Getting to Block island

 Chores and projects

It's wonderful to work as a team! Everything just moves a lot faster!

Tightening stanchions

A few of them are a bit loose, including the gate that we use for boarding the dinghy. Before one gets to the stanchion bolts, one has to completely remove a panel that covers them. Neither the screws nor the stanchion bolts are easy to get. So, it sounds simple: just tighten 4 bolts after adding sealant under the stanchion base, but it took close to an hour before everything was buttoned up again. Thanks to Mark this was much faster!

Tightening the engine belt

This is one of the things I didn't do before departing for Newport, and luckily I knew the warning sign: lots of soot-looking crap inside the engine compartment. Belt is now tight, so we should be good for the rest of the trip. Nevertheless, a reminder to look into the engine compartment on a regular basis. Again, thanks to Mark for expediting this job!

Charging cable for the outboard engine battery

The extension cord was getting hot at the connection, and the battery seems to be charging a lot slower than I remember. I removed the 12V receptacle and crimped in the cable. After an OMG-moment when the voltage was 0 instead of 12, I found that the fuse is resettable, so battery can now be charged without the extra heat losses. 

Per my recollection, the battery used to charge quicker. We went through the estimate with Sasha, and it seems that things do add up. Per spec, the battery is 915 Wh. Charging it with 3.5A at 12 V means adding 42 Wh/hour, so the full charge cycle should take more than 20 hours. Yesterday the battery was down to about 30% of the capacity and after 16 hours it's up to 99%. Given the temperature fluctuation over the past 3 years while the battery has been sitting idle, I'm happily impressed that the battery is still functional.

Dinghy oars

One of the pins in the oarlock was broken again. This has happened before, but this time rather than taping the remainder of the pin with duct tape, Sasha drilled a hole through and fixed the oar with a bolt. She also attached the oar locks, so now we are all set to get places with hand power should the engine get unhappy.

Tie off for the gennaker furler

The furler is meant to be used only for the code-0 and when it's idle, it shouldn't bang around and should be tied off. 3 years ago we would take off the entire furler, but that takes a lot of time because the infinite furling loop line also has to be taken off. Sasha was doubting my proposal of sewing a loop out of a rubber cord, but equipped with a sail maker palm thimble she got that done!

12V receptacles

Temperature changes and age got to the plastic of 2 receptacles: the one in the cockpit and in the starboard cabin. The cockpit receptacle is now removed and will be used for the charging the dinghy battery. While Sasha (the husband) was dropping off the rental car, he stopped by WestMarine and picked up a few receptacle, and then replaced the one in their cabin.

Meeting online friends

Margot has made online friends with a few teenagers, including one in Massachusetts. Mabry is also in the same online discussion forum, but for her it was a total surprise to see Tanjay in Newport. Thanks to Tanjay's mother who drove 1.5 hours for a 2-hour physical reunion of the online friends, the girls were happy beyond imaginable to hang out together.

And it turns out the world is indeed small: Tanjay's uncle finished his PhD in experimental high energy physics at Harvard 2 years after I got there, so I do vaguely remember seeing him in the old building on Oxford St!

Adventurous sail

After the reunion we were running late, but the crew worked very well together to get us going ASAP. We pulled up to the fuel dock, got some diesel, replenished water, folded the dinghy, and got on our way towards Block Island.

The wind was in our face, so given the time constraints we motored out of Newport harbor. We simply didn't have enough time to tack back and forth. At the harbor exit, I thought we could sail. Even though not directly to our destination, but at least without the engine running. After going through the operation procedures for the winches, Margot proceeded to unroll the mainsail. I saw that she was having a hard time turning the winch, so I made a joke that she is out of practice. That was a mistake!

It seems that I didn't roll the sail tightly on my solo trip to Newport, so it jammed in the mast. Ok, let's sail with the genoa only and see if we can fix the main underway. Rolling it in was just as impossible as rolling it out.

Obviously, none of us have sea legs, so very quickly after exiting the harbor everyone started to feel queasy to various degree. Sashas put on a natural patch behind the ear. That seemed to help him, but she went down below to lie down. Mabry also got a patch, and standing on the wheel she was ok. Mark felt a bit tired and sleepy, and I had a strange taste in my mouth.

It seemed that fixing the main would have been nice to accomplish as soon as possible. First there was a minor snag: I couldn't find the climbing harness. After I tied a harness, there was a major snag: there was no way I could ascend with the ascenders. The amount of swing was too much. Sasha said that he could try to winch me up, so I tied into the spinnaker halyard and thanks to his idea also tied myself to the pole which is attached to the mast. That kind of worked and I was able to stuff about 1/3 of the jam back inside the mast, but then it got tougher, and we were losing time, so we made a decision to leave the main as is and resolve it in the morning.

As we approached the island, the water got a lot calmer, so everyone woke up and was ok with not just a lying-down position. There was a lot of humidity in the air and the setting sun had a distinctly red color. Very unusual and pretty. Too bad we don't have a good enough lens to capture that with a camera.

We pulled into the Great Salt Pond at dusk. Once the anchor was in the water it got completely dark. A bit of a late arrival, but everyone is safe.

I was amazed that after dinner (yummy burgers on bagels) Mark and the girls had energy to play a game!