had a good enough photo. Which one of these two do you think is better? The first shows non-optimal sail trim, with the main not having enough "belly" in her yet.

This mooring field seems secure. We have two lines through the moorings eye, one to each side of the bow. But we are completely exposed to the northern wind which is kicking up waves around us. It is rolly.

As we approached Key West I noticed a large structure which seemed to be leaning over like the tower in Pisa, above the tree line.

When we got this close it was revealed as the stack of a cruise ship. And she came out through the channel as we came in, so we stayed out of the channel to give her room. I dont know when cruise ships started coming here but they were not here in August and September of 1965 when I was at the navy school here, learning to kill submarines.

Next day we dinked in to find the office where we paid our $18/day mooring fee and then to the dinghy dock. The office and dock are far apart and hard to find. We trekked over to the main Key West Bight where the marina in the heart of town is, to look over the slips and changed our reservation dates. There we met the folks of s/v "Into the Mystic" who we had last seen in Portsmouth VA. We also saw the schooners "Appledore" and "Hindoo", plying their excursion sail trade here. We had last seen them in 2013 in Camden, Maine and Provincetown, Mass, respectively, where they work in the summers. Lunch at Turtle Krall waterfront restaurant and a hike to the Publix preceded a taxi ride back to the dinghy dock with food. There we took wasted showers. Why wasted you might ask? Because the wind was "UP" on the way back to ILENE, kicking up waves that resulted in a pretty thorough salt water rinse.

A "discussion" took place, repeatedly, during most of the day, about whether or not to sail to the Dry Tortugas. We have given up on Cuba for this year. The new arrangement does not really relax the old rules except that the US government will not examine your paperwork very closely. In other words they invite visitors to lie. I could say that we were going for "educational" purposes, being a lifetime learner, or for "journalistic" purposes, because of the blog. But the regulations are clear that education applies to a matriculated student in an accredited school and journalism is much more formal than an amateur blog, however well written, if I do say so myself. So no Cuba this year, but what about the Tortugas?

Lene does not want to go for fear that we will face the continuation of strong wind in our face on the return passage. She also argues: "Why sail 120 miles for only a one day (two night) stay in windy conditions not ideal to the enjoyment of a tropical isle." And I have to count among my blessings the fact that my beloved is on this eight month sail with me; many wives just wont go. Dont push your luck Roger. So even though the forecast winds looked good (to me) for one day out, another day there, and the third day back, I finally figured out that Lene just didnt want to go. And a compromise miraculously appeared. Marquesa Key is only about 20 miles in the direction of the Tortugas. It is now our next destination and the furthest from home that we will go in our own boat during this trip. There is a high speed ferry which will take us to the Tortugas on a day trip. It departs at seven a.m. for the three hour trip and gets back to Key West at five p.m. Only $160 per person which includes breakfast, lunch, a guided tour of the fort and snorkeling. We are thinking to take this trip, though to me, it is just not the same as sailing there yourself. It is the same way that we visited Saba Rock in the Caribbean in 2012. So Im feeling a bit like a mountain climber who intended to scale a peak "because it was there" but has to content himself with only reaching the last camp before the dash for the summit. Life is a series of compromises and I have a lot of blessings to be thankful for. But still....

A lot has changed on Key West since 1965, with the construction of huge malls with big box stores, but some lovely older housing remains.

NOTE: We will have no internet, or phone connection during the next few days.
Here are Kevin and Mary Ellise, after our mango sweet potato pancake breakfast; sorry, I couldnt get this picture to go in at the correct space.

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March 30 April 2 Fort Pierce to Cocoa and Three Lay Days There 57 Miles

We left the fuel dock at 8 am and anchored at 4:45. Lots of miles but all high bridges except one which opened on request. We went past Vero Beach and Dragon Point, where we had stayed on our way south. This was just as pleasant a passage as the one to Fort Pierce had been ugly. The ICW is deeper, wider and straighter for the most part, and it was sunny and warmer.
A pod of porpoises looked us over while crossing close behind us; we havent seen them for a while. When the tide turned, slowing us from near seven knots to 6.2, the wind came up, just far enough off our starboard bow to allow the small jib to get that speed back for us. We had planned to go outside in the Atlantic to New Smyrna, but the problem with the sunken barge in the Fort Pierce Inlet coupled with winds out of the north made the decision to stay inside until New Smyrna for us -- three passages instead of one.

