Among other things on the Feb 9 show, we will be talking about hard water sailing and where you can see it when. we will post the information here after the show. In the meantime here are some pix. a.s.
Feb. 18 Here is the phone number for current conditions and locations for iceboating in midcoast Maine 594-2184 google maine ice sailors for more information. Richard Saltonstall sent pix of an unusal fwd cockpit boat he designed and built himself. He calls it blackfly. Thanks Richard. a.s.
On the February 9 show we will be talking with Jo Royle who will soon be sailing an interesting boat from San Francisco to Sydney, right through the Pacific garbage patch. The boat is brand new, made from recycled materials. Check it out at www.theplastiki.com Joining us in the studio will be Larissa Curlik from the Marine Environmental Research Institute to talk about the good work they are doing. Their website is www.meriresearch.org As usual we will start out the show with local news and your calls 1 866 625-9378 at 10-11 am eastern us time. talk to you later, a.s.
You only get so much in a life, time making love or having a sail like we did the other day.
I’m thinking of the almost 24 hours from Block Island, R.I. to Sandy Hook, N.J.where we have been sitting 36 hours now on a storm tossed mooring behind a breakwater that is facing the wrong way today. We have had an interesting time getting here and of course we’re not where we’re going yet.
Captain Mark and I left Bass Harbor, Me.after 1 Pm last
Saturday with Feng Shui, A Morris 38 bound for Shelter Island ,N.Y. Feng Shui and her owners are finest kind. This is her second delivery of the season, Capt Andy and Mark brought her ” home” to the Morris Co. for repair after she suffered the embrace of another moored boat whose jib unfurled in a short sharp thunderstorm.
The wind started light and SW as we left Bass Hbr. but went north and east and built through the afternoon. So Saturday night, clear with a full moon, we ran pretty much dead down wind across the Gulf of Maine with a reefed main in 20-25 kts with 6foot sloppy seas occasionally slopping sideways into the cockpit. That was a nice sail. There was just a moment before dawn Sunday when the big red-hearted sunrise turned the still high yellow moon orange and made a light that was weird but wonderful.
We made the Cape Cod fuel dock before 5 Pm and had a very uneventful motorsail overnight down Buzzard’s Bay and across Block Island Sound to Gardiner’s Bay. I had the 3-6 watch and Capt Mark woke me just in time to catch the mooring at the Shelter Island Yacht Club just before 9 Am, Monday morning, Labor Day. We rested and socialized in the busy harbor, spent the middle of the day cleaning the boat, and enjoyed excellent hospitality with the owners and friends. Another perfect working adventure but just the start of the current one – already known as the Nantucket Sleigh Ride.
To get to Nantucket from Shelter Island takes 3 ferries, 2 taxis, a rent-a-car , and most of the day. Late afternoon midweek after Labor Day the brand new yacht club is very quiet. Front and center, the prettiest boat in sight, is our next ride, a Morris M36 “daysailor” with teak cabinsides and deck. Check the weather and confirm the weather is due to deteriorate in a day or so, so we provision poste haste and untie her just after 5Pm, and (end of the season)just after the fuel dock closed. We are bound for Annapolis, M.D. most of 4 days away. The boat has a full 20 gallon fuel tank and3 empty 5 gallon buckets we would like to have had filled.
The new plan is to head to Block Island for our next fuel stop. Not to waste anything we head out over the shallows between Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, calm and wine red in the sunset.
It is very shallow between the two islands and while they call it Muskeget Channel there is barely a buoy for a clue. We are small and shallow draft but truly without the highly accurate GPS chartplotter we could not go this way. The irony is that we are on the edge of the paper chart. Captain Andy and Mark brought the boat Annapolis to Nantucket in the spring and the Block Island to the Chesapeak charts that were aboard and still should be- ain”t.
Basics. Paper charts are the ultimate authority. The GPS chartploter is the best (and easiest) navigator ever on any vessel, any ocean, any time. It’s a miracle. The problem is that even if (depending on format) all the information on a paper chart is on the machine screen- you can’t look at it in the same way. Zooming in and out can never reproduce the overlook that is possible staring at a real chart. Normally we would never leave home without one. Even with our experience in these waters this is not a good thing, but we feel good to go because of that experience.
There’s basics, now politics. But wait, we are off on a lifetime sail, so screw politics , but be assured there are some. We’re off and they’ll be back.
