Seems to us, this is what boating is all about

Nothing very profound here. Just Frances and Bill taking a cruise to Long Island. We've made this trip dozens of times, sometimes in poor weather, but we have always had fun and appreciated the fact that we had a boat that would get us there, and back, and keep us reasonably dry along the way.

We left on Thursday, June 16, only about an hour late. The weather was more than good, it was what every boater wishes for: cool as we went down the Thames and then the wind on our stern once we turned west into the Sound. It was one of the few times we could remember that we could let go of the wheel and just make minor course corrections.

Our little Acer laptop laid out our course and we simply followed that across the Sound to Plum Gut, where we would enter Gardiners Bay. Sure, we also had a compass heading and a plan just in case the computer died but we always know where we are. Even in fog we can always turn on the radar if needed..

The software on out little computer is by Polar Navy for about $50. Download the charts at no cost, plan your cruise and cast off. We have power adapter that allows the Acer computer to get power directly from the boat's batteries so we're never out of juice.

Thirty-eight miles later we were at Greenport. We called them on Channel 11 and they confirmed our reservation. Note to any others like us: arrive mid-week. It is so much easier docking when everyone else isn't coming in or going out.

In a couple of hours, we were in what we call "vacation mode." That means forget the shore side stuff, relax and enjoy the surroundings. The marina was mostly empty this early in the year and that was fine with us.

We took a very short walk to the IGA (the most air conditioned market on the planet), bought some stuff, checked out the Farmer's Market across the street where Frances chatted with Eddie, who has been with the farm for years, and then strolled back to the boat.

Our other crew member, Pooka, was happy to catch some shut-eye with his favorite new toy.

Frances really likes to cook on the boat and she produced a great dinner. Then it was off to bed after a long day.

For the next couple of days, we did as little as possible, as we were firmly in the grasp of Vacation Mode. We treated ourselves to breakfast a couple of times at the Sterlington Deli. (Note to those who are new to Greenport: breakfast or lunch, this is the best place in town.) When we were introduced to this deli years ago, the locals called it "the German girl's place." That German girl is now probably a grandmother and the deli is run by her son, Fred Schutz.

On Saturday evening, we met our friends Ellen and Dave for cocktails on the boat and then dinner at a restaurant about 750 feet away on Front Street. Nice evening with good conversation and very acceptable food.

Seeing Ellen and Dave is always fun and a wonderful chance to catch up on what's happening on the North Fork. For instance, we learned that Claudios hasn't been sold, contrary to rumor. Someone made an offer of $13+ million but then couldn't raise all the money so the Claudio family re-opened for another season. If the number of people and boats we saw packed in there on Saturday night is any indication, they are doing OK.

One afternoon, we took a walk to the beach at Pipe's Cove. It's another village park that few boating visitors ever get to enjoy. We knew we were in luck when we spotted a Osprey nest, one of Frances' favorite birds.

We were carrying our trusty old still camera, which we call "clamshell." Frances took this nice still-life of two bikes in the park. She has a good eye for composition.

We left on Tuesday morning and found ourselves with now a west wind, perfect for our ride back across the sound. And it was just fine, as was our little Greenport vacation.

We've attached some video, which we would classify as a little rough. We used three cameras, one of which is a little Go-Pro-like action cam that doesn't produce the best pictures. We came back with literally hundreds of video clips and still photos and, because of work responsibilities, it took us longer than expected to edit and organize them all into something that our friends would enjoy watching.

First cruise of the year, coming this week!

Our plan is to untie the old boat and head out to Greenport, Long Island on Wednesday. We do this every year to see our friends Ellen and Dave who live very near Greenport.  We have a long history with Ellen but that's a long story that we'll leave for another time.

But a cruise means that we need to do some preventative maintenance, not that there seems to be anything wrong with the boat. It's just that we're old fashioned when it comes to checking everything out before we cast off.

With that in mind, we began Sunday morning (after The New York Times) by looking at the the float switch on the midships bilge pump. The pump comes on from time to time, mainly from condensate from the air conditioner, but lately, it hasn't been shutting off. We played around with the Rule bilge pump float switch for a while and found that it had failed. Par for the course for a Rule switch, at least in our experience. We've had three of these float switches fail in our shower sump so we're familiar with how they mount and how often they fail.

A quick trip to Defender Marine in Waterford and we had a new switch that we hope will last for the summer. Next winter, we'll replace that switch with something more substantial.

While all of this was going on, Frances headed to her house to pick up Pooka, the boat cat, and that was a good thing since we had to open hatches, spread out tools and generally get in the way for several hours.

