The Burlington Island Race was cancelled last weekend due to a forecast northeaster. I walked Thelma down to the river end of the street at about the time the race would have started and was greeted by the sight of spinnakers flying -- and I use the word in its aeronautic sense -- downstream. Some other club was not quite so timid as we, I guess.
That's okay, because of course the Mariner sat on the boathouse apron, relieved of its rust-pocked centerboard. Now the Mariner is on its trailer up in the back lot, as if it were prepared for winter. And the centerboard is off in a corner of the apron where it will offend no one.
Still, there are a couple of weeks left before the moorings are pulled, so it is still possible that we'll get to sail her this year.
On the book front, I'm almost done editing the manuscript for Swimming in the Shadow of Death and will ship it to Keith Wallman, my editor, probably on Monday.
Also, I got a review of the youth novel, Leaving Harwich, that was at once both scathing and promising. The review is by a literary agent who represents best-selling authors of youth novels, so her comments are important. I will attempt to understand them and to see whether I am capable of addressing her concerns, with the goal of getting her to represent the book.
Sailing a Mariner is a forgiving experience. Trying to get published is not. One's skin must be thick and wear-resistant.

The northeaster has passed and sun shines on the Delaware River this morning. I drove to the waterfront to check the Mariner and found that the rusted steel centerboard hadn't floated away from where we left it on Wednesday. With fair weather forecast for most of the week, I may get back to grind off the steel shims that kept the board from dropping out of the trunk. Then it will be ready for re-installation.
But that won't happen before I get my current job finished. I'm "polishing" the manuscript for Swimming in the Shadow of Death. I'm about one-third the way through the 95,000 word document.
Keith, my editor at Lyons Press, mentioned that I might want to change some of the sentences structured in the passive voice to an active voice. It has been a very, very long time since I was schooled in grammar, so I had to Google active and passive to figure out what he meant.
In a passive sentence, the action happens to an object or a person. In an active sentence, the person or object takes the action. I'ts the difference between saying: The ship was sunk and The ship sank.
I did recall, once I investigated, having been told (passive) by an editor many years ago to quit using passive sentences. They are too ladylike. They lack force, he said (active).
In my search for passive sentences to convert, I'm finding that the story is really pretty gripping. That's pleasing. And Keith was right. The rewrite is improving the prose.

With attention being paid to the Mariner, the cupola project has been delayed but not forgotten. On Wednesday, I talked with a representative of United Rentals, a company that rents all sorts of lift equipment. I've decided, on the suggestion of my friend Fowler, that it might pay to pay for a machine to lift the whole, 440-pound structure and place it on the roof rather than assembling it up there myself on a ladder.
To determine the weight, I disassembled the bottom of the cupola -- the part with the windows in it -- stood on the bathroom scale and held one side and then one roof panel. Each side weighs about 75 pounds. Each roof panel weighs about 33 pounds, or 108 pounds total per side. Multiply this by four and round up to the nearest ten and you get the total weight.
Yesterday, I was about to go to a builder's supply store and buy some coil -- the coated aluminum that will become the red roof of the cupola. But a phone call delayed me. So the purchase has been postponed until today.
The next step is the fabrication of the metal roof. That will be a slow process because the fit has to be just right.
Once I get a quote from United, I'll schedule a day to rent. Then, just before that day, I'll take the whole structure outside, piece-by-piece, and reassemble it at a spot where the lift equipment can reach it.
I was surprised to find that United doesn't care that I've never operated a lift before. They will rent just about any piece of equipment that I ask for. That's a little scary.

