To see how the rails are used for launching boats at the Red Dragon, go to this site:
the East Coast Fall Series


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hsw2YiIOlM

www.youtube.com

In an earlier post, I described how a shroud on Bluebird had become detached from its chainplate during a sail. On Friday, when I went out to bring Bluebird ashore in advance of Hurricane Sandy, I discovered that the same shroud on the opposite side had become detached. I had checked and tightened that attachment when I found the first shroud flying, so I was puzzled.
Yesterday, I helped dislodge some large logs that had been washed by the flooding river up on the rails on which we launch boats at the Red Dragon Canoe Club. There were a half dozen tree-sized logs tangled between the rails and the steel pier that extends out to the floating docks.
When the work was done, we noticed a landscaping timber lying in the parking lot up where debris marked the high water level from the flood. And then we saw the two bolts, bedded in concrete at the edge of the parking lot bulkhead, from which the landscaping timber had been floated.
The timber had been secured on those bolts by two nuts. Clearly, the nuts would not normally have twisted themselves u[ward off the upright bolts. Gravity, if anything, would have caused the nuts to tend downward on the bolt threads.
So there seems to be a mystery there on the Delaware involving the disengaging of threaded fasteners. I'm not suggesting anything like the Bermuda Triangle. But the sequence of events is troubling to a mariner.

Sandy came, went and left a message.

You can't dodge every bullet.
A pin oak with a base nearly four feet in diameter toppled onto our deck at about 10:30 Monday night. We were asleep. The sound was that of a dump truck loaded with gravel falling beside your bed. We were both asleep and came to with the same "What the . . . " cry.
We were very lucky. The tree could have fallen on our bedroom and crushed the roof. Instead, it missed the corner of the house by about a foot.
One branch punctured the roof above the kitchen. When I came downstairs at 4 a.m. to quiet the pups, I heard a dripping and found that the roof was leaking directly into the kitchen sink! Could we be any more lucky?
I put a temporary patch on the hole in the roof after daybreak. We'll wait to deal with the tree until the insurance company has had a chance to inspect it. I suspect the entire deck will have to be replaced because it's sagging under the weight of this impressive tree. There is one hole punched through the deck boards -- about a foot square -- and if you look down on it you can see the broken end of the branch that made the hole, only slightly smaller than the hole itself.
The power came back about five o'clock after being out for about 22 hours. There was very little inconvenience caused by this. It drove us to play a full round of Mexican Train domonoes.
The first report from Maryland indicates that Robin survived intact. The same is true of all our friends' boats, apparently.
The bullet only winged us, and we sail on.

Sandy, be she a hurricane when she arrives or a tropical storm or a mere meteorologic event, prompted me yesterday to visit Robin in Maryland. In a small breeze, I removed her Genoa, took the staysail in its bag off the foredeck, stripped the dodger frame of its canvas, bound the mainsail tightly inside its sail cover, removed all loose obects from the deck, checked the dock lines and shrugged.
About 60 years ago, when my family was camping in Baxter State Park in Maine, a storm that had been a hurricane was approaching. The water it later dumped on Mount Katahdin rolled huge boulders down Katahdin Stream and washed out a crib-work dam in the campground.
The campground ranger, Fred Pitman, a tall, lanky man probably in his 60s -- tall and strong enough to lift over his head a 55-gallon steel drum filled with trash to empty it in his pickup -- was talking with my father about the impending natural disaster. My father remembered for the rest of his life what Fred said, words to the effect: "Hurricanes, storms, blizzards. Ain't much you can do 'bout 'em. No point worrying 'bout 'em."
That's where we are today. Letting Sandy come. I hauled Bluebird from the river on Friday afternoon. She's strapped on her trailer, mast down.
A strong enough wind visits Maryland or New Jersey, things can happen.

Right now, we've brought Zippy, the cat, indoors, much to his displeasure. He's washing his paws in a yellow wingback chair. Lexi and Samantha are on the livingroom couch. Monica is watching the pre-game show on ESPN, preparing herself to knowledgeably watch football, and I'm going to catch up on some reading and watch the wind rise. I hope everyone else is secure and ready to enjoy the storm.

