Realllllly the Last Post of 2009

     I figured I'd have no more posts in 2009 but an update became needed.
    
     Why?

     We had someone aboard Infinite Improbability over the weekend and they stole a large MagLite flashlight from the cockpit. They did not break into the boat or vandalize anything and they left a rechargeable spotlight. This wasn't my spotlight. It was the one they brought themselves! Not only that, it was worth more than the light they took and it worked!!! My MagLite had dead batteries in it.

     Did I come out ahead? No. The police took the spotlight away as evidence. They hoped to fume it (see NCIS or CSI). I may become a suspect since I touched it before I realized what had happened. Oh well. Another adventure.

     The other update is about what may become our ship's cat. We've been adopted but she may end up with Heather when we sail away. We'll see. She's already been to the boat and was fine but who knows what will happen once we get underway. Going to a foreign country could be an issue, too. That is a few years in the future anyway.

    

I am on Facebook as Mike Cam.  A friend asked me to join so I could see his photos.  Seems like a lot of work.  Facebook is officially over since  I'm now on it.                                                                 

HAPPY (through the next 40 days or so) HOLIDAYS

I hate winter

Well it's the off season for boating here in New England. It's not officially winter yet but it's official, I hate winter.

We hope this is the last winter season we spend in this area. By mid-November next year we should be nearing Florida with Infinite Improbability but you never know. The weather enroute south hasn't been all that great this year and there have been delays with bridge failures, etc. so who knows, next year. We'll see.

I moved the boat to Clinton, CT on Holloween weekend for winter storage. It was a long motor against the wind and current. Calm and boring. We didn't use the boat at all in October because of weather and travel but we did buy her some new toys at the boat show to make up for it.

Here is what the boat looks like after engine and water system winterization and then covering part of it to keep snow and ice out of the cockpit and off the bimini. It is also to keep the bird crap off. It seems like there is more of the latter than the former in Clinton.

Piggy Sue made the trip with me to Clinton but her health has been up and down. She gets dehydrated because she doesn't want to drink. We trick her by giving her fruit drinks and soup and she perks right up. Acts like a little piglet. Well, not quite. Then the next week she doesn't want to drink what we've been giving her and we have to try something new. It's like dealing with a cranky old aunt or grandmother in the nursing home. If you are a cranky old lady, I don't mean you.

Piggy Sue will be in the next issue of Points East magazine. http://www.pointseast.com/

This is likely my last post for 2009. We are starting to work on preparing the house for a spring listing and are looking forward to moving aboard fulltime and then sailing away in 2010. In the mean time...

I hate winter!

End of season

          The 2009 boating season is coming to an end here in New England. We went to a District 1, USPS event at Hamburg Cove, Lyme, CT the last weekend of September but it looks like the weather, Carol's schedule and our trip to Annapolis, MD (by car) will likely prevent any more cruises. Next year we hope to be going to the Annapolis Boat Show by boat, not by car.

          I had a really great solo sail from Mystic to the Conn. River enroute to the USPS event. Small craft warnings were given but the wind (20 kts. gusting to 25) was from the north and that keeps the seas to reasonable levels if you are on the north side of Long Island Sound. I had a reef in the mainsail (reduced sail area) mostly because I was solo but my speed still averaged over 8 kts. and topped out at 9.9 kts. It was a very quick trip at that speed. Lots of fun!

          The District 1 Poker Run went well and then we had Waterbury Squadon people aboard for an evening social. The next morning I came upon 6 empty bottles of wine on the counter so I would guess everyone had a good time, a really good time.

          Unfortunately the next day we had very bad weather. Small craft warnings again, with rain. The wind was stronger and coming from the direction we were heading. This meant a very slow, uncomfortable motoring voyage with a lot of hull banging, window leaks and even a damaged cabinet door that swung freely until it broke. It took an hour and 45 minutes longer to make this return trip than the outbound trip. No fun at all. Not dangerous. Just boring and tiring. Not the note on which to end a decent boating season. Perhaps the trip at the end of October to our winter storage marina will be better. Maybe not.

          Here is a photo of Piggy Sue swimming to Bassett's Island, Pocasset, Cape Cod back in August. She wrote another letter that will be in the next issue of Points East Magazine. It concerns meeting up with Shadow, the dalmation, at Hamburg Cove. Shadow is one of the dogs she dissed in her previous letter to the magazine. I don't know when it will come out. The current edition is the October/November issue.

          We finally got around to putting our boat name on the sides of the boat:

         

Piggy Sue has been getting some more attention lately. She wrote a letter to Points East Magazine which was published in August. http://www.pointseast.com/

She is also in the online version of Cruising World Magazine. In the cruising-life forum section dated 10 September. Here is the link: www.cruisingworld.com/cruising-life/when-pigs-fly-1000076178.html

Piggy Sue from 2004

Piggy Sue wasn't feeling so good after getting back from Watch Hill. Grumpier. Had a slight fever. She seems to be better now. A guess mught be she had a jelly-fish sting. We're not sure. Didn't affect her appetite or any other personal business, however.