Someone -- probably the last owner, who was an engineer -- apparently had a problem with the Mariner's centerboard wobbling. Up near the top of the board, in a place that almost never is exposed below the hull, they attached four small plates. The plates probably were meant to take up space in the centerboard trunk -- the enclosed slot in the bottom of the boat up into which the centerboard is raised to give the boat a shallow draft or to improve downwind speed.
The problem they apparently did not anticipate was that once the paint flaked off of the iron centerboard, the iron would rust. And the rust would cause the iron to expand. And the four little plates then would be pushed against the inner sides of the trunk, gradually making the board more and more difficult to raise and lower.
So it was that today, when with the help of John Morrison and Doug Cunningham, I set out to inspect the centerboard for the first time and had the boat raised on the waterfront hoist, the darned board wouldn't come down at all.
It was cold early in the morning, so John and I didn't make it to the waterfront until well after 10 o'clock. (I didn't check the time.) Doug met us there by coincidence, and together we brought the boat to the hoist, rigged the lifting sling and raised it to hover above the trailer.
We soon discovered our problem, and we worked through lunch without stop, wrestling with the board -- which weighs hundreds of pounds -- to no avial.
We used a sledge hammer but even that seemed unable to coax the board into dropping out of its slot.
Late in the afternoon, I called Stuart Marine in Maine, explained what was happening and asked for suggestions.
"Do what you are doing," said Dave, the man on the other end of the phone.
Having been given license to treat the poor Mariner as we already were doing, we really let the sledge hammer fly. In about 15 minutes, the board was out of the boat and lying on the ground.
It does not look promising to get the board repaired and back in the boat in time for the Burlington Island Race on Saturday. My only hope is that the northeaster that is promised for the next two days will cause the race to be postponed.
By next spring, I see a new board from Stuart in the Mariner's trunk. That may be the soonest we will get to sail her, and that's okay.

The sail on Sunday was out of a television commercial. The breeze was light but steady. The coffee mugs set on the deck never spilled. The air was cool enough for sweaters or windbreakers. The sky was blue and streaked with white clouds. In other words, it was tranquil sailing, pleasant, relaxing, never challenging.
The television commercials never show you the boredom of motoring in a sailboat or the terror of unavoidable bad weather. They let you believe that all is serene out there with the sails billowing and the water slipping smoothly by.
So we stayed out for about four hours, tacking from time to time until we'd made it to a point about five miles west of Cambridge -- maybe less. At that point, with Monica having gone below to make some gourmet turkey with roasted red pepper sandwiches, we came about and, on a level keel and a downwind run, had lunch before returning to our slip.
Too soon, Robin will retire for the season. If we are lucky, we'll have a couple more days like this one.