Samantha, left, and Lexi at just under 15 months. Monica says they are adorable. Then they come indoors, get their treats at the door and, like the hoodlums they truly are, run past the baby gate on the stairs up to the bedroom, where they gobble down Zippy, the cat's, dry food. Dr. Spock blames the parents, says I should have closed the gate completely. Says if I keep this up, they'll grow up to be obese and indolent. That sounds like a solution. Get them fat and lazy and I won't have to chase them around. Then I can get obese and indolent, too. I think I'll have another Ritz with peanut butter while I ponder thus further -- or is it farther?.

There was change in the air yesterday.  A southerly wind stirred the clouds in odd configurations and it reminded me of a day in June 2009 when I was alone on Robin, sailing to Bermuda. The sky that day was not precisely like it was yesterday. I recall two long, towering columns of white, extending off to the southwest. We were about 350 miles south of the Gulf Stream, I would guess. The air was warm and, although I'm not skilled in forecasting weather shifts, I sensed as I looked down the canyon between the columns, that rain was coming, perhaps a storm.
Out there, you cannot run from a storm or put into some convenient anchorage. You have to take what is delivered.
So I simply enjoyed the view and awaited the inevitable, whatever that would be.
On that occasion, there was a brief rain, no big winds, and then the weather passed.
The memory yesterday was a pleasant one as I looked up at the sky and then went indoors.

Tonight, I'll give a talk at the Red Dragon Canoe Club, our local boat club. I've called the talk: Cruising the Coast of Maine: The Fun and the Fear. I've assembled a Powerpoint slide show, and I'll ad lib for about 90 minutes.  I find that when you know a subject, it isn't all that difficult to wing it, as long as you have a general outline of what you want to say.
In this case, since Monica and I have made several trips to Maine aboard Robin, there is a lot to talk about as long as I stick to describing what we've seen and how we've gone about plotting and executing a cruise.
What I have to avoid is finding myself in a place where I believe I have some expertise -- that I actually know something. As soon as you think you are an authority, I've found, you're on the precipice of a great and painful fall.
So I need to enter the talk with a robust sense of my own ignorance and with a few stories to tell that demonstrate my fallibility. A few out of many, many. All the near-misses, and some of that calamitous collisions that were not avoided.

The wind was northwest yesterday on the Delaware River, the sky was a crisp blue and the foliage along the banks was electrified by some of the brightest oranges and yellows I've seen in this region, where atumn usually is a subdued tapestry.
So, of course, I took Bluebird out for a sail at two o'clock instead of going to Home Depot for a new garbage disposal.
There was quite a bit of water in the bilge and in the cabin, and that required using the electric pump to drain Bluebird of most of her burden. The pump always leaves some water, and I've learned to accept the everpresent sloshing.
With the sails raised, I headed with the current but against the wind, tacking downstream two miles past the little city of Beverly. I sailed until I reached a Pearson 28 that was sailing toward me. As if by plan, with both came about as we met, reversing our directions  and leaving each other behind. The sail upstream was with the wind, Bluebird at times was on a broad reach, at other times on a run, as we sailed the four miles to the Burlington-Bristol Bridge.
I sailed in close to the Red Dragon Canoe Club dock, where friend Bob was returning the launch. We exchanged greetings as Bluebird glided past in a breeze that carried gusts of about fifteen knots. I kept a good watch for other traffic. There were occasional powerboats, whose  captains waved as they sped by.
The sun was in the final quarter of its daily arc when Bluebird came about just upstream of the bridge and began sailing a saw-toothed track of long starboard tacks downstream and shorter port tacks across the stream.
Sitting low in the snug cockpit, I was content. Smug may be more correct, for I admit to feeling not only one with the wind but in some ways on an elevated plane compared with the rest of humanity.
Then, on a long starboard tack, I noticed a problem. The mast is supported by six slender stainless steel cables, one rising from the bow to part way up the front of the mast, a second attached to the stern and the top of the mast and, on each side, two called shrouds that keep the mast from falling  to the opposite side. On a starboard tack, the wind is pushing the sail -- and thus the mast -- to port, so the starboard shrouds have all the tension. The port shrouds are slack.
What I saw was that the "upper" port shroud was detached from its base on the deck, swinging gently out over the water. The shackle with which I'd pinned the bottom of the shroud to the deck fixture was still hanging from the "eye" at the bottom of the shroud, and its threaded pin -- which had worked free, allowing the shroud to detach from the deck fixture --was for the moment still held by one side of the shackle.
I had to laugh at my contenetment of a moment earlier.
I also had to do something or the mast would fall.
I let the sails flutter, making sure the tiller was pushed so that Bluebird wouldn't go on a port tack. Then I bent over the side and attempted to reattach the wandering shackle through the shroud eye and the deck fixture. Hard as I tugged, I was unable to stretch the shroud enough for the pin to reach the hole in the deck fixture. So I attached the shackle itself to the fixture and then, with a short piece of line that I use to tie up the mainsail when it's not in use, I put a rolling hitch around the shroud and passed the other end of the line through the shackle and tugged and tied it tight. For the time being the shroud was now stabalized and I could  sail on a port tack.
With that, Bluebird made it to the dock, where I fashioned a more stable connection between the shroud and the deck fitting, not a permanent solution but one that should keep the mast upright until I can get a proper pin.
What I learned is that you should never have a threaded  pin holding up the rigging because there is always a risk of that pin backing out, as this one did. And that reminded me that Robin, our ocean-going boat, has always had some of its shrouds held in place by bolts and nuts. I'll need to replace those with proper pins, too.              