We checked all the fluids on the engines and transmissions and then adjusted the choke on the port engine, which has never opened soon enough. That done, we adjusted the idle jets on both carbs so that warm, they would run at exactly the same speed in gear while docking. Again, only the port engine required any adjustment.

Then we got out lines for docking at Greenport and then adjusted the sliding screen door to our cabin. Isn't this exciting?

Just when we were running out of things to do, Frances arrived with Pooka. It's fun to see the old guy again. He immediately walked around and we like to think recognized his summer home from last year. Bill got the equivalent of a fist-bump from him right away. That's where he runs his face along your leg.

Sounds to us like a good beginning to the summer.

Time to clean the outside of the boat

This probably isn't very interesting. Cleaning rarely is. But, our boat has been in a shed all winter and we did have Stanley Steemer come in and make the interior clean and fresh, so now it was time for us to make it look almost as good on the outside.

It's Memorial Day weekend and on Saturday, we brought down our pressure washer and began by blasting the grime off the foredeck. The pressure washer did a good job but we also used one of those scruffy pads to get into all the little spots.

Then it was down to the cockpit to do the real hands-and-knees cleaning. Not fun, but it was satisfying to see all the winter dirt disappear down the deck scuppers.

That took just about all day and as cocktail hour got underway, we decided to try our marina's new restaurant for dinner.

This is third operator of the restaurant in five years and to be fair, we don't think they knew what to expect on their first days of being open. When we got there, the place was mobbed and very loud. The staff wasn't trained and the food was a few steps below "okay," and that's being generous.

On Sunday morning (isn't it great to sleep, once again, on your boat?), Frances made to strongest coffee in the Western Hemisphere, which really hit the spot. We read The New York Times and then started the first big event of the season: get a pump-out. Once the waste tank was empty, we calibrated the tank gauge so that Frances will always know just how we're doing in that department.

We also, cleaned all 13 of the windows on the bridge and then tackled the upholstery, gauges and all the little spots that seem to trap dirt. We finished off the afternoon by cleaning the cabin windows.

We made a silly video of Sunday's activities just because we could. It's only about 2-1/2 minutes long but it was fun to put together.

A Heart For Hailey

If you follow our blog, you know that it's all about the fun we have on our boat. However, we also have a day job, running our small marketing and communications company, Large & Page Communications.

We are lucky enough to have a long-term client, the Town of Windsor, Connecticut. While we didn't devise or produce the event shown here, we were asked by the folks at Windsor Town Hall to shoot some photos and video. 

This event was covered by the newspapers and the local NBC station and got the front page of our biggest daily newspaper, The Hartford Courant the next day.

The following is the press alert we distributed for this event:

"To show their support for 20-month old Hailey, the daughter of a member of the Windsor Volunteer Fire Department, Windsor town employees decided to arrange themselves in the shape of a huge heart on the Windsor Town Green, where they would be photographed from the top of the giant aerial ladder on the Fire Department’s “Ladder 1.”

Hailey is afflicted with Neuroblastoma, a form of cancer most often found in very young children.

Those participating in this event are asked to donate a minimum of $10 each."

The person who did all the legwork to make this work is the Town of Windsor official to whom we report. If we used her name, she'd be very unhappy, since she doesn't want to take credit for what turned out to be an event that really reflects how government and the citizens of Windsor work together.

Underway again...

At 10:30 AM on Friday, May 20, we started the engines and headed out for another season at our summer marina in Norwich, Connecticut. We chose to leave on Friday because it promised the best weather after a week of wind and cold and Small Craft Warnings in Long Island Sound.

We have a lot of experience and faith in our boat, but Long Island Sound isn't to be trifled with. Just 362 days ago, on the same trip, we trashed the inside of the boat over about 3 miles of the Sound. But not this year. The sea conditions were great.

The trip down the river (33 miles) was uneventful and even relaxing. There was little or no boat traffic on the upper river and only about several dozen boats out on the lower part. The engines ran perfectly as did everything else. Frances put things away down below and visited the bridge every once in a while to check out the scenery.

In about 2.5 hours, we were at Old Saybrook Light, where we entered the Sound. The sun came out and the visibility was about 10 miles. We could see the water tower on Plum Island across the Sound. We powered up to about 17 mph and turned east. What a wonderful ride. This is what boating is all about!

The 14.6 miles to New London seemed to pass quickly and that was because we were going faster than conditions normally permit for a boat like ours with older engines.

Once we were on the final leg into New London harbor, we noticed the Orient Point ferry also entering on our starboard side. Not a big deal; we see these ferries all the time. But this time, there was also a large number of small sailboats practicing just west of the channel entrance. We needed to pass that sailboat class, leaving it our port side and get into the harbor channel.

