Back to Portland for the winter

This blog began on Friday, September 27 when our boating friend Stu and I made an 8 AM visit to the boat for the trip back to Portland, our winter storage location. Frances was anxious to accompany us but unfortunately, her legs (while improving a lot over the summer) weren't quite strong enough to enable her to get off the boat once docked on the very unsteady slips at Portland Riverside.

Before we docked for the summer at Norwich, we got new 4-step boarding stairs that enabled her to get on a off easily. You can see them in the video below and they were well worth what we paid for them.

Last year, I made this trip at the end of October and it was, to say the least, difficult and not what pleasure boating is supposed to be. With that in mind, we picked what looked like a good day and made the trip a month earlier.

As it turned out, the weather was nearly perfect. We saw few other boats and the sea conditions (predicted to be "one foot or less, wind from the north at 5-10 kts") was exactly that or better. As you'll note on the video, there were times where we didn't seem to be moving and the boat would hold course without any steering adjustments. It was that nice!

Our buddy Stu, a former long-time boater and I passed much of the time laughing at the foolish things we did on our boats 20-30 years ago.

It was warm and sunny when we got to Portland. I was sad to dock the boat for the last time this year and all we had to do was secure the lines, grab our unused winter coats and drive home.

While we didn't cruise on the boat a lot during the summer, we did visit it most weekends starting in July and Frances always enjoys seeing all of her dock-mate friends.

Next summer

We will be another year older and that has taken its toll. My night vision isn't great and our maintenance on the boat takes a little longer to accomplish that it used to. Frances should be back fully on her feet by spring but even she has to take things a little slower.

American Wharf in Norwich, where we dock in the summer, is for sale and there are now many vacancies, although the dock crew is as helpful as ever. We looked at moving the boat to a slip at another marina but finally decided that our friends were in Norwich, so why not just stay there?

The boat, now 40 years old, is dry and comfortable and has all the stuff on it we need (and a lot of stuff that we probably don't) . Our engines are sound and take us where we want to go. It is definitely our "summer cottage" so in January, we'll write that big check for our summer 2020 slip rental and come May, make the trip back to Norwich, once again.

The video shown below covers a number of weeks from the fall cruise through winterizing the plumbing and engines. That took a little longer than expected due to the discovery of a kink in the hose from our fresh water tank. But we replaced that hose and the pink antifreeze finally flowed.

The video will be a good time to take a 13-minte nap, it's that calm. But it's fun for us to look at during the winter and perhaps it will be for you too.

Sunday morning in September

A couple of people have noted that we've been neglecting our blog and that's true, although we have been posting videos. Our summer got a late start but we have been using the boat, perhaps more as a summer home than we have in the past. But the old boat runs just fine and we did use it to visit Mystic Museum a over Labor Day and had a great cruise. A video of that is on You Tube.

Frances' health kept us from using the boat as much as we would have liked but we bought a new set of boarding stairs that is four steps high and that makes it possible for her to get on and off the boat much more easily. Once aboard, she is definitely the "old Frances," cooking up great dinners and talking to all of her neighboring boat buddies.

We know how good Frances' doctors are and how much she respects them but a weekend on the boat seems to be very good medicine for her right now.

Of course, it's fall here so the boat has to go into winter storage soon. You'd think we'd be used to that by now but filling the engines with antifreeze is never fun.

It rained last Saturday but we were in the boat anyway. Sunday was warm and while loading up the car, we took a video tour of our dock. Nothing special but it will be a nice reminder of how much we enjoy the summers on A-dock.

Winterizing the boat - after the snow

NOTE: If you didn't see our last blog post, it's because we didn't publish it when we should have. If you want to catch up with our boating adventures, check out our blog post for November 1. It's called "A difficult cruise to Winter Storage."

We managed to get the engines winterized last weekend and today, we finished the job by making sure that the hot and cold water lines in the boat were full of that pink antifreeze, including the head.

For us, winterizing includes putting old sheets down on the floors and covering the furniture. Of special importance is our table, which always get a new table covering. That keeps Bill from damaging the table top during his many winter boat-project adventures.