We got to Block Island like we get a lot of places, at 0-dark-30. With a couple of hours before a fuel dock could possibly be open we grabbed a mooring and a nap. The fellow at the pump could not get over the boat- prettiest one he had seen all summer. This was a re-occurring theme. Everywhere we went people came running across jetties, seawalls and docks, altered course and hailed us passing in canals and marinas- “What kind of boat is that? It’s a Morris. Beautiful.”
It was a gray day with the wind rising and aft of the beam when we headed out of Block Harbor just after 8 Am. Starting with a reefed main and full jib we used different sail combinations all day, ending up with just a scrap of jib by the end of my watch at midnight. Perfect boat, perfect company, less than perfect day but the boat is romping and we are digging it. Ironically we need to slow the boat down as we are headed for Hell’s Gate and have the fear of a foul tide.
What a ride. Understand two things about boat deliveries- the engine is usually on and the autopilot is usually driving. We travel 24 hours a day if possible and would life to make at least 6 kts, so motorsail as necessary. Sometimes we have a sail up just for looks but not today. Besides being so pretty the genius of the Morris “daysailor” is how easy it is to use and sporty to drive. The critical lines: jib in and out, and the mainsail up and down and trim are led out of sight to rope clutches by the port and starboard electric winches just at the helm, where you can stand and play that thing like a fiddle.
Speaking of music, I’ve never liked headphones on watch. Earlier in the season we went from Padanaram, Mass. to Rockport, Me. and back in an older wooden boat without an autopilot. Actually having to steer the boat makes for a long watch and I now have a discman. Now is a real ecstasy of rhythm and boat motion and melody. Alejandro Escovedo is rocking out and singing his songs of the sea (he’s a surfer who likes Boattalk), and I am singing and dancing like I’ve just discovered God. We are definitely at church.
Watching the autopilot sail the boat downwind, it drives reliably but steers kind of loose. I’m already having too much fun now let’s sail this thing. Tweak the sheets, auto off and get the groove of dancing with the rudder instead of fighting it. Like I said, only so much in a lifetime, especially if you notice, and the captain resting below will have to hear me singing because I can’t help it and his harmonica is worse.
Through The Race at 9 kts and down the sound we go watch on watch, wow man, wow! In between watches off Stanford, Conn. the two of us stow the mainsail. This requires rounding up into the wind and falling off again . Sometime after this maneuver we notice a boat cushion is missing and must be presumed lost at sea. We often don’t even use things like cushions (if you don’t use it you can’t hurt it) and this is a bad punctuation on a great day. The cushions inside are velcro’d but that would be harder to hide outside in such a perfect cockpit. Nobody saw it go or even thought of it with the current conditions- but there’s a re-learned sea lesson: just when you get comfy it can and will reach out and slap you sideways. We haven’t broken or lost anything in a long time and Capt Mark in particular is not happy.
The moon is just past full in and out of the clouds so we have auxiallary lighting as we pass under the Throg’s Neck Bridge and into the East River at 2 Am. We are good with the tide and all hands are on deck to run through New York City. It’s true , neither the town or traffic on the river ever sleep. Tugs, tugs pulling and pushing barges, ships coming and going and at anchor are even more interesting to listen to on the radio. (Favorite exchange: “How’re you moving that thing, Captain? Pushing her, that’s all we know how to do , push, push, push.)
The East River is not very wide. Above the U.N. is an expressway so we also have 60 kt traffic a biscuit toss to starboard. The U.N. seems small tonight and the city in general has a surreal orangy light, is massively in your face, but also has a sort of lack of depth. Also this morning of September 10, the intimate proximity of the tip of Manhatten and history conspire to give me a strange feeling. Out the Buttermilk Channel and past the Statue of Liberty at half past 4Am, that was my favorite trip to New York.
Now we face the coast of New Jersy, a forecast of 40 kt winds and some of the politics mentioned earlier. There is no question we will seek shelter. It is decision time and now we really miss those paper charts.
The way I understand it there was big trouble with the delivery of this boat north and south before we came along. By bad trouble I mean a grounding and a flooding. Capt Andy and Mark were the first to succeed flawlessly this spring and of course the owner now wants nobody but Capt Andy. Unavailable , cruising with the owners of a very favorite boat, he is in Annapolis and on the phone worrying about us too. Andy recommends Atlantic Highlands at Sandy Hook, N.J. Mark wants to go to Liberty City, N.J. and we pick up the outermost mooring behind the breakwater at Sandy Hook at about 7 Am.