Labor Day

The weekend after our vacation cruise was Labor Day Weekend. We went to a Watch Hill, RI rendezvous with the Waterbury Power Squadron.

It was a nice, relaxing, mostly sunny weekend with friends. A very short trip for us and no adventures.

Some of the group had a slightly less relaxing weekend when the wind picked up early Sunday morning and their raft-ups dragged their anchors. I woke up about 0100 to see the tail end of the re-anchoring efforts and to make sure we were still secure. We did not have anyone rafted with us and didn't drag. The others had up to four boats rafted and did drag. Coincidence? I don't think so. Adventures are better when someone else is telling the story.

Some of the 17 people aboard for a 'happy hour'.

Vacation Cruise

We completed our 2009 vacation cruise. Well it was Carol's vacation. I'm on permanent vacation. Heather joined us and Piggy Sue was in the crew also. We had great weather right up until the end. We cut the trip one day short because of rain and possible stormy conditions on what was supposed to be our last day. Except for that it was sunny every day of our cruise. Including those affected by Hurricane "Bill".

Here is the crew taking in the sun at Hadley Harbor, Naushon, Cape Cod, Ma.

Our trip started out very foggy going from Point Judith, RI to Cuttyhunk, Elizabeth Islands, Cape Cod, Ma. but it was sunny all the rest of the way to Lake Tashmoo near Vineyard Haven on Martha's Vineyard, Ma. We spent four days there mostly going to the beaches, going to town or taking a nature walk. We then went to Oak Bluffs, Martha's Vineyard to see 'Grand Illumination' night at the Methodist "campground" there. It was an adventure manoeuvering our boat in a very tight mooring field in Oak Bluffs Harbor. The practice would come in handy later in the cruise.

We then went to Nantucket. We had very dense fog for a little more than an hour enroute with several collision opportunities. None occurred. We kept Heather's young eyes at the bow in these reduced visibility conditions. Much to Heather's disappointment we only spent one night in Nantucket and did not even get to town. That night was breezy and due to the strong current we did not point into the wind, making for a noisy and rocking night. Hurricane Bill started making itself noticed and these factors lead us to leave early and head to Hyannis on the Cape for more security should the storm come closer than forecast. We spent a nice night in Lewis Bay and then went to the Inner Harbor for a slip for the night of the storm. Nearly $200 for that night!!!! Ridiculous!!! But it was safe and calm and they did give us a nice tote bag. Got to use a car and the internet, too. This is the 48 foot space they had us go into with our 44 foot boat. We had to go in sideways. If you know boats you know how difficult that is. We managed just fine before moving to a different and nicer location. Why did we move? The mega-yacht did not want us that close. I think because we smelled different. Didn't have that cash smell in our wallets.

We left there after "Bill" had passed and went to my favorite harbor, Hadley Harbor, which is across from Woods Hole, Ma. On the way we saw Air Force One approach Otis A.F.B and then later Marine One with President Obama flew nearly over us (along with many scout and decoy copters) enroute to his vacation on Martha's Vineyard. While out in our dinghy at Hadley Harbor we saw several seals fishing for their breakfast in Vineyard Sound. We had never seen any marine mammals from our own boat before. Neat! Our kind of adventure! Last year we saw sharks (for the first time) on our cruise. Seeing seals is much nicer.

From Hadley we went to Red Brook Harbor, Cataumet, on the Cape for two days. This is Carol's favorite harbor. Our second day there we started hearing about Tropical Storm Danny and had to modify our cruise. Instead of stopping at Cuttyhunk we went directly to Newport, RI. Heather was happy about this even though it is a long passage. She got to shop and see a friend she met when she was at Marist.

From Newport to our home port in Mystic we started getting some sprinkles which preceeded the rain on what was to be our last day of the cruise.

All in all a nice trip with good weather and no major adventures. Seeing Air Force and Marine One, the seals and manoeuvering our boat in tight quarters were the only unusual events. Foggy adventures are more the norm and these did not get too dangerous.

We had 45 hours underway over the two weeks and no yelling was involved.

If you'd like to see (nearly) all the photos of our trip email me (at pnorm72-one@yahoo.com) and I'll send you the link.

Cruises Update

I thought I'd give an update on the summer so far before we do our two week cruise to Martha's Vineyard, Cape Cod and (hopefully) Nantucket.

I did a one-week cruise with other boats from the Waterbury Power Squadron in July and didn't have any adventures except for spending two nights in Cuttyhunk (Elizabeth Islands, Cape Cod) on a $40 per night mooring due to very bad weather. In a week I got two hours of sailing in.

Typical.