As it turned out, our boat made it into the shed just hours before the season's first snowfall. That was four inches of wet snow that tied up all the terrible drivers in Connecticut and delayed schools openings on Friday. It was mostly gone by Saturday morning but by then, ACT THREE was safely in the shed and waiting for some attention.

Today, we poured in all those gallons of pink and ran everything through the faucets, the head and the shower sump as well as the air conditioning.

We shot a little video using our look-alike GoPro camera, which doesn't win any prizes for quality but you'll get the idea.

Next up, we remove the towels and bedding and somehow, we don't think that will merit any video.

A difficult cruise to winter storage

We finally got underway for our cruise to winter storage on October 30. That's about two weeks late for us and, it seems, for many other local boaters.

The marine weather for our area has been terrible. Lots of days with Small Craft Warnings or Advisories and a couple of Gale Warnings. Not good, so we waited and waited until looking almost a week ahead, October 30 looked okay. Not great, but something we could do, as we often say, "without rearranging the furniture" on the boat.

As October 30 drew closer, the weather forecast deteriorated. Nothing terrible but "sunny with the wind from the northwest at 10-15 KTs gusting to 20" isn't fun, mainly because we'd be running into the wind just about all the way.

But we needed to to get going before it got really cold or even snowed.

We also had to realize that Frances' health, while vastly improved, wasn't exactly 100%. She would not be able to climb up to the fly bridge in any kind of difficult seaway. This would be a 62 mile trip and it didn't seem fair to have her down in the cabin just holding on for much of that distance.

So, we discussed having me (Bill) run the boat up myself. She definitely didn't like that idea but, since I've done it before, she agreed,

I arrived at the dock on Tuesday morning dressed for the cold, because it was. Long underwear, sweater and heavy winter coat. The hat that Frances assigned to me looked dumb buy ended up being perfect.

The manager at our summer marina gave me a hand with the lines and off I went. It was a windy but cold, run down the Thames River to New London.

 Once out into Long Island Sound, I turned right (west) and into the wind. The Sound, as far as I could see, was whitecaps.  I steered into them at about 16 MPH. Within 1,000 yards or so, I slowed down to 10 MPH just to ease the slamming. This wasn't fun and I had 15 miles to go before i could turn north into the Connecticut River.

Just to be clear, I wasn't in danger of sinking. Our old Silverton banged up and down without ever missing beat. but after while, I slowed again to about 5 MPH. I couldn't hold a course going any faster and I was getting wet up on the bridge.

Our front video camera became covered by the rolled down front bridge window that was caught in the wind and do what a might, I couldn't keep the window from being blown into the camera's view. As a result, there isn't much to see of the waves on video during our 15 miles in the Sound. Too bad. I found it invigorating, to say the least.

The trip of the river to Portland was cold, with fairly bright fall foliage. Thirty-three miles is a lot of foliage, in fact, enough for me for some time to come. Did I say it was cold?

After about two hours, we turned the corner on the river at Middletown and spied Frances waiting next to her car. The good, hot dinner she had waiting for me was exactly what I needed.

Some video...

October again!

Early evening on September 30 and a view of Frances' many artifacts displayed across the front windshield of the boat as the sun goes down. Another summer seems to have passed and with it lots more rain than we are used to.

It's a beautiful evening and everyone has left. It's nice being alone on the dock once in a while.

We paid our annual visit to Wal Mart today and bought the pink antifreeze, engine oil and filters that we'll need to winterize the engines and plumbing once we get to winter storage. It's actually easier to load up here in Norwich, so everything is lined up ready to cruise.

 The inside of the boat is crowded with bags full of stuff to be taken home but Frances is in the galley cheerfully making dinner.

 We were looking forward to some Indian Summer but now there's a chill in the air as soon as the sun sets. We had the heat on in the boat last night and it looks as though we will tonight, as well.

Frances is jumping on and off the boat like the old days so all's well with our world  She'll also be taking the long cruise to winter storage so well be able to chat and take pictures, just like the old
days.

Time to get out the boat's winter to-do list. It's not long and it's fun and interesting for us. Just seems as though October got here quicker than normal.