I attended the last four Annapolis sailboat shows free, covering them for Soundings Magazine. This year, we paid. I was just as confused as I was when I had the pressure to find a story inside the show grounds. There is just so much stuff to see.
We got off the shuttle bus that brought us from the Naval Academy stadium parking lot and immediately bought tickets. Monica said I should lead the way, so I stumbled ahead in blind disarray.
We had only traveled maybe 150 feet into the grounds along Ego Alley when I looked down and saw a must-buy product -- a powder that claimed it will remove mildew from your boat. Even though we had scrubbed our saloon cushions with disinfectant, they still had that bitter mildew odor.
We allowed ourselves to succumb to the mildew man's pitch and bought a jar of the stuff. The same fellow was hawking odd-feeling rubber-like pads guaranteed to keep your tumbler filled with iced tea from tipping over when the boat heels 30 degrees. Or at least that was the promise Monica believed was made. She's a sucker for such products, like the golden towels sold on TV as Sham Wow. She's convinced that they are dangerous because if you drop them overboard, they'll absorb all the water in the Chesapeake, leaving you grounded.
From Mildew Man, we moved on through the gauntlet of boat salesmen and boat insurance salesmen until we found ourselves beside the Mini-Transat Eko, atop which sat Kate Ambach, who sailed the boat to Bermuda in the race in June. Her fiancee, Drew Wood was in the cockpit as was Sam Asmus (sorry, Sam, if that's not the correct spelling,) the owner of the company that built Eko. Drew sailed another mini to Bermuda and Sam did the same in 2007.
I'd seen the minis in Newport and Bermuda but never been aboard one. So I took this opportunity, saying as I stepped from the dock that I couldn't conceive ever sailing one offshore.
Oddly, when I returned to the dock it was with the feeling that sailing a mini in its blue-water element would be great fun -- as well as a great challenge.
You crawl into a mini cabin as if entering an igloo -- through a tiny companionway. Once inside, you find an amazing amount of room. Since it is a pure racing boat, you find no amenities.
Sam explained that minis come in "prototype" models, which can have canting keels and water ballast and carbon fiber everything, and in more prosaic models which are made of fiberglass and have neither the keels nor the ballast. But they do have solar panels and autopilots.
In place of water ballast, which is pumped from port to starboard and back to counter the heeling force of the wind, the crew of a standard mini simply shifts their stores inside the boat from side to side to gain the same effect.
We moved on from the mini to inspect some other boats. (We'd already visited the Morris 52-foot daysailer, at $1.4 million an example of state-of-the-art one-upmanship. Later, we visited the Friendship daysailer designed by Ted Fontaine. This is my choice among these frivolous boats for its exquisite blending of curves. It is, at least, a great bit of sculpture.)
At lunch time, we broke bread at McGarvey's Pub, sitting outside and braving the drooping gray clouds, in the company of our NJ neighbors, Jean and Mark Nooney. They live two doors away, but we had to go to Annapolis to finally share some time with them.
On the dock, we ran into Georgie and Tom Norton, members of The Red Dragon Canoe Club well before we came to town and joined.
At some point, we boarded a Cabo Rico 56, just to be dazzled. Among limited production boats, the Cabo Ricos have always caught my eye. I didn't ask the price of this model.
We finally did some investigation in one of the tents where I spent time with Hans Bernwall at Scanmar, which sells windvane steering units. I had emailed Hans after we damaged our Windpilot coming back from Bermuda. I was inquiring about a vane system that, I learned, he no longer sells.
At the show, Hans spent an inordinate amount of time explaining why I should buy a Monitor windvane. I know that many boats in the Bermuda One-Two use Monitors. I also know they cost a bundle. Hans wasn't offering any half-price deals, and we can get along without a windvane at least until Monica retires and we begin cruising seriously.
It was fun to chat with Hans, however. He's a good salesman, I'm sure, and it was interesting to hear him slander his competition with a winning smile.
We lasted at the show until our feet got tired. Then we drove to Robin's side. But that's another story.

By the way, thanks to the many, many people who provided leads on Mariners. I think we followed each lead, and we made serious attempts to learn more about them all. It was a matter of timing that we ended with the boat we now have.
Today, I'll get the boat to the waterfront and attempt to prepare it for the water. It will be next week before we have a chance to launch her. On the weekend, we'll visit our neglected Robin where, I believe, there is a spare bilge pump that would work for the Mariner. Once we have a pump, it will be safe to launch.
Then, a week from this Saturday, we'll see if we can make it to the Burlington Island Race. Finding a boat and then launching it has been a great distraction from the effort of finding and keeping a job. I can recommend it as an alternative in a time when job hunting is a bit taxing. Somehow, it's more pleasant to worry about whether you're finding the right boat than whether, in the end, you will gain productive employment.

The Mariner is at the Red Dragon Canoe Club, still on its trailer but no worse for the 150 mile trip from Westport, CT.
John Morrison joined me for the excursion before the rain had stopped. But as we neared Westport, the wind began to increase and trees along the Merritt Parkway were thrashing.
Eric, the seller, had already replaced the wheel bearings in one wheel when we arrived, and he had rigged trailer lights mounted on a beam attached to the boat's transom. He showed me the bearings in the other wheel, and to my untrained eye they looked fine.
There just were a couple of wires that had to be connected in the lights. And the other end of the wires had to be secured in a plug that would connect them to the car. These tasks, which we thought would take only a few minutes, seemed to be completed when we tested the lights and all worked.
But then something happened. We don't know how, but there was a short in the circuitry and a fuse was blown. By the time we got some of the lights working, more than two hours had passed.
Eric offered us sandwiches, since it was now well past lunch time. But we declined, concerned that we make it home before dark.
We started out, quite slowly. We stopped at the end of Eric's lane to check everything. Then we checked at the next stop sign.
Trailers are not allowed on the Merritt Parkway, so we made our way to old Route 1 to the south and from there to Interstate 95, where we stayed in the slow lane, occasionally falling to 40 miles an hour behind traffic.
We suspected that there would be a trailer ban on the New Jersey Turnpike, so when we crossed the Hudson River on the Tappan Zee Bridge, we kept going west until we reached Interstate 287 south, the outer peripheral highway around New York City. This added perhaps 20 miles to our trip, but it was still the fastest way if we couldn't use the Turnpike, which indeed proved to be closed to trailers due to high winds.
The sun had just set when we arrived at the Red Dragon, and once more the fuse had recently failed, so we had no trailer lights.
But all seems to be well on the as-yet-unnamed little Mariner.
Indeed, Ancient Mariner sounds like a good choice, but we're still open to suggestions.