In the morning the tachometer was not working, nor the engine hour meter. I took off and cleaned the plexiglass cover that protects the panel and the panel itself and jiggled the wires. Jiggling sometimes helps such problems, but no luck today. Then Lene said she had trouble with the ignition switch when turning on the engine. Oh yes, she had accidentally turned it to "Off". After "Start" it should be left "On", but turning it "Off" does not stop the engine -- it only turns off the electricity to its instruments. Switched back to "On" and the tachometer was instantly restored to operation.

A big pleasant surprise when I heard a yell of  "Roger" and saw a dark blue motorized catamaran passing us.

"Its Phat Cat," came next. Dave and Diane, with their two cats aboard, passed us. They resigned from the Harlem and are currently on their last leg (northbound up the Atlantic coast) of the "Great Circle Cruise". They started up the Hudson, and then through canals to the Great Lakes and Canada, down Lake Michigan, the Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee and other rivers to the Gulf of Mexico, through the ICW east and south along Floridas west coast to Marathon and then northbound in the Atlantic.  This is a trip for power boats; our mast would have to be taken down for the trip, and laid atop the boat, would extend ILENE from 43 feet long to over 65. Dave and Di have been on the journey for about ten months. Since Marathon, they have been in many of the same places we were, but neither of us knew it and we had not met up until now. Their boats name is not on the boat and I might not have recognized it if they had not called out.

We recalled a wild Harlem Memorial Day Rendezvous near Ellis Island in NY Harbor. We had rafted up to Phat Cat and then another smaller sailboat rafted up to our other side and get her mast caught under our back stay. Several men got on top of Phat Cats roof and pulled down to the side on the other boats main halyard to free her. And again, during a Club Cruise, we enjoyed a good time with Dave and Di in Watch Hill, RI.

Phat Cat is a Lagoon 43, built in France, the same length as ILENE but twice as wide, so they have lots of room. It can be rigged with a mast and sails but Phat Cat is not.

The aft stateroom can be divided by a bulkhead down the middle to make two large staterooms if it is used for chartering; but Phat Cat has one immense stateroom, shown here with one of its two cats, Xena or Cassie, reclining on the queen size bed.  She goes faster than us and when we caught up we anchored near her at Cocoa Village, off to the west of the ICW in ten feet of water with 50 feet of snubbed chain.

Dave put down their dink and ferried us around the first night and the next two days that they stayed with us here, before moving on. We had not planned to stay here so long but the nearest place that can do a professional patch on our dink is in St. Augustine and they will not have time to do our job until April 7, so we have slowed down our itinerary to arrive there when they can do the work which will take two days.

We dined on Thai food with Dave and Di at Thai Thai our first night, a pot luck aboard their large boat the second and blueberry pancakes on ILENE the morning of their departure.

Lene making herself at home on Phat Cats back porch.

Dining room with nav station in background

Dave and I dinked across the Indian River to its eastern side where it was a short walk to the local Publix, less than half a mile. The four of us "shopped" Cocoa Village, right by our free dinghy dock, one afternoon. Lene got two pairs of shoes, Dave and Di enjoyed some excellent pastries from the bakery, and we toured Travis hardware, a famous old fashioned place with a huge inventory including tools for use on ocean liners. We bought a better lock to secure the dink to the shore or to the boat,   We are not far from Cape Canaveral where Disney Cruise ships put in with their thousands of passengers. One of the excursions is to take busloads of tourists to Cocoa Village for shopping.

When Dave and Di headed north, we took our dink across to Merrit Island so Lene could get her fix of supermarket shopping. I went back to Travis for a stainless steel snubber hook to replace the rusty mess that we had aboard, and "spline" rubber to affix the new cat proof screening into the frames of the side screens which had been scratched through. I also visited the bank and the Florida Historical society.

They have a good free dinghy dock at Cocoa Village, where one can tie up fore and aft to keep the dink away from the pilings and use the lock amidships to avoid theft. And you can see the shortened tiller extender sticking up, imagine before I cu 18 inches from it!
Lene got a message, her first on this trip, and after dinner at Murdocks,

(southern cuisine --  delicious and inexpensive) we attended the local production of My Fair Lady at the Cocoa Village Historic Playhouse.