The annual Blue Mass cookout

On September 7, we unloaded our stuff at the boat and headed to the nearby East Great Plain Volunteer Fire Department in Norwich for the annual cookout held as a fun raiser for the upcoming Blue Mass to be held at the Cathedral of Saint Patrick. As I'm sure our readers know, a Blue Mass is held for active and retired law enforcement officers and their families.

Needless to say, it was fun. Our A-dock folks all sat together and enjoyed a great steak dinner, grilled by dock mate Lou and his son Tim.

Of course, there was a raffle and in the photo above, dock mate Sue reacts to dock mate John T. as he wins $120, which was the top raffle prize.

We shot some video even though it has nothing to do with boating. Just nice people turning out to support an event that is important to the entire community.

Cruise to Greenport II

After waiting out several weekends of bad weather, we shoved off for Greenport to see our friends Ellen and Dave who were away during our July visit.

Once again, we left on a Thursday and came back on Monday. Weekdays are ideal for getting to and from a slip at a popular marina such as Mitchell Park. Friday afternoons are very busy and Sunday mornings almost equally so. We heard  the Captain of a 100 ft. yacht on the radio refuse to tie up at his assigned spot because it was too narrow. "This boat is 25 ft. wide and we will not fit," he said. Then he took is 100-ft. yacht someplace else.

We met lots of nice boaters (as we almost always do) and our friends, Ellen and Dave, found us and spent some time catching up on what we and they had been up to. On Saturday night, we all went to dinner together despite the fact that it's not easy to find a restaurant on a weekend night during high season.

Claudio's

Claudio's, the East End's most famous restaurant, was sold and is now owned by new people, although the iconic building and the docks remain unchanged. We had a reservation and were seated promptly in a noisy dining room. No problem there; it was a Saturday night in August. The food was another matter. I know we're just New England rubes, but isn't dinner supposed to be hot? I guess not because our's wasn't. One of us ordered the "Fisherman Platter," that was not hot, devoid of flavor and probably right off the frozen seafood truck from Brooklyn. Our advice? Skip Claudio's, at least for now.

Fire boat

When we got there, a large part of Mitchell Park's east pier was taken up with a 300 ft. ex-NYFD fire boat, which is being restored by volunteers. The fire boat was there as a fundraiser and at about 1 P.M. on Sunday, they fired up its engines and backed it out into bay. Once there, they turned on the boat's dozen or so water cannons and let the people in their go-fast runabouts get wet in the spray. Pretty cool, I'd say, although no pun intended.

We left an almost empty marina on Monday morning. As the temperature approached 90 degrees, we had a nice cool ride down the Sound and visited our old Buddy, "Smokey" at Shennecossett Yacht Club in Groton for 143 gallons of gas. Best gas price in this part of Connecticut and you can't beat Smokey's conversation.

"American Wharf, this is Act Three!" No response

Very few boats seen as we covered the 15 miles back to our home marina in Norwich. As we went farther  north, the temperature went up. It was going to be warm, very warm, once we tie up.

Once we had our marina in sight, we called them on Channel 68 for some help docking. This is exactly what we always do and all we need is one person to grab and tie down one stern line.

Nothing heard on the VHF so Frances called the marina on the phone. Answering machine picks up, so no luck there.

So, in we go. We back into our slip and slowly drift away from the finger, as we knew we would. Frances takes our boat pole and hooks a dock cleat and drags the boat close enough so we can temporarily fasten a stern line. Our boat is docked and everything is fine. The two senior citizens at the end of A-dock have returned safely once again.

We find the new marina manager driving out of the parking lot and let him know that he and the morons who own (and are trying to sell) this marina have forgotten that some of us expect that dock help would be available during business hours as it has been for many years. Wide-eyed, he promises that it will never happen again. We'll see.

Finally getting underway

 It seems we hung around the marina until after the July 4th holiday. Time to get out of here and, like previous summers, we decided to go to Greenport to see friends and blow the cobwebs out of our boat.

When we arrived at the Marina at American Wharf in Norwich this spring, the first thing we were greeted with was a letter telling us that there would no longer be any fuel. It seems the marina's fuel tanks had reached their mandatory end-of-life and had to be replaced. Management felt that was too much of an investment so they had them removed. All that happened before they sent out the bills for this year's slip rental, which contained a 6.25% price increase.

