September 2 9 Two Wednesday Afternoons with the Old Salts

First, an innovation on an Old Salts Wednesday: a visit to Louies Seafood Restaurant in Port Washington in Manhassett Bay. Eleven of us motored over with light wind in our faces between noon and one. From left to right: Carolyn, Art, Klara, Dave, Morty and Art on the left side and then continuing: Bennett, Marcia, me, Mike and Sandy.

I felt a bit guilty not eating at the Clubs restaurant - the Club can sure use our business - but our group does eat there rather religiously on all the other Wednesdays. The only other problem was how long it took to serve the eleven of us, but the food was good, albeit pricier than at home.  In short, we did not get off Louies dock until three and had only two hours for sailing.

With winds continuing out of the south we had little difficulty, less than I had feared, backing off the south side of Louies dock, the wind aft the beam out of Manhassett Bay and then a close reach over to Throggs Neck. I had the genoa out until then and furled it there in favor of the small jib for a reciprocal course and then back to the mooring. On the prior Wednesday, Deuce of Hearts had been faster and this time it was the other way around. But with ILENEs handicap, she is supposed to be ALOT faster and this was not so. Can I blame this on my helmspersons, who are not as experienced in sailing my boat and more interested in having a good time than going as straight and hence as fast as possible? I think not. And it got worse the next week.
Once back at the mooring, the six of us on ILENE transferred to Deuce of Hearts for a libation of Margaritas, instead of the traditional G and Ts. See, it was an innovative Wednesday indeed.

The following week we reverted to our old fashioned ways as befits a group called Old Salts. Seven folks on ILENE, went slower than Larrys 31 Pearson sloop "Jubilee" with three aboard.
What a great name for a boat: signifying freedom. Larry brought a friend from many years and Morty went with them. On ILENE, in addition to me, it was Klara, Marcia, Art, Dave, and Ernie. Ernie of "BLAST", which was on the cruise and is so every year since before I joined the Club, has been a big help to me for many years. He is about the purest power boater one can imagine. We used ILENEs engine for the first five and last ten minutes of our 3.5 hour sail, and teased him about how much fuel we were saving. The wind was from the SSW, nice and we used the small jib compared to Jubilees use of the genoa. The result is that we stayed reasonably close together, almost to Execution Rocks and back. A rain cloud came up in the west. It looked like rain but not a big black thunderhead with sometimes punishing winds. But I felt literally four drops. Our only problem aboard ILENE was that the clips that hold the float of the pickup stick at the correct height slipped, causing the stick to ride low in the water, making for several passes before we were able to reach down low enough to grab it. No photos because I left my cell phone home!
No much sailing because we spent the four day Labor Day weekend in the Berkshires where climbing is fun but sailing cannot be done. Elevation 1700 feet, 700 above the valley floor. Good exercise.

We did go over to Hop-O-Nose marina in Catskill NY for a luncheon visit with Dean and Susan of "Autumn Born" on our way home. They are planning to head south in early October and maybe we can connect with them when they pass through NYC.

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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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ovember 22 and 23 Two Lay Days in Fernandina Zero Miles

Pretty lazy lay days. We had a delicious breakfast with Dean and Susan

followed by a very productive shopping trip at the multi-vendor farmers market. We are looking forward to boiling the likes of home made sweet potato fettuccine -- the eggs and other filler replaced with the pureed potato.  Afternoon and evening plans were replaced by the threat of a storm so we hung out on ILENE with some cleaning and polishing and a quiet night at home. The rain came, and heavy, but not until about 2 am and continued until morning.
The second day was warm, with a very light shower in the evening. After bailing many gallons of rainwater out of the dink I visited the Amelia Island Museum of History,

located in the former county jail and took its 2 pm "eight flags" tour. The ninth flag, except that they did not have one, would have been that of the  matriarchal peaceful people, the Timucuans, who the Europeans wiped out. (The Seminoles, who married with escaped slaves -- slaves escaped to the south, to the Florida wilderness, where the Spanish left them alone -- came later, from the north.) The Spanish wiped out the Huguenot French saying: "not because they were French but because they were Protestants" and held the island several times, including, for a period after the Treaty Of Paris, which ended our war of independence. That treaty gave Florida to Spain for their help to the new republic against the British. Various pirate regimes were established. David Levy Yulee campaigned to have the Florida Territory become a state and was the first US senator from Florida (and the first Jewish senator in the US senate) when Florida was granted statehood in 1845. But Florida was the third state to secede, in 1861, so its first period as a US State was short lived. Yulee (a nearby town is named for him) also built Floridas first big railroad, which ran from Floridas Gulf Coast northeastward to Fernandina, a deep water port, to permit the transport of goods from the gulf states to the Atlantic without having to go all the way around the peninsula and the keys by boat. But it was finished just in time for the Civil War and sections of rail were removed by the Confederacy to be used in more strategic locations. You get the idea that no one really cared that much about Florida until tourism put it on the map. All of these "regime changes" were accomplished without a shot being fired.
Flagler offered to build a spur of his east coast railroad to Fernandina but the existing tourism on Amelia Island was so good in the 1890s that the town fathers declined his offer, much to their chagrin, because the tourism industry relocated to southern Florida until the 1990s when it returned here. What made the museum so enjoyable was our docent, Bobbie Fost, a history professor who knew and loved her subject, shown here under a depiction of the eight flags, in chronological order.

The museum has much more to offer so if you want more, ask me  -- or visit yourself.

