Odalisque - June 4th, 2006 Log

Log 2006 - June 4th

Sunday, June 4th 2006
“Solar panel install and couples in light winds"

Crew: Caleb, Jessica, Laurie and Matt
We set out in a tin boat with some of Matt’s friends from the club. They wanted to borrow our as yet unused bolt smasher and we willingly obliged. It is a working club and members do help other members if they can. Matt managed to arrange a play date for his son Jackson for that afternoon with the wife (Sharon?) right before we hit the water. Jessica, Matt and I boarded and found the bolt smasher for our tin boat friends and bid farewell. They were working on their boat at a finger slip off the main dock.
We had a little work to do ourselves and worked on threading some of the expensive WM electrical wire under the cockpit to the aft lazarette cover for our solar charger. Crimp and heat shrink seem to be the preferred method for marine wiring. We routed the wire easily and hooked up the charger to the regulator and then a battery.
I did a modest job of calking the hole we had drilled for the wire from the charger and the existing backup VHF antenna whose caulk bedding was less than adequate with 3M 4200 caulk. By the time we finished Laurie was arriving via the launch.
It had been raining a lot and it was nice to just get out on the water in very light (<5) breeze. Laurie had a babysitter for her kids and she was thrilled to anywhere but home . We were all happy to be on Odalisque for our own reasons. I thought that it would be fun to try to practice with sail shape in the light airs and the Commodores were happy to watch us sail the boat. We got them back a little later with a short VHF radio lesson for Laurie and a short stint on the tiller for Jessica in light or no wind. It can be disturbing for the person at the helm when the wind dies if they think the boats behavior is their fault. The fact is that the boat would seem uncontrollable to me too. The constant luffing and banging of the rigging and sails as the hull rocks in the waves can be unnerving. Sculling with the rudder in situations like this might provide the headway needed to quite the rigging if time with the rise and fall of the hull.
If you were cruising you might douse the jib and motor for a while. If you were racing you might even anchor if you were drifting the wrong way and have lunch. If you were in blue water you might deploy a drogue off the bow to keep the boat headed into the waves. In our case we were day sailing and we motored back to the mooring field as very little wind emerged.
Note to self: I would like to have a drougue or sea anchor for Odalisque.
We had a nice peaceful if not partially windless sail. Ran bilge pump 1-2 minutes for rainwater and engine for < 30 minutes. Distance covered in 3 hrs maybe 5 miles.

Wednesday June 14th, 2006
“Not so early afternoon sail”

The temps in NYC had been in the mid 80s that afternoon when Matt left work around 4:30 hoping to beat the flood of traffic leaving that burgh. The flood it seems preceded and enveloped him as it took him nearly 2 hours to arrive home where I was having some dinner on his porch. I had been waiting for him to come home as had his family only I was waiting for him to take him away from his family for a short sail.
We missed the start of the races that evening, not that we intended to race. The current was upriver and the wind from the south so we raised the main and cast off without the jib. The engine was in neutral and used only briefly in reverse to get us away from our pennants and stick. We swept passed the other moored boats and made our way out towards mid channel where the race was going on.
The wind had been steadily under 10 knots yet we measure GPS speeds over ground close to 6 knots with a bone in our teeth but going nowhere in particular, while our speed through water mechanism (Sumlog) never got above 4 knots. The Sumlog is an old water speed indicator mechanism that depends on a propeller mounted under the hull that tends to get grimed and barnacled over on our boat in the Hudson. I had repaired the fins of the propeller this spring but had little hope that it would be very accurate. Our GPS readings may have verified its inaccuracy as there is some strong current in the Hudson but 2 knots is a bit much. Sure enough, as the season progressed the Sumlog mechanism got fouled and failed completely.
Matt and I have sailed together for more than the four years that we owned Odalisque together and we find a groove quickly together whether it is setting up, breaking down or just sailing and we did some racing turns about that were quite good. We had never been in a sailing race together though and I believe that Matt had begun crewing for a club member with a J24 sailboat in the Wednesday night races.

— Caleb Davison