There are a couple of hundred boats in here between us and the dockage, dead to leeward. With this wind the breakwater is not much help and the dock does not look good. We are on a very sturdy and new looking double penant mooring and feel pretty bombproof. Boats came in all morning including an older couple with a badly wrapped jib problem. For the last day and a half we have got to watch our neighbors lose sail covers, biminis, dodgers and so on. On the tide the breakwater is under water with a 3 foot sea inside. We are hanging out bucking and plunging with the bow occaisionally submerged. The starboard penant looped over the bow light twice.
The forecast this morning was for dangerous thunderstorms and maybe a tornado. First time ever to hear that on the marine weather! And of course we are still here. This afternoon things are moderating, the launch is finally out with anxious owners , and we’re thinking tomorrow.
Mike Joyce @ Sandy Hook, N.J. 9 / 11/ 09
One of the topics we will be mixing in on the Tuesday Nov. 10 show will be the effects on ethanol in gasoline. We talked with Paul Bowden of Bowden Marine on Mount Desert Island. For more information he has a website Suggestions for solutions (pi) are welcome. a.s. bowdenmarine.com
In our October show we talked with friend of boattalk Peter Neill of the World Ocean Observatory (there’s a link to them at the bottom right of our home page) about the ocean gyres and the garbage patches they are becoming. Its a bad situation that is receiving little attention, but is something we can all do something to remedy. The discussion was very interesting and enlightening. Just click on the October show in the right hand column of our home page to listen. The discussion was in the second half of the show. An interesting website trying to raise awareness on this subject is www.theplastiki.com We boatbuilders may have some issues with their vessel and we would be glad to talk about it during our show, but their heart is in the right place.
For some sad photos of the problem check out “pacific garbage patch” in google images. I use a cloth shopping bag now and refuse any plastic bag for purchases. Get your coffee in a reuseable cup. For many years now one of my greatest personal annoyances when way offshore is to see styrofoam cups and disposable diapers floating by. We all can do better. a.s.
In our October show we talk with John Ferland vice president of the company here in Maine that is developing tidal power projects here and in Alaska. It was an interesting discussion. If you are interested in tidal power it is worth while to listen to that show. Just click on the oct. show in the right hand column. For more information visit John’s company’s website www.oceanrenewablepower.com a.s.
A couple of times on past shows Giffy Full has mentioned his “pot deflectors” as a friendlier way of minimizing getting lobster trap rope wound-up in your propeller. Friendlier than cutters, one trap costs about $50. So a picture is worth a thousand dollars. Here’s 2K. The forward pin is smaller than the aft pin in the bracket, so if it takes a hard whack it should swing back. The fasteners are copper rivets.
While I was at the boat he told me I should see his portlights also. He calls them the “Winthrop Warner” portlights. Pretty simple. Just change the glass for a screen made of screening laminated into a formica frame for ventilation. No great panes here. a.s.
Giffy Full told me that I should check out Rockport Marine because there was some good work going on there. He’s right. This is the first time in many months that I had a hard time finding a parking space at a boatyard. I didn’t have much time to spend there but the sheds are full and there are some interesting projects going. I couldn’t resist taking a picture of a twin-screw power boat in for a refit. Not many places that can make them like that anymore. To see more just google rockport marine and pick the maine one. Giffy will be talking about Rockport Marine on the Oct 13 show. a.s.
Rumors lately say that George McKay, the prime motivator behind Raw Faith, has decided to put a motor in the boat according to his son. I went to Rockland where the boat has been on anchor for a long time to see how things are progressing. As you can see the boat appears to have all of its standing rigging in place and three sails bent on. All searches of raw faith websites failed and the harbormaster’s office has no way of contacting the boat, so there you go and there it sits. I’ll update this entry as more information becomes available. a.s.
The November issue of Fisherman’s Voice has a nice long article on Raw Faith. a.s. 11/08/09
2nd Annual Boattalk Semi-dinner Cruise Report
It didn’t make any sense to go over to Seal Harbor and visit Martha and the Rockefellers because of the fog. And the only entrant in the Martha Stewart Recipe Boattalk Potluck Challenge had more cents than culinary skill- he tried to pass off some supermarket sushi as from the Martha Entertains With Hanafords not -a- book. No prize there. But there was plenty of good food, a full boat of good people and the wall of fog we entered as we left Northeast Harbor only added atmosphere.
The second annual Boattalk semi-dinner cruise was wicked good. We are indebted to Bar Harbor Cruises and the Sea Princess with Captain Andy Allen at the helm. We are also grateful to the cruisers who helped raise $800 for community radio WERU and generously filled the tip jar which we gave back to the boat. It’s good to be good to people who are trying to be good to you.
