The last few little projects before Block Island

As you can see, Pooka the boat cat, is no longer content to sit quietly in the salon. He now climbs the ladder to the bridge and after this shot was taken, we opened the canvas and sure enough, up he went, happy to find a new place to explore. After a thorough sniff of everything, he came back down.  He's not as good coming down as he is going up, but he'll learn, we're sure.

If you've been reading this blog, you know that we have been rehabilitating the outside of the wall that surrounds the sliding door. We finished the trim last weekend and on Saturday, we taped again to protect our trim.  We then applied one coat of Petitt Easypoxy paint, using the same color that we had used on the deck.  When we paint, Bill applies the paint and Frances goes back over the surface to make sure it's perfect.

The whole project looked great but as we often comment as we do these things, no one will ever notice it because it simply looks the way it should, rather than weathered and dirty. So many of the things we have done to our Silverton fall into this category but we remember how the boat looked when we got it and we take a lot of satisfaction from working on making it look good and function the way it should.

After painting, Frances took a break to chat with our friend and dockmate Joanne. Joanne was drinking wine and plucking out fresh blueberries. Nice way to get some extra nourishment.

We had a number of other small jobs on our list and we got them all done on Sunday.  They aren't very exciting but they make life on the boat easier.

Frances devised a way to keep the expandable deck hose inside its circular holder. All that was needed was to drill a couple of holes and add some zip ties. Good engineering on Frances' part.

We also found some clips at Defender marine that could be used to store the oars that we use with our inflatable. Those oars always seemed to be in the way.  We mounted the clips up under the edge of the cockpit.  Frances stood back and let me know when the clips were in exactly the right spots.

We also checked the fluids in the engines, transmissions and v-drives (no fluids needed) and we fired the old girls up and let them come up to temperature.  We managed to raise the idle speed of the starboard engine just a little to give us just a more bite when backing into a slip.

When you raise the engine hatches and start the engines, a few dockmates always come over to see what we're doing. (We do the same thing when someone else has their engine hatch up. It's a very  guy thing.)

John Hanks, a dockmate who is ex-Navy, a diesel engine technician and very knowledgeable about boats, asked about the capacity of our water tank which is mounted outboard of our starboard engine. We told him that it holds 50 gallons of water and was full.  He suggested dumping most of that water to save weight and fuel.

He was right, of course. Water weighs 8.4 lbs per gallon so we were dragging around about 420 lbs. of extra weight. The only time we use the water in that tank is while underway and we don't drink it but use it to flush the head (one pint per flush) or to wash hands, etc. We could easily get away with 10 gallons or so, so we opened faucets and shed about 336 lbs. of unneeded weight.

If we raft up with others or spend some time on a mooring, that water would be very useful to have but for now, our next stop is Block Island, where we won't need it.

Fireworks on Sunday and Woodwork Unveiling on Monday

We all gathered on Sunday for the rescheduled fireworks and dockluck dinner.  Both met our expectations. Our media expert, Sue was able to find the radio station that was in concert with the "works"

Here is the gang.  Kudos to John Hanks for the hot and mild venison meatballs. 
Dang tasty!

Our very own Southern Belle

The rest of the gang

Milo the Mascot, all dressed up and nowhere to go

John T., Mayor of "A" Dock

  

Tape removed from deck woodwork project.  We will reverse the green tape and paint the wall this weekend.

Great weekend to get some more things done

We arrived at the boat on Friday afternoon, loaded with food, only to find that the fireworks originally planned for that night had been postponed until Sunday night. It was just as well because it began raining early in the evening and continued for most of the night.

Pooka is the official 2nd mate, he is sometimes referred to as "Kitty Buffett"

On Saturday morning, we continued our trim rehab project and taped all of the trim around the sliding door.

We applied a coat of Sikkens Cetol and, although it set up very quickly in the heat, decided to let it cure overnight. We took some time on Saturday afternoon to visit Defender Marine in Waterford to get the paint we'll need to go around the newly refinished trim. That color will match the deck so we expect it to give the cockpit a new, much cleaner and newer look.

Early on Sunday, we applied a second coat of Sikkens.

The plan is to apply three coats for now.  After the second, it began to take on some color.

We also updated our list of things that we'll need to bring down to the boat for our upcoming trip to Block Island.  Pooka, the boat cat, added his companionship.

At one point during the day, we needed something that was stored in the space under the lower helm. We picked up the hatch and Pooka, who loves to inspect any new space, jumped in immediately and gave everything an introductory sniff.

