Odalisque - October 15, 2004 Log

Log 2004 – October 15th

Friday October 15, 2004 – “Back Onto The Hard”
Crew: Caleb and Jessie
Sea state: calm
Wind: light < 6 SW with light intermittent rain, gray sky

We had no choice but to decommission today. Hempstead Harbor Club wanted us of the guest mooring Sunday. We had no chafe protection on the guest mooring and Steppingstone was shutting down launch operations today and we had nowhere else to go. Jude Thaddeus marina could not pull us over the weekend but they could on Friday. We were going to be busy over the weekend with a family party and were free today.

We took my mother’s Toyota over to Hempstead Harbor Club after leaving our car at the Jude Thaddeus parking lot so we would have a car in both locations to ease the back tracking on land. We would later discover that we left the keys to the Toyota in our car. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

We paid Hempstead Harbor Club $60 for the 2 nights at their mooring and met a member named Kaufman at the launch operators shack. Nice fellow who knew of our boat model and year. He said that there was another member who knew everything about the Atomic 4 engine, which is on our boat. Yachties, you have got to love them.

The launch took us out to Odalisque under cloudy skies and calm seas with very little rain. We purred away from the guest mooring and made our way to the Mosquito Cove entrance between Sea Cliff and Glen Cove. There were other people on boats that we passed but no one was out sailing that we could see. As we turned up the narrow channel a small motorboat brought up our stern as we cruised at 2 – 3 knots. The motorboat dutifully kept astern of us as we crept along, dropping the throttle to nothing. We prepared to turn up the finger of docks that would lead to our haul out point. It is narrow, but I was careful; they can have very low water in here but the breakwater was almost under water, so it was still high tide. We had already set deck lines and glided slowly up to a portion of empty dock. There was no one else waiting to be hauled out. I jumped over to the dock with my stern line as soon as I could and stopped our slow forward progress. Jessie then threw the bow line I had set. We were in safe. I turned off the motor and blower and helped Jessie off and we turned Odalisque over to the capable ground crew who used by dock lines to coax Odalisque into the cradle of the travel lift. Once her bull was exposed I could immediately see the effect of the last hull painting job I had done. The bow, which got the top of the gallon was the most overgrown and the stern and rudder which got the goopier portion was pretty clean. I had not shaken up the can of expensive paint long enough. A new coat of hull paint will be required this spring.

We caught a cab back to Hempstead Harbor Club and picked up our car. Then we dropped off my mother’s car and said hello to her and her one eyed dog, Galla. We were hungry for all our efforts so we went to the Brookville Diner for a late lunch at 1545 where we ran into Stacey, Teri Mullen’s sister and caught up on old times. It was good to see her. She seemed well and healthy. It is a small world.

We arrived back at the boat yard with a ladder so we could board our vessel and remove the more sensitive items and close and lock the companionway door. With the ladder locked to the chain on the boat stands we then dumped the 4 gallons of tainted motor oil into the used oil tank and left.

— Caleb Davison