And what a treat! The house holds 600. Eliza Doolittle was a sixteen year old. The actors were great and in the choral numbers 48 of them were on stage, supported by an orchestra of sixteen musicians. The costumes and sets were excellent and one would have paid five times as much to see this show on Broadway. Professor Higgins is such a misogynist and yet even today the story is great because the show makes fun of him for it.

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December 16 18 Two More Lay Days in Titusville and Passage to Dragon Point Anchorage 30 9 Miles

Titusville is a good place to leave ones boat for the Christmas holidays as our friends on Autumn Borne and Seeker are doing. But it is also a sightseeing launch pad. Our first lay day was devoted to JFK Space center on Cape Canaveral, on Merritt Island, which forms the eastern shore of the Indian River (think of boxes of fruit from Florida) and was the subject of my prior post.
Our second lay day was mostly errands: Post office, bank, pet food store, laundry, and supermarket. But we also visited the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. It has a one lane unpaved loop road about three feet above sea level in a very circuitous path  about 7.5 miles long with about fifteen stops for viewing wildlife, mostly birds. But there are alligators there too and the book says there are small mammals as well and their droppings attest to it. It is a birders paradise and made me wish I was a birder, because there are so many species.

t flies but its not a bird.

Out in the middle of nowhere, there is an additional 5 mile hiking loop further than the road goes. I walked about half a mile and back while Lene waited. The wet lands and marshes have a few high spots, about three feet high, and the road simply connected them. The place is not completely natural but rather carefully managed to let seawater in,or out, to preserve ideal depths for different species. I took a lot of pictures but few came out well. Another paved road takes you to Playalinda (pretty beach in Spanish) Beach but we ran out of time.

And our last lay day was for the Universal theme parks in Orlando. Lene wanted this and I think she has gotten roller coasters out of her system. It was mostly monster rides but also a lot of inside rides that are intended to be scary.  For the giant ones a person must check all things that could fly away with the violent shaking of ones body: bags, hats, glasses, phones, cameras, wallets, change etc. They have rooms with walls of lockers that use your fingerprint to lock and unlock them. These areas need to be enlarged a bit. They have attendants to keep things moving when the system fails. The locker areas are the only thing in the park that needs to be expanded. I did not take pictures except these of Lene in chartreuse top with colossal structures.

We were lucky it was not Christmas week when the crowds would be three times as large. Several rides said that the line was 45 minutes, but in fact the times were shorter than that. And they keep you moving and entertained while waiting.  There are two separate parks with different rides in each, though both had Harry Potter rides and villages (One London and the other the suburban school). We were not close followers of the HP phenomenon but enjoyed it anyway. One mistake was drinking a "butter beer:" it looks like a beer with a head, but it is all cream and butterscotch and sweeter than is good for anyones health. All told, we went on about a dozen rides or shows during the 8.5 hours we were in the park. Most rides and shows are based on Universals action thriller or cartoon characters. They have done a very good job with some of the shows. The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad was in a huge amphitheater with acrobats, diving, and explosives. A Neptune show was all large excellent computer animation and pyrotechnics. These two had a watery theme as did two rides that we skipped because the fun is getting drenched. Both of the HP rides and several others put you in cars which move along a track, swivel on center and tilt and shake in myriad ways while 3D computer animations confront you. Very clever use of burning hot big flames -- you could feel the heat. Similarly, when an aquatic villain loomed out there was a spray of real water -- Aldous Huxleys "The Feelies" have arrived. An old fashioned looking railroad takes you from the HP area of one park to the other, with attendants in each area appropriately costumed. But the view out the window of the train would be of the back sides of  the various rides so instead of they put us, six in a small cabin, on one side of the train and amused us two ways during the short ride. For one thing, silhouettes of HP characters were made to appear in cloudy silhouette in the trains corridor, nattering about aspects of the plot. On the other side, a computer animated view of the English scene was shown moving past as if you were traveling by train in England. Clever. And the park is very expensive: $135 per person plus $17 to park the car. And merchandising everywhere. (for an additional $50 per person you can get an express pass which gives you the right to get on a separate shorter line to wait for the rides and shows. Not needed the day we visited.) We had dinner back in Titusville at Chops -- good food at a reasonable price.
On passage day, breakfasting out (third day in a row), returning the rental car, showering, raising the dink and fueling led to a 10:45 departure for Dragon Point (There was a big statue of a dragon here but it has disintegrated). It is the southern pointy tip of Merritt Island. No wind to speak of so; motoring all the way. At the Point we hooked a left into the Banana River, on the eastern side of that island, and dropped the hook a couple of hundred yards up that river in 17 feet of water at high tide with 100 feet of snubbed chain, for a quiet evening aboard. We had thought to stop and anchor half way in Cocoa FL,but skipped it this time. I have stopped reporting dolphins because they are with us every day.