Like last year there was some tension about the weather. The sun was sort of almost out in Northeast as we filled the boat but the mouth of the harbor was a fuzzy white wall. Not a navigational or entertainment hazard, the fog, which was really only kind of medium, was like being in a scenic moving watercolor. Just outside the harbor we watched the beautiful new Morris 52 “daysailor” showing her bottom as she sailed out of and back into the mystic, hard on the wind on a port tack. We headed over to Southwest Harbor for an anchorage tour and then up Somes Sound, the only fiord on the east coast, which was, as often, less foggy than outside. Valley Cove is always a stunning spot and I’m telling you having the mountain which plunges into the water and makes it so deep next to the shore cut off halfway up by the fog didn’t make it less so. Just up-sound we visited Man-O-War Brook where a bit of a waterfall tumbles into the sea 10-fathoms deep right next to the shore and where ships used to take on fresh water–and where a pair of eagles sat watching us. Wave to the eagles–it’s always a good sign.
The top of the sound has two sides and we went west into Somesville Harbor first. The house with the cement beam cantilever over the cliff and the water is a perfect example of a Maine scene you can only see by water. My neighbor, who is a landscaper, pointed out some of his work he had never seen from the water side. Isn’t it all about point of view and good to be able to see things from different ones? We also checked out the boats at Henry R. Abel’s, yacht yard and lobster pound, on the eastside and then headed back to the dock. A three hour cruise, Gilligan wasn’t on it and there were no pirates. We’re sorry if you missed it.
Not just because of the fog, there was plenty going on inside the boat as well as out. In addition to the general good eating and BYOB-ing, Alan provided commentary on the Mr. Microphone PA and I visited around telling stories. We got some heavy gossip on the long time Boattalk subject Raw Faith we can’t talk about on the radio. For instance. More fun, we had a happy birthday to Judy sing along. And the ultimate in participatory feedback, Capt. Yo, a usual Boattalk suspect and the master of Annie McGee, my favorite little pinky schooner, brought a beautifully carved cedar full hull model of the Sea Princess herself (designed by our senior whenever he can co-host Giffy Full) and showed it off with commentary. Yo told how interested a kid who saw him floating it in Echo Lake was. Imagine a kid, a model boat and a pond with no digital video anything in sight. It’s all old school and no telling what sticks with a kid. The young lady from Penobscot who spent her time in the wheelhouse with Andy had never steered a boat before…
Almost too much fun. Maybe the second annual Boattalk semi-dinner cruise was even better than the first ,but that would have to be your judgment call. There were people who can compare and other people already planning to bring more friends next time. We are under some pressure to add a fall edition. There is also the possibility of a trip out of another harbor: Belfast-Camden- Rockland? All we would need is you and a boat.
As I told Alan after–sometimes I’m proud to know him. And how much fun it is to play an expert on the radio and share some of the boat in Boattalk with you. Are you on the boat? We can always talk about it.
Boattalk Galley-talk: I like to say a good trick is one that keeps working, Alan and I have been working on ours and some people even liked them. By request here is some recipe on Alan’s semi-famous green chile salsa and my re-occurring feta spinach quiche which really comes from Morning Maine host Karen Frangoulis.
Feta-spinach quiche: I’m not an over organized measurer but here is the idea–cream together feta and cream cheese, beat in eggs and some milk. Add some sauteed spinach and onion, salt and pepper of course. I put basil on anything and nutmeg is good with spinach or what ever you think. Pour into a pie shell and bake till golden brown. This time I added hunks of avocado. Whatever the proportions, it kind of has to be good.
Mike Joyce / July 09
Alan’s green salsa: First it is very important that you make this at least a week in advance to let the flavors meld together. This makes a large quart of salsa, so you can cut the measurements in half to make enough for just a few people (2 1/2 or less), but the left over salsa makes a great additive for stews, meatloaf, and tuna salad.
Destem and trim bottoms off 12 tomatillos. Chop and drain the tomatillos while you process the rest. Save the drained juice for a fine reduction sauce. Prep and chop a vidallia onion. Chop very fine six jalapeno peppers then add and chop two poblano peppers. Mix the peppers and onion in a medium bowl, add 1/4 cup lime juice, 1/8 cup green habanero sauce, and 1/4 cup sugar. Add tomatillos, stir all, cover and put in the fridge stirring occasionally for several days. A few hours before you are ready to serve, chop and add a bunch of cilantro. Enjoy.
Alan Sprague / July 09