The owners of our marina screwed us once. They won't do that again.Wouldn't you think they would have known about the fuel tanks when they bought the marina 5-6 years ago?

As a result, the marina is now half empty and those of us who have been here for a while are shopping for new slips for next summer.

However, we did get some boat things done. We did a thorough cleaning and the boat looks great inside. He also had the side cabin windows tinted to match the back sliding door that we did last fall. It was fun to take down the dusty old blinds and really amazing how much bigger the inside of the boat looks. And for you skeptics, if anything, it improved the performance of our air conditioning.

But, in the meantime, the city put on a good fireworks display for the fourth and we loaded up for a 39 mile trip to Long Island, once we found some gas, which we finally did.

The ride to Greenport was uneventful and we were surprised at how few boats were at Mitchell's. We arrived on a Wednesday and really enjoyed the beautiful weather. By Friday afternoon, word was circulating of rain and threatening east winds that were approaching. Some of our dock neighbors left on Friday afternoon; we shoved off early on Saturday morning.

The east wind had fully developed by then and our trip down the Sound was close to as uncomfortable as we've seen it. Frances was trapped in the cabin holding on and we had to do a lot of corrective steering up on the bridge. Our air draft is about 13 ft. and we were taking big doses of water through our one open front bridge window. It took a while but we made it just fine. The boat just keeps going!

But, enough of the sea stories. We know that we all have some to tell.

Here's a little video, excluding the dramatic return trip home.

Back to Norwich for the summer

Despite the inconsistent weather, we had the boat ready for its scheduled launch date and this year, they hit it right on the head. Despite that, we had to wait a few extra days to let the storm and rain debris clear somewhat and on May 14, we went down river.

 As soon as we left the dock in Portland, we encountered our first log. It was one of many that day

Despite the cold conditions, once in the Sound the wind was behind us and the water smooth. We ran at almost 17 miles per hour and we at New London in what seems like no time.  We know. Seventeen miles an hour is nothing to most of our boating friends but it's pretty speedy for us.

The docks at Portland Riverside are better but still a little shaky for Frances and while she is much better, she was a little unsure about getting on the boat, so Bill took that 62-mile trip alone.

No problems and the boat ran perfectly although it was cold and Bill wore a heavy winter ski jacket for almost the entire way.

 Once we got to Old Saybrook, the weather and the sea state looked a lot better

 

 As Bill attempted to back into our slip in Norwich, there was Frances waiting.

"Attempting" to back in is pretty accurate. The wind and tide were running and it did take a number of tries to get the bat secured. Frances remembers six attempts; Bill can't believe that he was so inept. He does remembers finally making a good approach on his third attempt only find that he was almost in Lou and Jane's slip next to ours. Oh well, there's nothing wrong with being close. Eventually, we made it.

Now we have to do the annual boat cleaning but if the weather is nice, that will be just fine.

Looking forward to a great summer with all  of our boat buddies.

Here's some video from the helm of the trip:

Back to the boat after the snow

 It's March 24 and it's finally warm enough to get back to work on our list of boat projects.  The snow is gone, even though we had the third "nor'easter" storm earlier this week. Nor'easter is now a TV weatherman term meant to keep us glued to our TVs. That works, of course, even though the last storm didn't leave enough snow here in Hartford to shovel.

Okay, back to boating. We arrived at the boatyard with two things on our list: Replace the hydraulic lines on the trim tab pump (one of which was leaking) and install our newly rebuild starter on the starboard engine.

The trim tab part went well enough. We trimmed the hydraulic hoses back and installed new fittings. Those fittings turned out to be hard to find. The local shops had nothing. Boat US had lots and we ordered four. After three weeks, Boat US couldn't figure out where those fittings were. So we ordered four more from iboat, which is located is one of the nation's boating capitals, Utah. I had our hydraulic fittings in hand in six days. So much for Boat US.

The new fittings were installed on the trim tab pump lines in minutes but to see if the pump now actually worked, we had to add automatic transmission fluid up to the "full" line on the pump. The full hole in the pump is really small, smaller than anything we had on board, so we'll have to hunt up some really, really small tubing to fill the pump and then test it.