Pooka has taken to the boat and seems very happy there.  Normally an inside cat with Frances at home, he now comes out into the cockpit, rolls over in the sun and sometimes climbs up on the side boarding ladders to check out, well, just about anything.  Everything is new to him and he seems to love it.

Others on the dock were busy as well. Our dockmate Bob borrowed a ladder from another dockmate and climbed up to fix his anchor light.  It's amazing how something as mundane as fixing a light can draw a crowd but, that's boating among friends. You can see what a beautiful day it was. That's our friend John, the guy who helped us bring Act Three back from Long Island two years ago, holding the ladder.

Since we were on a roll on Sunday, we decided to try one more time to put the boat's MMSI (Maritime Mobile Service Identity) number into our Icom VHF radio.  We followed the directions carefully but could never get the radio to successfully accept this simple nine digit number. Today, we tried one extra step that wasn't in the instructions: Turn the radio power switch off after entering the last number. Sure enough, when we turned the radio back on, the radio display showed the correct MMSI number.

Now, if we trigger the emergency switch on the radio, the radio will transmit our MMSI number on channel 16, which will tell the Coast Guard basic information about the boat and who we are.

But to make this really useful, we should also transmit our exact location as part of that emergency message. Sure, we could verbally say our location over the radio but if we were busy dealing with a real emergency, this might not be practical. Our Standard Horizon chart plotter has that information and all modern plotters make it available through a couple of wires coming out of the back of the unit. Also, all newer radios have a couple of wires that if connected properly to the plotter, will accept that position data and broadcast it automatically as part of the emergency message.

(A recent article in Soundings magazine pointed out that while VHF radios and even chart plotters are now widely used by recreational boaters, a relatively small percentage of boaters have bothered to interconnect these two pieces of equipment.  Not doing so is fairly dumb, since since making these connections dramatically increases the Coast Guard's response time and the type of assets it deploys in response to your emergency.)

It is worth noting that although we have a pretty thorough knowledge of marine electronics and even understand how NMEA 0183 and NMEA 2000 work (these are the data formats that allow various pieces of equipment to communicate), we found connecting the chart plotter to the radio to be far from easy..

First, Icom (our VHF radio) and Standard Horizon (our chart plotter) didn't have matching color coded wires so we had to look up that data in the instructions to figure out how to connect them. Second, Icom, a company that we would consider a top-tier electronics manufacturer, provided data wires that were ridiculously short and of much too light a gauge to be able to add even the smallest crimp connector.  Standard Horizon wasn't much better.  The wires were much longer but they were also very thin and difficult to strip and splice. How much can it add to the price of this equipment to provide longer, heavier gauge data wires?

It took a while, but we made the connections and then tried the radio to see if we could see our position on the screen. "No position," was the only message we got.  Then we plunged into the "advanced settings" screens on the chart plotter.  This area is very poorly documented in the manual.  We found that Port 2 (the port we selected to connect to our radio) was formatted to work with a Standard Horizon fish finder. We didn't even know that Standard Horizon made a fish finder. After some exploring, we found that we could re-configure port 2 on the chart plotter to NMEA 0183 data settings. Bingo!  That worked. We saw our position scroll across the bottom of the screen on the radio.

While you can't see it in this photo, the radio displays a "GPS" message when properly connected. Nice, although we hope we'll never have to trip that little red "emergency" switch on the front of the radio and make all of this technology go to work for us.

Hangin' out on the boat

We didn't have much planned for this weekend boat-wise. Lots of our dockmates went to Napatree to raft up together and it turned out we almost had the dock to ourselves.  Saturday, was a warm and sunny day and we used that time to wash the boat completely, not with a deck brush, mind you, but on our hands and knees scrubbing all the old salt and grime that had collected.  Looked nice when we were finished and Pooka the boat cat decided that sleeping on a chair was a better choice than prowling around outside in the cockpit.

On Sunday, we were sitting outside and began discussing the refinishing of the wood trim around the sliding glass door. We had noticed as we washed on Saturday, that the discoloration on the wood seemed to be mold and some of it came off with the mild soap we were using.  Now, on Sunday, Frances decided to try some of her favorite cleaning material and an old tooth brush to see how clean she could get that trim.  Using two tablespoons of Dirtex dissolved in a gallon of water, she began scrubbing at the discolored teak.  In about a half hour, the trim appeared to be free of mold.  We let it dry while we went to get some lunch and when we came back, the trim on the starboard side looked good enough to refinish without sanding.  The second photo is the starboard side showing what the trim looks like before scrubbing with Dirtex.

