Century Club: Jeffrey Halpern

Sunday I raced on Starbird. We had a super first race and tanked the second. Some days racing you are the bug and sometimes you are the windshield. 

"It was raining hard, but the fiddler didn't care,
He sawed away at the popular air,
Tho' his roof-bottom leaked like a waterfall,
That didn't seem to bother the fiddler at all."

So the stranger said Now, the way it seems to me
You'd better mend your roof said he,
But the old man said as he played away,
I couldn't fix it now, it's a rainy day."
"Arkansaw Traveler", Traditional American Folk Tune, 19th Cent.

Yup, it was that kind of weekend. A few weekends back, I had found a couple small deck leaks that I had fully planned to fix this Saturday. You guessed it, I couldn't fix it now, it's a rainy day..:"  Plan 'B' was to fix it on Sunday. But sunday was to cold to caulk, so I decided that I would check a few other maintenance items off my list. 

While my dock is very protected in most wind conditions, it is much more exposed to winds from the North, or Southeast. This winter saw an incredibly large number of gales from the North, so I decided to check the chafe gear on my docklines. I had checked them all before the winter, At that time, the chafe gear had all been in good shape. But the winter winds had chafed through in all of the usual suspect locations and in a few additional unexpected locations as well. 

Years ago I ended up with a couple yards of very heavy duty balistic nylon (the fabric that high quality cloth-covered suitcases have as a covering). I typically stitch that onto the line as chafe gear, and that was what I did on Sunday. 

But even installing the chafe gear was a bit of an Arkansaw Traveler kind of an undertaking as in "I can't fix it now its a windy day".

While I felt compelled to replace the chafe gear on the docklines due to Sunday's very high winds, replacing the chafe gear on the dockines was made much more difficult by the strong winds. Rgging temporary docklines was much harder as the boat slammed hard up against her lines, first on port and then on staqrboard. Lassoing the windward piling was harder for the line blowing back towards the boat. Timing was critical between the gusts, as the l\ines loaded up more than I could simply hold in my hands. I was not always successful in gaugung when the next gust would slam the boat hard up against her lines, and engaged in a losing tug of war against the forces of the wind as Synergy heeled and slammed hard against her lines.

Even threading the needle was tougher as the wind blew the short length of whipping twine away from the eye of the needle. Cold hands do not make neat stitching easy or even possible. 

On occasions like this I simply repeat the mantra, "The perfect is the enemy of the good".

What would normally take me an hour or so if I was sitting comfortably in my living room, chewed up most of the afternoon hunched over in the bucking bull ride that was Synergy's cockpit. It could have been worse, looking across the creek where white caps were slamming into the moored boats and docks, I felt lucky to be tucked away in the relative protection of the cove. 

There was no sunrise...just a slow change from abject darkness to the dim gray grimness of a perpetual twilight. The skies spit, drooled, and misted. It was not a delightful day for a sail, so I didn't.

But having planned a maintenance day a few weeks back, I was ready for a day like today. The space heater was already in the cabin and the tools and cardboard to mock-up a holding tank installation were sitting ready to go in the workshop. 

In the past few weeks I had researched possible tanks and picked three that 'just might work'. It was a bit of a Goldilocks mission finding one that fit through the opening in the bunk flat without too many modifications, but which was big enough to hold a lot of waste. The good news was that the area under the Vee berths was designed as sail storage and so are big bins with large removable tops. 

My first stab at a mock-up suggest that the tanks under consideration wont't fit without modifying the coamings arround the lockers. I am not sure that I want to do that. 

The good news is that I did track down a few leaks. The fact that there are leaks at all is very frustrating after I had rebed all of the deck hardware a couple years ago. But it looks like one contanqueous bolt and a small leak at one of the chainplate eschutcheon so its not too bad. 

I also helped the owner of a boat at my dock begin to figure out what needs to be done to set up their boat to be easier to singlehand.

There is a quote attributed to Dwight Eisenhower that goes something like,"in battle, plans are useless, but that planning is indispensable." That sort of summarizes the day.

I am sure that one way or another you all have been here. You know how that goes, Tuesday you begin to think about what you will do on the weekend. You look at the weather for the weekend and see a Saturday:predicted to be less than 40 degrees, next to no wind, and chance of scattered showers. Sunday still cold and light-ish winds, but no rain.

The plan for Sunday was easy, I am going frostbite racing. No brainer. Dock time 11:00- be there or be square.....

But Saturday, that was a different story. It needed a plan, and true to form, I was just the guy to come up with one. Saturday was a perfect boat maintenance day. The plan for the day was to continue working on the new holding tank installation by making a cardboard mockup of the flat for the tank base and a cardboard mockup of the tank and then see whether I could fit that size tank into the chosen locker. I had visions of the space heater keeping the cabin toasty while I cut out the parts and tested them. Further between the predicted bouts of rain, the plan was to sew some new chafe gear on the dock lines, and climb into the lazarette to measure the final pieces of aluminum flat bar needed to brace and complete last year's autopilot installation. That was the plan. Stuff was gathered during the week, and tools and a cutting surface bivouaced at the ready in the workshop.

And then it was Saturday morning. Making coffee it occurred to me that it wasn't raining after all. A quick check of the predictive weather sources showed no rain, a high in the 40F plus range, and 10-12 knots of wind. Holy smokes, I was flanked by a perfect winter sailing day. Change in plans.....

It was one of those rare days where no matter where I chose to sail, it was neither a beat or a run. I experienced every possible point of sail with the word "reach" in its name but no beats and no runs. It was considerably windier than 10 knots so I spent most of the day ripping about in the 7 1/2 to 8 1/2 knot range.

I could get used to that. In fact I did. Coming into Annapolis Harbor the boat slowed dramatically in the lee of the Academy. I looked at the knotmeter expecting the worst, but I was still doing around 7 knots. So I quickly looked around for the DNR since I was speeding in the 6 knot zone of the anchorage. Given that there were no other boats underway anywhere in sight, I shot through the Harbor, buzzing the tourists on the City Dock and at Charthouse, lending them a sailboat in the background of their selfies. 

A neighbor took this picture of Synergy reaching for the Mill Creek channel. Once I was safely tied up with Synergy put to bed walking up the steps to the house, the first drops of the presaged drizzle began to fall. This was a perfect case of when it comes to sailing, "Waste not (a moment of sailing time), (almost) want not." .