Then came the starter. It was on the starboard engine and it worked okay but not anywhere near as fast as the port starter, which had been rebuilt three years ago by our favorite auto/electric guy in Middletown, Connecticut. It took our guy two months (they knew were were boaters in winter storage) but now, the 30 lb. original Chrysler starter was ready to re-install.

After a lot of surveying the installation area, we managed to get the starter in position and when we finally had it seated, bolted the damn thing down and reconnected the power cable.

Once that was done, we straightened up the cabin and dragged our bags back to the car. But, the weather was so nice, we decided to check out the dock and the boats in storage. Looking at boats is one of our favorite activities and we burned up a few minutes doing just that before we left.

The video is below. We'll be cleaning up our old and somewhat dirty bilge soon.

"Your channel will no longer be eligible for monetization"

Really? Gosh, what should we do?

Nothing, it appears. In the last five years, we've posted a hundred or more videos to include in our blog. On You Tube, we have have more than 360 "followers," a term we really dislike. Many of them have contacted us to comment or simply say, "we like your videos." Some have become friends.

The last time we looked, we had earned something over $3.00 for all of that work. No problem, we never began posting videos to make money. So, we'll continue to post videos of our boating adventures and You Tube can continue to make whatever money they can on our efforts.

Our faithful Admiral, Frances, has visited yet another doctor and has received some what we were told is really useful medication. She's not strong enough to throw lines to the dock hands yet, but knowing that woman, she will be. Figure two more months and she'll be climbing up and onto the boat and letting us know it's OK to get underway.

Ice in the river

We haven't accomplished anything on the boat due to the extended period of cold weather that we've been having. (If you are a nearby boating buddy, we know that you already know this, but our readership spans the nation after all).

It began with a week of very cold temps, not out of the ordinary for late January or early February. There was also a couple of minor snow storms and then a drastic change in temperature upward for a couple of days and to see 45 degrees during the day at this time of year is certainly not what we'd normally expect.

Just a few days of warm weather started the snow melt north of us and that raised the level of Connecticut's major rivers. Then it got cold again, but this time colder than anyone expected. Early on January 14, the temp in our car measured -7 degrees at 7 a.m.

As you might expect, we hearty New Englanders watched as most towns banned on-street parking, closed the schools and issued threats of electrical outages. There were long lines at our local supermarket and once again, we wondered what people do with all the bread and milk that they buy when faced with winter weather.

But, you'll be glad to know, we survived and due to Frances' superior culinary skills, did so over some damn good dinners. We did shovel some snow but there's nothing wrong with some exercise when you are otherwise trapped indoors by the cold.

We visited the boat earlier this week, mainly to charge the batteries. While we were there, we shot some video of the river. As of today (five days after our visit) the river is closed at East Haddam due to an ice jam. Two small (65 ft.) Coast Guard boats have been unable to break the ice dam and the bridge over the river was scheduled to be closed to traffic today while they made another attempt.

There are a number of missing spiles (pilings) at Portland Riverside, were our boat is, but nothing really serious. We have a couple of small boat projects that include refurbishing our trim tabs and doing some minor electrical wiring, but those can wait.

If you are among our friends who decamped for Florida (thinking of John T. here), good move this year.

Been taking a little break

We've been spending some time collecting ourselves after the storm that roared through here in early November. It brought down a neighbor's tree that punched a bunch of holes in our garage roof and left enough debris behind to cover most of our back yard.

After the insurance claim and the subsequent cleanup were behind us, we did visit the boat a couple of times just to do boring stuff like cleaning and covering the furniture. Of course, we also made a winter boat list.

During another visit, we removed the starter from the starboard engine and took it to Joe's Auto Electric, which is nearby. (Joe's father rebuilt a boat alternator for use about 25 years ago.) The starboard starter worked OK, but not as well as the port one, which Joe's rebuilt several years ago. Just seemed to us like prudent maintenance. They know the starter is from a boat so we don't expect it back any time soon. No pics of the starter removal but we'll shoot some when we put it back in.

 Making the trim tabs functional

Another item on the winter boat list is to get the trim tabs working. They did work at one time but very slowly. Recently they stopped altogether and although the boat runs fine with the tabs fully retracted, it would be nice to know that they do work.