The plan now is to mask the newly cleaned teak and apply multiple coats of Sikken Cetol.  Once that is done, we'll reverse the masking and paint the wall area surrounding the teak.

There are July 4th fireworks in Norwich where we keep our boat next weekend, so maybe we'll get a chance to begin that refinishing process then.

That Sunday lunch we mentioned was at Harry's in Colchester.  We both wanted a good old fashioned hamburger and there is nothing like that short of fast food in Norwich.  Harry's has been there for 90 years (or so the sign says) and it's a place that just about everyone knows about. It's all outside and probably very much as it was in the 1940s. The burgers are cooked perfectly and served on little rolls. The french fries actually taste like potatoes and the fried onion rings will send you to an early grave with a smile on your face and grease on your lips.  Perfect for a humid, early summer afternoon.

Greenport: First cruise of the summer

We've been visiting Greenport's Mitchell Park Marina for years to see our good friend Ellen Creighton on or near her birthday.  This year, we missed it by a week due to bad weather but on June 16, we shoved off for the first cruise of the year.  This time, we had an extra crew member, Pooka, Frances' cat. We had no idea how this normally inside cat would take to six days on a boat but as it turned out, he did just fine. Pooka needs special medication twice a day and it saved Frances lots of money to bring him along.  Vets cost big bucks and when it comes to taking a pill, cats prefer their owners to apply the medication.

Our first stop was in Groton at the Shennecossett Yacht Club.  We pulled up to the club's gas dock and met Smokey, who was manning the pumps. Smokey is a club member who lives during the summer at the club on his 43 ft. Hattaras.  We chatted about boats while he pumped 156 gallons of 89 octane into the boat at $4.30 per gallon. Shennecossett will probably be our gas stop this summer since our marina is no longer able to sell fuel.

Smokey also pumped out our holding tank and then we headed out across the Sound.  We kept our speed at about 10 mph, having just spent almost $700 for fuel.

Four hours after leaving Norwich, we docked at Mitchell's only to find that we were the only boat there.  No problem. Ellen arrived and we had a great dinner, courtesy of Frances.

Friday morning dawned as foggy as we have ever seen it.  The visibility was down to 50 yards or so and even the Shelter Island Ferries were waiting for the next boat to come into sight before they left the Greenport's railroad dock.

Once the fog burned off on Friday, the weather was great, with nice warm days and cool nights. I think we used the air conditioning only twice, once we soon found that opening the windows and the front hatch kept us very comfortable. We checked out things on Front Street, did a little shopping and returned to the boat just in time for cocktail hour.

On Saturday, we had some new dockmates, all from Rhode Island.  Nice to see the place fill up.

Late Saturday afternoon, Frances began cooking dinner.  She and Ellen spent some time figuring out how the new cheese grater worked.

Meanwhile, Pooka joined us in the cockpit and soon found a nice place to sleep.

When dinner got going, Pooka wanted his too.

On Sunday evening, Ellen treated us to dinner at our favorite spot on the North Shore, Skippers.  It's on the North Road on the way to Orient Point so it's too far for us to walk.  Bill had his usual, the Fisherman's Platter (hold the scallops). In the 20+ years we have been going there, that dish has never changed. It is always great.

Monday was another great day and we took the ferry to Shelter Island and had lunch at the Chequit Inn.  We usually just stop there for a cold beer but today, the garden in front of the inn, shaded by a big tree, just looked too inviting. We had a great lunch and later walked down to Deering Harbor to check out the shops and, unfortunately, the two really big boats that were hogging this usually nice spot.

Eventually, we walked back down to the ferry and headed back to Greenport. Funny seeing Greenport harbor from a boat other than ours.

On Tuesday morning, we started the engines, Pooka assumed his cruising spot under the sofa, and we motored out in beautiful, but cool,  weather. The Sound was smooth and we increased our speed to cut the trip down to three hours.

Once back in the Thames River, we had to slow down to allow the young Coast Guard midshipmen to use up most of the channel learning how to sail.  We got a nice wave of thanks from them and Frances took the helm for the rest of the ride up to Norwich. Does she look like a captain or what?

Our next trip will be to Block Island but in the meantime, Frances wants some helm time to practice conning the boat in close quarters.  I think we'll find time to get that done, too.

