Odalisque - October 1, 2005 Log

Log 2005 - October 1st

Saturday October 1, 2005
First fall daysail/Bermuda

Crew: Caleb, Jessie, Matt
Air temp: 75
Wind: 10 – 15 S and diminished
Time: 1530 – 1830
Engine time: < 30 minutes charging battery 1

This was to be my first sail in Odalisque in almost a month and it was a wonderful, warm, early fall day. There was a slightly different hue to the leaves on the trees since I was last here; probably due to the little amount of rain and heat over the last sever weeks (several hurricanes had passed south of us with little precipitation and of course Katrina had wreaked havoc on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast).
Since my last sail on Odalisque I sailed on a 17’ modified O’Day in Bermuda with Matt. We sailed from Somerset to Hamilton across the Great Sound and back in about 2 1/2 hours (maybe 8 miles). At the rental dock we asked the proprietor for a char of the local waters. He gave us a printed place mat with an approximate chart of Bermuda and penned in one spot where there were dangerous rocks nearby. The little O’Day handled nice and perkily at first but when we hit our first larger swells we could feel the difference in the ride between little miss rental O’day and our Odalisque. Odalisque plows through small chop quite nicely at 4 tons with gear. The O’Day, with Matt and I aboard may have weighed 1000 pounds. So we slid over the surface of the waves in Bermuda. We also got rained on and witnessed a funnel cloud, which could have threatened us but we rose to the challenge and managed to arrive at the rental dock nearly dry. I would go back again, anytime. Matt thought of a tourism slogan while we were there: “Bermuda. It doesn’t suck.”
Firmly back in our own latitude we surveyed the damage to our toerail and put in a screw or 2 to hold down what was left. The damage had been minor but we had clearly been swiped by another boat in our absence by another Nyack Boat Club member who had identified himself. Apparently he tried to sail off his mooring while hurricane Ophelia (we were en route to Bermuda when she was blowing up the Atlantic, which I saw out of the airplane window quite clearly, not to mention the Sargasso Sea) was well to the south but the wind and currents where not with him. This is one of the reasons I wonder if some modern rub rail would be more carefree of maintenance. The teak toerail serves a purpose and it looks great when well maintained but it is a maintenance headache.
It seemed a bit windy to Jessica and I so we convinced Matt to set up a reef in the main. We unfurled the whole jib so we had a different balance (center of force) until we finally shook out the reef and enjoyed the falling sun over Nyack. It was nice to be on our bigger, heavier boat again bobbing about the wakes of boats like the Forbes’ (family of companies) “Highlander”, which carries a helicopter and has the family name emblazoned on it’s huge transom. Our boat cost $4K, theirs $40M, and twenty gallons to the mile on fuel with a crew of 20; it was huge but had a nice green hull with gold accents. The huge yacht was full of people; I saw people on the top deck and in the aft cabin through windows. They looked like they were having fun and we were too.
I tried to beam reach back out into the river and back in to the mooring but the current set us up a bit north of where we wanted to be so we fired up the engine and overcame the current.
It had been a very relaxing sail that we all enjoyed. It was only a short daysail but it made me feel the subtle changing of the weather and the season.

— Caleb Davison