We'll shoot some pictures of what we've been doing next weekend. So far, we've limited our tab work to disconnecting the hydraulic cylinders from the tabs themselves. That allowed us to pull the tabs all the way down and apply several coats of paint remover. Scraping off many coats of bottom paint (not put there by us) takes a long time but it eventually works. We're close to completing the top of the starboard tab and next weekend, we'll try cleaning off the bottom.

With both tabs disconnected from the rams, we tried applying some power to see if either of the rams extended. They didn't, although the pump was drawing some current. This may be as simple as filling the pump with ATF but that's a long shot. On a boat, the simple fix is fairly rare and in this case the pump is down there where the sun never shines so we have a feeling that this will turn into a true winter boat project. In other words, spend money.

Cold weather

We've gotten our first taste of really cold weather. Last weekend, we went to the boat full of good intentions but the cabin temp was 28 degrees and after an hour of charging the batteries with our little cabin heater on, it had risen to 30. We gave up and went home. No fun working when you can't feel your fingers.

The cold weather is tough on Francis but she has compensated nicely by redecorating parts of our house. She can't get an appointment with a specialist until late January but with any luck (and some decent medical care) she'll be back to heaving a bow line next spring.

A shoutout to Bill Moser

Thanks, Bill, for reminding us that we've fallen behind on blog posts. Yes, we're still alive and kicking and looking forward to the days getting longer and our boat "to-do" list getting shorter. Happy holidays to you from both of us.

End-of-season winterizing

We certainly don't look forward to this job and it was made just a little worse because the day we did the engine winterizing, it was a beautiful day. While the go-fast boats roared by our slip at Portland Riverside, we dragged down the oil, filters and our vacuum pump and got down to the dirty work.

As usual, we warmed up the engines, spread out the Puppy Pads in the bilge and changed the oil filters. Dropped one but caught most of the old oil in a zip-lock bag along with the old filters. After that, we used the vacuum pump to extract the old oil from the engines and then started them up and let them suck up about three gallons each of anti-freeze. A shot of Marvel Mystery oil down each carb and the boating season was officially over.

We certainly hope that this year's weather isn't a hint of what's to come. The week before we brought the boat up from Norwich, the sea conditions were not pleasant and we picked our day to travel carefully. It was a rough ride in the Sound but nothing that rearranged the furniture. A few days later when we did the winterizing, it was like summer. As we write this, a couple of weeks later, we've experienced a big storm that downed some trees in our yard that punched some holes in our garage roof. All's good with the boat, however. She's safely in the big shed and we've found the time to pump antifreeze through the boat's fresh water system.

For  those of us who know us well, we can report that Frances is doing well. She was slowed down a little by what appears to be Arthritus but she is coping and in great spirits to get through the winter and begin another boating season. If you know her, I know she'd love to hear from you. You know her email address.

We shot some video of some of the winterizing agony. Not a lot of detail there since we've done that in previous years and frankly, changing the oil really doesn't vary much from year to year and it is anything but exciting video.

The cruise to winter storage

October 18... time to leave American Wharf and cruise up to Portland Riverside for what right now, seems like a very long winter with no boating.

We planned this trip for the previous week but every time we looked at the weather, it seemed to get worse. Winds from the west at 15-20 kts. is a little too much for us. When the Small Craft Advisories finally went away, we looked at what we thought would be the best day and headed out.

Frances is doing fine but we felt that the ride might be a little uncomfortable for her as would driving an extra car to Norwich so Bill created an alternate plan in which he'd bring the boat up himself.

Since you're reading about it here, you'll know that that worked out fine.

 The Enterprise Car Plan 

Bill drove his car to Norwich on October 18 and left on the boat. Once in Portland, Bill called Enterprise Rent-a-Car in Middletown and they picked him up at the marina (this was prearranged). Once he dropped off the delivery person, he drove the rental car home in Hartford. The next morning, he returned the rental car to Enterprise in Norwich and they gave him a ride back to the marina, where he picked up his car and headed home. Perfect! Total cost: $84.83 plus $2.00 to refill the rental car with gas. When you consider how easy this made the whole trip, we consider it a bargain.