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April 30 May 1 Two Lay Days in Portsmouth Zero Miles

Lenes finger, at the right, is pointing out our slip on F Dock at this Marina, a huge one. In 2012 and 2014 we stayed at a free dock by the Radisson hotel, a couple hundred yards to the upper left of the poster but this time we wanted repairs and might have had to haul the boat so a marina was needed.

Gaston showed up with his assistant promptly as scheduled. I had cleared out the aft cabin to give access to the area of concern. He laid a pencil on the shaft, so light that it would easily detect vibration. Nothing. It does not happen at the dock, even when, tied onto it tightly, we run the engine in gear up to 2500 rpms, trying to drag the dock. He dissembled the flexible coupling again, tested for alignment with feeler gauges, reassembled it and pronounced that it was within tolerance. So the problem is outside the boat, at or near the propeller end of the shaft. He suggested that we wait until the fall and when the boat is hauled, we check the cutlass bearing and remove the propeller and ship it to California for what will be an expensive reconditioning job. He said that we are not in danger from the current situation.
Then he lent us his truck and we visited the supermarket, the drugstore, and a law firm where I signed a document and got it notarized. I spent a few hours planning the places we could stop along the Potomac on the way up and down to Washington DC. It is slim pickins for anchorages and marinas with water deep enough for ILENEs 58" draft. I have asked the 6500 members of a "private group" on Facebook for more information.
Later Gaston came over and paid us a social visit. He was born in France, raised in Israel and is an excellent mechanic. He was affiliated with and sailed in the Caribbean 1500.

The weather has been rainy most of our two days here and so we did little. I had visited the nautical museum and lightship in 2012 and toured the historic district. It rained then too!
They also have a Childrens Museum and one honoring Virginia athletes. I took a pass on those. There is a small Jewish Museum and a historic 1812 house, both of which can be toured, but only in season, not now.
So we took showers, took on water, cleaned the boat, blogged, read, cooked, ate and watched the first two episodes of the PBS series Wolf Hall, based on a novel by Hillary Mantell, which my book group read a few summers ago, about Thomas Cromwell, an attorney in the time of Henry VIII.

We would have left the second of these two days but the forecast of rain and 25 knot wind in our faces deterred us and the forecast came true.

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Header Photo 30 Sq Meter Skerry Cruiser

A first for Earwigoagin; I put a keelboat up on the header photo. This is a 30 square meter, a type also commonly referred to as a Skerry Cruiser, and to my eye, the various square meter sizes are the prettiest of yachts with long, long, overhangs, low freeboard, and efficient rigs. (I have always found large overlapping jibs to be photogenic.)

Alden Smith put a comment up about this photo and. in reply I realized I didnt know the history of the square meter rule. So a quick tour around the Internet turned up a couple of factoids.

• The rule originated in Sweden in 1907 as a reaction to the perceived rigidity of the International Meter rule. The current rule, administered by the Swedish Classification Board, traces back to 1925 with some tweaks along the way.
• It is based on a sail area rule, the square meter is the sail measurement of the class though this is somewhat deceiving as only 85% of the jib foretriangle is measured, hence the extreme overlapping jibs to get free sail area.
• There were a bunch of classes from 15 sq. m. up to 150 sq. m. but the two that survive in some numbers today are the 22 sq. m. and the 30 sq. m..
• If you want to dig in deeper, as usual, the best place to start is the Wikipedia page.

There was a good number of 22 sq. m.s that were either imported or were built in the United States and several years ago I came across one being restored in Annapolis. Unfortunately Ive forgotten who the owner was.

Sea State Marine, out of Missouri, of all places, (their blog is part of my blog list) is in the process of restoring a 1929 sq. m. Kippis, a Skerry Cruiser that was sitting in a barn in Missouri. Some, but not all, of Sea State Marines blog posts on the 22 sq. m. rebuild can be found here.

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