Century Club: Jeffrey Halpern

I have a love-hate ambivalence towards this short-handed race due to its total unpredictability and its role as a waypoint marking the last legs of  the season and the last CHESSS race of the year. Some year's races have been bitter cold with crazy winds, and other years a warm temperature drifter. Most years, its been a fun last short-handed romp around the buoys.

Watching the wind predictions this year, I had feared that there would be absolutely no wind. In fact, the forecaset on one site was something I have never seen, and can't even fathom. That site showed zero wind starting from the west at the start, then zero winds veering to the south and ultimately ending up with zero winds from the northeast. In theory that would have been a race consisting of dead runs in zero winds on each leg of the course. 

As it turned out the Race Committee moved the start/finish line to shorten the course, took a short delay, and by the start decent winds filled in to allow satisfactury racing conditions. Paul Parks and crew on Sundog taught us all a master class in how to sail in those conditions, correcting to a half hour ahead of the second place boat. The second through fourth place boats finished within 66 seconds of each other on corrected time, with Synergy taking third, correcting only 7 seconds behind of John Zseleczky with his son, Paul oin his well sailed Pearson 30.

The day ended with a lovely sail back to Mill Creek. . 

If spending a day on a boat anchored somewhere during a cruise counts, I figure a day at the boat show has to count. After all I was literally on and off dozens of boats and at least some of them were anchored. And like any good cruise there were lots of old friends encountered along the way, and gobs of talk, and at least some, if not most, involved messing around with boats. 

With the bulkhead back together, and the autopilot reinstalled, I needed to recalibrate the autopilot controller. I had also changed the installation geometry of the ram, and wanted make sure that would work, so late in the day I motored out of the creek to do the calibration. I was ecstatic just to be underway again, let alone delighted that everything worked! All that and a gorgeous sunset. 

I must admit that I was a bit inappropriately prideful after the Cambridge Race.  The source of that pride wasn't so much that we won our class but that the old boat, with this old sailor and a friend, had gotten though those tough conditions without major damage or drama. 

I basked in that glow all week, and then went out for a daysail. On the way our, wirh sails set, I set the autopilot to handle a few chores. It seemed to be working but there was suddenly a grinding / ripping noise and the helm felt stiff.  I opened the Lazarette and realized that the autopilot ram had torn out about a foot square chunk of the bulkhead and was hanging in the bilge. I was stunned, but I put the autopilot back on the shelf on the other side of the bulkhead and continued my sail. 

Granted the conditions that day were a bit sporty but I was perplexed how that could have happened.  

At the end of the sail, it was a real struggle when it came time to furl the jib. Back at the dock, jammed under the spinnaker pole, I found the twisted body of a destroyed furler fairlead block and small plastic chunks of its sheave. 

Three weeks of every bit of spare time spent in intense labor doing fiberglass work while crammed into the Lazarette, resulted in the bulkhead repaired, strengthened, and the autopilot reinstalled.