The cruise

The Thames River was docile but cold. Bill had to stop at the sub base while the USCG and the sub base police pulled a sunken aluminum row boat out of the channel. That took almost half an hour. Once we turned west on the Sound, I could see that it wasn't going to be pleasant. The west wind was there as predicted and the opposing tide made it 15 miles of what we like to call "bang and slam" boating. However, we didn't rearrange any of the furniture and our 37 year old Silverton went through it without any problem.

The ride up the Connecticut River was fine (absent any fall foliage) and Enterprise picked Bill up within 15 minutes of his call. The pickup driver was a 20-something female who told Bill that he was "funny, like my grandfather." Oh, well. At least she didn't say "my late grandfather."

Docking at Portland Riverside after a long - but great - day.

There's video here. A little long but at the end of the year, we like every minute we can get.

Tinted windows

After discussing darkening the windows on our boat for about eight months and contacting a number of vendors, we finally decided to begin by having just the three large windows at the rear of the cabin tinted.

We arranged to have Dwayne, the window-tinter who seemed the most cooperative (and who lived fairly close to Norwich), meet us at the boat at 10 a.m. on Saturday. Our first task was to remove the three six-ft. long rear blinds that were in poor condition,  Then Dwayne took over. When he was finished less than an hour later, our boat had a new look.

The amount of light and heat that the tinted windows keep out is substantial and while no one will ever notice but us, look really cool.

Can we see out at night? Yes. Can people see in at night? No, not under normal conditions. This was a fairly expensive job but we're more than pleased with how it looks and the extra room that became available once the blinds were gone. Next, we'll save up some more boat bucks and have the side windows done, as well.

With that spiffy new look to the back of the boat, Bill was moved to wash the exterior, a job that took him the entire rest of the day.

On Sunday, we decided to head over to the gas dock to fill up. Our original plan was to cruise over to Greenport during the week but the aftermath of Topical Storm Jose was predicted to make that an very unpleasant ride. But we gassed up ($450) anyway.

Not a very exciting video but we've added it below it anyway.

Reverse Polarity

"I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison."  - W. C. Fields

Reverse polarity is something that most boaters don't really worry about. Those big yellow (and expensive) shore cords that we use to connect to shore power have carefully designed prongs that keep us from plugging them in backwards.

Our boat has two reverse polarity indicators (tiny red lights) on our power panel and neither of these has ever lit up.

On Saturday evening of Labor Day weekend, we were aboard and Frances was busy preparing dinner. Yes, she was drawing a lot of current, what with both stove elements lit up brightly and the toaster oven just getting warmed up.  That was in addition to the battery charger and the hot water heater. Then the lights went out.

No problem. We know what to check. Circuit breakers?  All on. The breaker at the dock? On and ready. Shore power cords connected? Yes, nice and tight. What the hell? There goes cocktail hour!

Since Bill didn't have any useful ideas, we decided to go to bed and sleep on the problem.

The next morning, Bill assembled all of his tools and got access to the breaker panel (with the boat unplugged from the dock, of course). His theory, based on a good night's sleep, was that the main breaker was faulty. Sounded good and he soon swapped in a new one. But that didn't work either. 

Then he went for the socket into which one of the shore plugs connects to the boat. Unfortunately, that looked good too. Nothing black and burnt.

Then it was down on the wet deck to look up behind the shore power inlet plugs. Maybe a wire had broken off somewhere? Yes, this was a desperation play because we had zero additional ideas. Fumbling up behind the plug we could feel the three wires (black (hot), white (neutral) and green, (ground). Each was routed neatly forward into the boat except the black (hot) wire that first detoured into a fixture mounted between the two power inlets. That fixture was our 1980-era reverse polarity indicator that had never worked. In fact it had been ignored for all the years we have owned the boat and we would never have known its function except for the faint words "Reverse polarity" stamped on its face.

The excitement built as Bill disassembled it and pulled it out of its mounting hole. It had a tiny bulb, long since dissolved in corrosion. Hmm. Black wire goes in energized and come out dead. Time for some quick rewiring!