The ferry isn't small. It's a 300 ft. car carrier moving at about the same speed we were. We considered calling the ferry on VHF and then decided, WTF, let's just get in there! Anything is better than slowing way down and letting the ferry and it's wake bounce us around.

We pushed the throttles up and watched our speed increase. At about 3400 rpm we were flying (for us, at least) and we have to admit that the old boat really got up and went. Frances was sitting up on the bridge and the smile on her face was wonderful as she watched to speed increase on the GPS screen .

It wasn't a big deal. The ferry captain saw that we intended to pass the sailboats and enter the channel before him and he slowed down.

We ran up the Thames and soon were backing into our slip at the Marina at American Wharf in Norwich.  Let's hope that this summer, every time we back into a slip, it goes as well as this one did.

We spent the first night of our summer season on the boat with its sparkling clean and refurbished interior. The outside of the boat, however, really needs cleaning and we'll do that next weekend.

The next morning, a couple of other boats arrived and, instead of working, we spent some time sitting on someone's dock box for a chat.

Some things never change, luckily for us.

The guys did want to see our new Sirius Electronic Flare, a device that eliminates the need for pyrotechnic flares (the ones that always seem to be expired when you check them in the spring).

The four-legged dock mate in the picture is Bailey. She is friendly, playful and doesn't give a damn about electronic flares.

Starting the engines after winter storage

On May 13, after a busy work week, we took some time on Friday to start the engines on our old boat for the first time this season. Luckily, there were no issues. The old girls (our engines) started right up after they each got a few tablespoons of gas poured into their carbs. Nice to hear them idle with lots of water coming out of their exhaust pipes.

We now have 50 gallons of fresh water in our water tank and all the faucets and the fresh water pump work just as they did last fall. We'll pump most of that water overboard before we leave or while underway. No sense hauling all that extra weight for nothing.

We're glad that we have a reliable way to winterize the engines and our water system, despite many of the postings on internet forums to the contrary. No compressed air or special fittings needed, just common sense.



Once we got the engines going and the batteries charged, we shut things down and checked the fluids in the transmissions and the v-drives. The port transmission took about half a cup of fluid but everything else was where it was supposed to be.

On Saturday, it was time to bring lots of our stuff back to the boat. That included bedding, linens, etc. It's all still packed in those vacuum bags we love so much. Now someone needs to unpack it all and put everything away. Can you guess who we hope that will be?

There is more to do here than in previous years because this winter we removed just about everything in order to paint and rewire.

We must have made a dozen trips from the car to the boat. No dock carts here at Portland Riverside,  unfortunately.

On Sunday, we brought down a few more things, checked the electronics on the bridge and made a very half-hearted attempt to wash the front of the boat. We finally gave up because it was cold and the wind on the river was gusting to about 25 mph. We rarely see whitecaps on the river but we did today.

The weather forecast for the next couple of days is lousy but if  we get a good day, we'll make the run to Norwich and begin setting up Frances' summer home.

The last few things before we go into the water

It has now rained on and off for a week. The boat is cold and since we took the electric heater home several weeks ago, we'll have to just deal with it. With any luck, next weekend the boat will be in the water and we'll be planning our cruise to Norwich where we'll be for the summer.

Our first task for this weekend was to install the zincs. We could probably have gotten away with using the old ones for another season, but why? To save the $72 cost of the zincs? Not worth it for us.

While we were down there, we inspected the shafts, props and struts. Everything looked good so we can cross them off of our list.

Next came the fun job of applying bottom paint anywhere that we saw the barrier coat showing though. The barrier coat is bright blue so it's easy to see where the yard crew blasted through the black bottom paint last fall. Not a lot this year, thankfully.

Applying bottom paint at the water line means that we had to mask that line first and that went fairly easily. Once the bottom paint was dry, we pulled off the tape.

Not very exciting pics, but with launching only days away, it's the best we could do.

The top for our bridge enclosure has become a problem. We usually take that home and clean it just before the boat goes in the water. When we took it down last week, we discovered that it was littered with bird shit. Not the usual splotch or two but lots of birdie BMs from one side of the top to another.

We tried scrubbing with lots of water and a stiff brush and while lots of it came off, the stains remained. Luckily you can only see it from above.

On Sunday, we applied the 303 waterproofing spray that we always use to the top but had to allow drying time so nothing was done on the boat on Sunday. Feels funny to be sitting at the desk writing a blog post this early.

We shot some video in which Frances shows off our stained top. Hope you enjoy it.