We encounter a number of characters each morning when I drive Monica to the bus stand at 7:45. There is the couple out for their morning exercize: he with shoulders back, chest out, arms swinging  with the drama of an old veteran in a Memorial Day parade; she, shorter than he by a foot, head down, lips moving  or at times hidden behind a white dust mask, eyes intent, lost in some message -- a lecture, it would appear -- she's delivering. We see them while we're heading for the bus. On the return, on the same street, I often pass the bald and bushy-bearded mechanic at Jim's Auto, riding his mountain bike to work, even on chilly mornings wearing but a dark T-shirt with his dark blue chino work trousers. He leads with his hairy chin, assaults the morning with elbows out, knees pumping, perhaps imagining the first stubborn nut he will work free amidst the smells of old anti-freeze and worn rubber.
At the bus stand, several women who've worked the night shift at a nearby medical supply warehouse await home-bound rides. They wear the uniform of their jobs -- dark blue polo shirts, tan chinos -- and they engage in constant, greatly-animated conversation. Monica and I sit in the heat or the airconditoning of our car and watch  these ladies and the other passengers, all of whom we've given names in order to be able to comment on their behavior.
"Well, the Smoker's here," we might say, referring to a middle-aged man with a sour disposition (according to Monica) and the smell of stale tobacco smoke. Or, "Wonder if Tips will make it today." Tips is a middle aged woman who, for some reason, bleaches only the tips of her neck-length hair.
"The Twins" are two of the warehouse ladies, whom we first named because we noticed their matching wardrobes well before we realized they wore uniforms. "The Passenger" is another warehouse lady who used to wait for the bus in the passenger seat of a co-worker's car until one of the twins would motion to her that their bus -- which is also Monica's -- was coming.
(The one who motioned could be, by virtue of her features, the sister of former NFL player and football commentator Tom Jackson, whose pontifications Monica absorbs before the Sunday games. Both this lady and Jackson have a pleasing, low-keyed counteance.)
Until The Passenger lost her ride, the Twins would hold forth at the curb in serious dialogue, during which the Jackson Twin would listen and respond to her taller co-worker, who seemed to lead the discourse, accentuating her points by jabbing the air in front of her with two straight fingers between which was clenched a lit cigarette. There seemed to be little mirth in the conversation.
Then the Passenger lost her ride and now merriment is the order of the day. The Tall Twin has been relegated to a minor role. Her brusque jabs return only when the Passenger is absent.
Of all the characters who populate our morning, I like the Passenger and the Jackson Twin best. Sitting in the silence of our car, we can feel the good will being exchanged up there at the curb. In the place of Tall Twin's vehement gestures, we see the flutter of the Passenger's hands as she shapes the funny story or, perhaps, joke she's telling. Her hands are in nearly uninterrupted motion, and when there is a lull, the Jackson Twin's hands fill the void, drafting her reply as, often as not, both ladies bend in convulsive laughter.
The Passenger and the Jackson Twin draw in new arrivals with their behavior. One younger woman whom I'll call The Apron -- for she always wears a dark-blue apron with pockets, apparently signifying her employment -- at first stood on the periphery of the discourse, smoking and swaying  her stout body from side to side. But over time, she has been welcomed into the fun, and her comments seem to have been embraced.
I told Monica this morning that on Monday, when we next visit the bus stand, I'm going to take up a place at the curb so  that I can hear what's transpiring. I'm imagining that beginning the day with the Jackson Twin and the Passenger has to be better than listening to shock jocks on the car radio or the news on NPR.