Odalisque - October 15, 2005 Log

Log 2005 - October 15th

Saturday October 15, 2005
College friends; Alls well that ends well; Barnacles on prop

Crew: Bob K., Caleb, Jessica, Matt
Air temp: 70 in the sun
Wind: Quite windy. 10 knot steady, gust to 25 from the NNW

Today was the first sunny day in the northeast after ten rainy, overcast days and we were determined to get on the boat and did. Jessie and I noticed the wind as we drove along Kenney Boulevard through North Bergen, NJ. The land rises up to form the ridge we call the Palisades and there were plenty of W, WNW gusts that I could feel in our Honda Accord as we were driving. Fall has finally arrived; I could smell it in the air.
We arrived at the boat and the sun began to poke through the clouds, I dropped the mooring lines and was not able to manage to tie the stick to the pennant loops. Oops! We set the main and motored out of the mooring field than unfurled the jib. We close reached up towards Sing Sing (Ossining) in the NWish flukey wind. We had some blazing October sun on our faces and some bitching gusts in our hair. I watched the dark tendrils of the wind dance down to us and engulf us. I let Matt take the tiller for the short sail, as it felt good to just be sailing again. I also felt rather nimble and was able to play the role of galley steward: pouring wine and other beverages, stowing/unstowing cameras, and helping with the jib sheets.
Even though the moon was almost full this evening we prudently decided to head back towards Nyack around 1720 as the wind was still quite fresh. There were some whitecaps and foam streaking on the surface of the river. We came about and broad reached back quite quickly it seemed so we went a bit south of the mooring field ad closehauled back towards our mooring which had no pick up stick, thanks to me. We had a great fall short sail with old college friends on the beautiful Hudson River. We didn’t know what would happen next but we furled the jib and turned on the engine. This is when things seemed a little dire. The wind gusts were so strong that they caught our freeboard and pushed us. I checked the back of the boat earlier to see if there was cooling water coming out of the exhaust and there was. I might have noticed that the propeller was not producing the usual swale pattern of wake. The boat become sluggish and the engine almost couldn’t get the boat through the eye of the wind. I thought about a lot of things but I thought about the propeller especially. When I installed a zinc on our propeller shaft this year another yachtie told me that after he did it his prop was overgrown by barnacles. We didn’t really know what the problem was with the engine; new plugs, oil change but we know we were in some danger because we couldn’t easily control our vessel.
Somehow I ended up at the tiller with Matt and Bob on the foredeck with Jessica asking me what she could do. I asked her to see if she could think the wind gusts lower or to subside. I could hear my friends saying: "No. Head up!", but all I could do was to scull with the rudder to fight the gusts and try to hold my course. Each cat paw seemed to alter my heading as by this time we had lowered the main too. We would not make our mooring at the rate we were going. We might have had a go at sailing up to our mooring but we did not attempt it. We called the launch to see if he could help us but no answer. We thought we were fucked by the wind but I managed to scull us to a nearby vacant mooring about 100 yards from ours. We licked our wounds and tried the radio again and another member of the club (Paul K.) came out in a tin motor boat and helped us tremendously by barging us the 300 feet to our mooring. He also took us back to the dock and saved us (as the launch had ceased its operation). We were a little “ass out” in our situation and thinking. Paul suggested we may have a bumper crop of barnacles on our prop and that idea started to make sense to me. Once the prop’s flukes are compromised by barnacles, it functions little better than spinning a dowel spinning in the water as far as propulsion goes. I must get my mask, snorkel, wetsuit and under water chisel to inspect the situation. We also ought to get Paul a nice bottle of rum (mark of a true sailor) for his competent help. All is well that ends well and only my pride was a little damaged since we needed outside help to answer our crisis..

— Caleb Davison