A rainy weekend in Norwich

We're getting ready to head out to Greenport, Long Island at the end of next week and we had a few things to do to get ready.  We changed the spark plugs and wires on the port engine only to find that the plugs that were in there were perfectly fine but they weren't our plugs so now we have a maintenance history on the plugs and ignition cables on both engines.  We tinkered with the stuffing boxes to get that tiny drip that we like to see and generally put things away.  Others on the dock were doing much the same thing.  Here Lou puts a new bow line on his Four Winns while John helps by chatting on his cell phone.

We also brought down gas cans and added 20 gallons to our fuel tanks.  We hate doing this but the Marina at American Wharf's fuel dock is out of commission so we have to make sure we have enough fuel aboard to make it safely to another fuel dock down river.  Let's hope this is the last time we'll have to go through this.

Then it began to rain and we went into the cabin and, after blowing the cocktail horn at 5 PM, watched while Frances heated up her baked stuffed potatoes and Bill's fantastic new meatloaf.  Pooka was happy to watch and dinner was delicious.

When we are in Norwich, I (Bill) like to take a walk on Sunday mornings and this weekend, despite the cold, gray weather, I headed over to what at one time was Norwich's main shopping area.  The Woolworths 5 &10 and the movie theater are still there, although now re-purposed as sites for social service agencies. Most of the shopping has shifted away from the old center city but there is still interesting architecture and if you look carefully, a hint of what this area must have been like 50 years ago.

The only life early on Sunday morning is the Dunkin Donuts where, I have to say, the coffee cake muffin is tasty fortification for a good long walk.

There are lots of vacant buildings but many of them aren't in bad shape and some have been rehabilitated into apartments for the growing oriental population, which has migrated to the area to work in the nearby casinos.

Round the corner and you encounter the Central Baptist Church, a massive building in brick with some brownstone foundations that must have been expanded several times as the congregation grew. The architecture is quite a combination of styles and I keep promising myself that some day, I'll stop in and ask about it.

Just to the right is an architectural gem, Norwich City Hall. The city fathers have done everything possible to maintain this building without altering its original Italianate detail.  The inside is just as impressive with lots of dark wood and huge windows.  It's no wonder that people who love old buildings come from all over to see it. Yep, even the clock works.

Note the angle of the street. It really is that steep. All of the neighborhoods in Norwich that surround the harbor are that steep or even steeper.

This Sunday, my walk included a look at a building that exhibits (in my opinion) some of the most unfortunate architecture ever foisted upon a New England seaport.  The Mercantile Exchange.

This is a view of this enormous building from its Main Street side. It is flanked by many charming, although vacant, buildings that go back to the mid-1800s when this truly was "Main Street."  From the harbor, this building appears even more offensive, simply overpowering everything around it.  Note the glass wall in the center. That alone should have added five years to the architect's prison sentence.

This pile was built by (I believe) by the State of Connecticut, perhaps five years ago. The building has been perfectly maintained but is now, and always has been, vacant.  Since I obviously don't have all the facts surrounding the Mercantile Exchange, I'll refrain from commenting any further.

On my way back to the marina, I passed the new Transportation Center, which is being built about as close possible to the nicely restored Thayer's Marine building.  Why they decided to put this erector-set building's entrance on a one-way street is beyond me.

Once back at the marina, I had to stop at what I'll call the "floating cottage," for lack of a better name.  This absolutely beautiful little building was built with exquisite detail by the marina's former owner. It's also empty and has always been so.  I think it's for sale although I've never asked what the asking price is. Note that it also has it's own dock box.

Finally, at the marina's inoperable gas dock, we come upon a boat that is the marine equivalent of the Mercantile Exchange.

This boat is probably about 100 ft. long and (again, in my opinion) exhibits many mistakes yacht designers make: A completely generic looking design with too many fussy windows, all the same size; an arch with unnecessary detail scribed into it supporting a huge satellite antenna that looks silly on a boat this size. We hope the energy from the two 6 ft. rotating radar antennas mounted on that weenie arch don't do a brain scan on those sitting up there just below them.

Topsides we have an open fly bridge (useful for seeing the bow of the boat, which is probably difficult from the wheel house) topped with a white fabric roof.  Then, just to make a bad design worse, a little shelter is built into the aft deck that is made of tan fabric held up by stainless supports that look like they came right out of the West Marine catalog.

Note the mandatory water toy that is docked in front. I kinda like the styling of that.

End of walk and end of my rant on why architects and boat designers should be watched very closely.