After returning to the boat to pick up Lene, we dined on interesting dishes at "29 South" with Dean and Susan, and plan to head over to St. Marys tomorrow morning, less than seven miles.

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Boatbuilding in a Nation of Two Finger Texters and Page Swipers

One of the memes of modern American culture is we have lost our DIY aptitude (a characteristic particularly attached to the millennial generation). We dont fix our cars, we dont fix our houses, we dont build things..we pay someone else to do it. I was reminded of this when reading the geeky but very informative Professional Boatbuilder magazine (by the same publisher of Woodenboat magazine).. They did an article on Chesapeake Light Craft, the plywood boat-kit builders based here in Annapolis. Chesapeake Light Craft spends an inordinate amount of time trying to make their plans and kits so comprehensive there is very little room for error. I then read the following paragraph and my jaw dropped.

Some customers are so unskilled that it would be better not to sell them a plan or a kit. "So many people these days cant read plans at all. When a part is symmetrical around an axis and the plans only show half a part, some people build half the part. Thats happened twice in the last month. One guy made half of the deck and the bottom. We were very nice. I guess if you cant laugh, you have to cry...You cant make assumptions about anybody."[Professional Boatbuilder, Number 152, pg. 26]

Hmm! maybe we are becoming a nation of hopeless klutzes.

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May 12 13 Last Two Lay Days in Washington No miles

No, not a Maritime Museum. This is one of the fishing boats used by the Danes in WWII to smuggle most of their 7000 Jews into neutral Sweden. It is one of the many artifacts in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

I spent a whole day (10 to 5:15) here and did not see it all. Designed of the same beautiful pale yellow stone that is used in most other government buildings in this city, the interior has a long atrium around which the horrible history unfolds, as one starts on the fourth floor and works ones way down. This atrium is glass covered and reminded me of a railroad station  -- such an integral part of the Germans "Final Solution". I have been to such museums in NY, Jerusalem and smaller ones in many other cities but none that were as comprehensive, with a significant slant on US responses before, during and after the war. It showed how gradually Hitler came to power, consolidated his power and set to work first trying to drive the Jews out by making life unbearable and dangerous, then deporting them and finally, exterminating them. One huge wall of etched glass, has the names of the numerous European towns where Jews lived before Hitler, including my fathers birthplace, Untergrombach, middle row, right, with my imagined "RR Station" below.

The place was very crowded with lots of high school kids who were very respectful. I was quite moved by the experience. The museum repeatedly discussed the plight of the Roma (gypsies) and other victims. It also had exhibits on the three post-Holocaust genocides: Cambodias killing fields, the Serbo-Croation conflict and Rwanda. It seems humanity has not learned yet, despite the saying "Never Again! We had lunch in the museums cafe, located in a small building outside the Memorial.
Our final day was for Congress and the Library of Congress. We had planned to visit the adjacent Supreme Court as well. I had to be admitted to its Bar to oppose a Petition for Certiorari  in the late 70s. (Since about 95 to 99 percent of such petitions are denied, winning that one was rather easy.) But our tourism stamina gave out before we got there, which was a shame because Lene has never been there. On our way we passed the Frances Perkins Department of Labor Building.

Ms. Perkins was one of FDRs "brain trust" and the first female Secretary of Labor. She co-taught a seminar in labor history I took at Cornell in about 1964.
In 2008 Congress opened a huge underground entrance, visitors center, "Emancipation Hall," with Museum, gift shops, a large cafeteria and many restrooms to handle the throngs of tourists. We were shown an inspirational movie about how well Congress works, which is somewhat of a joke given todays hyperpartisanship. Leah, our assigned

tour guide was energetic and bright with the kids but the tour did not include either house of the Congress. We easily secured a pass to visit the House, which was in session, but just barely. The person acting as speaker recognized a stream of Representatives who rose to give speeches of up to four minutes. It was mostly women in red suits on the Democratic side and men in blue suits on the other side. Several democrats spoke in favor of refinancing the Highway Trust Fund and opposing yet-another bill to restrict abortion, which the Republicans are addicted to and will undoubtedly pass. The Republicans spoke in favor of the anti-abortion bill and in memory of slain police officers. They all spoke to an almost empty room. The speeches go into the Congressional Record and are fodder for the folks back home. "See how I represented your interests!"
After lunch we visited the Library of Congress through an underground tunnel which avoids having to go through security again. Our first time here.

The entrance hall reminded me of The Hermitage in St. Petersberg, with its staircase, marble, red, statuary and grandeur.










The main reading room is much smaller than the one in NY but more elegant.

A highlight of my stay here was a visit to the Geography and Map division, where I was given access to their collection of nautical charts published by the United States Navys  Hydrographic Office from about 1850 to 1950. The charts are numbered, to about 6500, with some omissions. I have been studying them and cataloging them, as a volunteer in the Map Room of the NY Public Library for about seven years now. They describe the coastlines of the world (excluding the U.S. and the Philippines which are the subject of a similar series of charts published by the Coast Guard. Each branch of the armed forces had its champions in Congress and back in the 19th century they worked out this geographic compromise.)  I had a good conversation with the director of the map room who invited me back. Maybe, by land, some day.

I also saw a German antiquarian map of the world, in Latin, published a few decades after 1492, purchased for $11,000,000 (less than half of it taxpayer dollars), an exhibition of Herblock political cartoons, and a recreation of Thomas Jeffersons circular library of Monticello (he sold it to the government) with mostly his original books. He was a well read man.

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