The photo is of the people on the cruise at Point Judith Pond, Rhode Island.

In August we had a get-together in Port Jefferson, Long Island, NY and I took the boat there myself (as usual). Tough being retired. Carol met me there by ferry for the day. Two days to get there and two days back for a few hours hanging out with the squadron. Got some sailing in, however. 2 1/2 hours on Thursday. 2 1/2 hours on Friday. 3 hours on Sunday.

The video is part of my sail on Friday, 7 August.

I did have an adventure on my return trip. A few miles out of Mattituck, NY I started the starboard engine and a belt that drives the raw water pump (a key engine cooling component) broke. No cooling equals no engine. I had to shut down the engine and go into a long narrow creek with only one engine. Fortunately no incidents occured. It only took a little time (maybe an hour) working over a very hot engine to replace the belt. What fun!!!!

Watch the video to get a little idea of what sailing on Infinite Improbability is like.

4th of July Weekend Rendezvous

As you probably know it hasn't been the greatest weather in Southern New England. The late spring and early summer has been pretty wet. Infinite Improbably hadn't left its mooring since Memorial Day Weekend due to weather, family commitments and other obligations. We're on the boat for parts of every weekend but not to sail. We got luckier for the 4th of July weekend. Maybe the weather trends have changed. Maybe not for the worse. On Thursday 2 July I got underway about an hour after the last downpour ended. I was hoping I would not get caught in another of the storms that had been marching through daily for more than a week. Carol was 'at work', keeping an eye on weather radar for me. It was a kind of boring motor trip through The Race and then to Shelter Island, Long Island, New York. Little breeze and on the stern makes for poor sailing while single-handing. It could have been worse, however. A thunderstorm would have made it exciting but I'll take boring over a thunderstorm any day! I arrived at the quiet little harbor on the southwest corner of Shelter Island and anchored. Had it nearly to myself. The crowds would start arriving on Friday, the 3rd. Carol and Heather arrived via the powerboat of a friend in the Waterbury Power Squadron and he and a few others rafted up with our boat. Rafting is when boats tie up alongside a boat that is anchored. It puts extra weight and wind resistance on the anchor of the host boat but usually it's okay if conditions are calm and protected. We had 7 other boats in our raft. Whoops. That's a lot. We had a great party aboard our boat Friday evening as all the people on the cruise from our squadron as well as all the people from the Meriden Squadron's cruise came aboard. I lost count at 27. 27! That is a lot of people on one vessel unless you are used to boating on a mega-yacht. I would guess that our boat never had that many people aboard it at one time with any previous owner. We estimated that if the average person weighed 150 pounds (who is average?!?!?) we had between 4000 and 4500 pounds of people aboard. Our stern boarding steps were submerged at least 8 inches, maybe more. It really was stunning. More importantly it seemed everyone had a great time. The next day (the 4th) was also a beautiful day but the breeze picked up and the strain on our anchor became too much. Even with the second biggest boat in the raft having an anchor out we started dragging. Dragging is when the boat starts moving aft, pulling the anchor right through mud it is set in. Not fun. We had to scramble to get the boats separated before we reached the beach. It was an adventure for a while but we safely broke the raft into several safer two-boat rafts. Carol and Heather were ashore bike riding so I had to 'borrow' Vicky Davis from "Afternoon Delight" to be my crew while we re-anchored. She did a fine job. Might have been in trouble without her. Another adventure. Did I mention I hate adventures? Sunday we had a great sail home to Mystic. We even tried fishing. Fortunately we caught no fish.

Typical Work Day

This is what a typical work day looks like now. Retired. Or as the British say: made redundant.

The photo was taken on a sail to Block Island, Rhode Island. A nice sail in the photo but later it became a great sail as the breeze picked up. Boat speed increased to about 9 knots for a while. That's over 10 MPH for lubbers. Fast.

While zipping along Carol wondered whether we were going too fast. I replied, "in a catamaran there is no such thing as too fast". Shortly thereafter a wave caught the dinghy and it flipped on its side as it hung in the davits. A lot of drag and stress on it as it was catching the seas as we sailed.

End of fast sail.

We had to stop to right it and bail the ocean out of it. When we got organized again it was back to a normal sail to Block.

Another adventure. Sigh. :>/

First Adventure 2009

We launched Infinite Improbability 23 April this year at Newport, RI and set out for home the next day. The boat is having water pump problems (the starboard engine impeller seal leaks) but it wasn't bad enough to keep us from heading home to Mystic. On Saturday the 25th we ran into dense fog in Fisher's Island Sound and touched the chain of a channel buoy! No damage (I think). First trip - first adventure. Hate adventures. Piggy Sue was happy as it was flat calm but she refused to help keep watch when the visibility dropped to zero. Less than zero. Arrived safely after a few extra cautious moments in the Mystic River channel.