The original Silverton reverse polarity light removed. No continuity between those two contacts meant no juice to all of the boat except the air conditioning.

It took only a few minutes to butt-splice those lengths of black #10 wire together and fasten the power wires back in place. Even with the door closed, we could hear Frances cheering as all the lights came back on.

Now we have some holes where the old light lived. We'll have to fit something in there. We'll bet that Frances has some ideas!

Block Island, August 2017

 On August 10, we finally got everything in order for our cruise to Block Island. Frances was feeling sprightly and our stuff was packed so off we went on a very nice day.

The Sound cooperated, so much so that we didn't need to steer much as we went across Block Island Sound.

It was a Thursday so we knew we'd be avoiding the weekend boating traffic but unlike previous years, Payne's Dock was just about full. We waited a while at their famous flagpole and they found a spot for us up against the bulkhead, which made it easier for Frances to get on and off.

Getting into that spot took some work and we kept the cameras on just so the folks who hate Payne's docking situation could see what they're missing.

Block Island's New Harbor has a way of relaxing you after a day or so. After a while, we simply enjoyed the beautiful weather and relaxed.

Francis met some nice dogs, one of which was also named "Frances." Both of these poodles got a bath using our hose. We don't think we've ever met a boat dog that we didn't like!

One day we ventured across the island the Old Harbor. While we have visited Block for many years, we've rarely seen the downtown area as crowded as it was. The ferries were pouring out hundreds of people and various food delivery trucks waited in the ferry line with their diesel generators roaring. People shuffled up and down the sidewalks looking for something - a restroom, the beach or a place to buy a souvenir. Mopeds scooted by operated by unsure drivers. This is all a result of one of the most successful tourism campaigns the the northeast. The quiet, beautiful island that we knew wanted more visitors and their money and they surely got their wish. At least in Old Harbor, this just isn't "one of the last great places on earth" anymore.

But, on our boat surrounded by other boaters, life was good.

It was difficult for us to stay up much past sunset and that's what makes a good vacation for us.

The Solar Eclipse

On August 21, after we had returned from Block Island, we were treated to at least a partial eclipse. Frances was ready to see it in all its glory. Several days in advance, she had us visit Praxair in Hartford to obtain several pieces of dark glass used in welding helmets. She also talked them out of two small boxes from which she had us fashion two "viewing hats." We looked pretty spiffy as the sky finally darkened.

The video is a little long because we included most of the docking activity but we like that part so we left it all in.

The 2017 Catfish Tournament

We make a video of the Connecticut River Catfish Tournament almost every year, although we had to skip last year because of another commitment. This event is put on by Portland Riverside Marina, which is where we store our boat in the winter. The folks who own the marina are old friends and it's our pleasure to be able to record this unique event.

The video is a one man effort, just Bill trying to capture everything. Just seeing the little kids getting their prizes (and helping to release the fish at the end) makes it worth the time it takes to watch.

Repair and relaunch Miss Nicky

Our friend John put a new engine in his boat, Miss Nicky II, this winter and during the sea trial he had some issues. He fixed those in the water at our marina but did need to replace the control cable to the stern drive lower unit. For that, the boat would have to come out of the water and that's where we found him on Sunday.

John enlisted the help of dockmate John H. In fact, John H (white shirt) pulled the boat out with this diesel truck and trailer. Another dockmate, Bob, also joined in. We were there to take some video of this project since we know next to nothing about stern drives.

Under an 80-degree sun, the first task was to remove the lower unit.

Then it was time to remove the old damaged control cable and install a new one. Not easy, it turned out,

There was lots of adjusting and readjusting of that cable to get it to go into gear reliably.

 The only way to tell was to try to turn the prop and we turned that prop many times before the cable  seemed to be adjusted properly. But finally, it was time to put away the tools and take Miss Nicky over to Brown Park to be launched.

The boat went into the water easily but once clear of the dock, that damn cable wouldn't function properly so John motored across the harbor backwards.

We know some people who would have yelled for help but John backed across perfectly and then went all the way down a fairway to where he could dock.

He'll get the final adjustment of that cable done soon and will be on his way to a great summer with that new engine.

The video from which the pictures shown above were taken is here.