The license plate for the trailer is in the car. Tomorrow morning at 8:30, I pick up John Morrison for the drive to Connecticut. I just talked with the seller of the Mariner, who has checked out the trailer lights for me and will be doing the same for the wheel bearings.
Maybe it's time to come up with a name.
For my first Mariner, I initially called it Solace, for a Scott Joplin rag that I love. Later, I changed the name to Neville, in honor of the classical conductor Neville Marriner (sp?) .
I'm open to suggestions. Maybe there should be a boat-naming contest. Any ideas?

The search is over. Yesterday, we bought a 1964 O'Day Mariner in Connecticut. I'm hoping to bring her home this week.
The boat has a white hull, light blue deck and dark blue cabintop. We actually paid a couple of hundred dollars less than our goal when we started the search. But we know that soon, we will have to give her a new centerboard. So in the end, we came close to hitting our mark.
On the way to Vermont on Friday, we stopped in Westport to inspect the boat. Leaving the Merritt Parkway, we wound along tree-shaded country roads until we found ourselves in hills where exquisite stone walls bordered many properties and, curiously, every building seemed to have a cupola!
At the end of one such lane, we found the Mariner, sitting prettily atop a sturdy-looking trailer. The owner was washing her down, a trick that a photographer friend of mine used last year to sell my 25-year-old motorcycle. The hosing gives the object you're peddling a wet-T-shirt look, you might say.
We went inside the owner's home -- removing our shoes -- and into the basement, where he showed me the mast, rudder, tiller and an engine that might -- or might not -- go with the boat.
Then he laid the sails out on the carpeted basement floor. That's something I could never do. Our basement is much too cluttered.
Everything seemed to be in order, and the price was so low that I was torn.
We were planning on stopping in Massachusetts on the way home yesterday to look at another Mariner, a newer one with more sails and some other upgrades. The price for that one was much, much more. I informed this owner that we would be doing that but that I liked his boat.
Then on Saturay I got an email from Massachusetts saying that boat had been sold.
When we got to Westport yesterday, I asked how recently the wheel bearings on the trailer had been greased. The owner wasn't sure. And the trailer did not have a legitimate license plate. So I decided to come back when I had my own plate and to grease the wheels myself.
The next step will be trailering the boat to New Jersey. And then there will be the launching. Each should provide blog material on its own.
I think we're both happy with the outcome. She's a pretty little boat, and we can visualize grandchildren aboard, along with their parents.

One down, one to go. We visited an O'Day Mariner this morning in Connecticut. It is an oldie, but it has potential and the price is great. We might need to replace the center board, but otherwise it seemed like a serviceable boat.
I am trying to contact Stuart Marine, the Maine company that has built Mariners and Rhodes 19s for several years to see what the replacement parts would cost.
Sunday, we visit a Mariner in Massachusetts. It's a newer model but the price is substantially more. One way or another, we probably will come home Sunday night with a boat.
The Connecticut boat has been in the same family for over 40 years and is one of the first 150 or so built. The Massachusetts boat has been dry sailed this past season and has new sails.
So many factors to consider.
Tune in on Monday for an update.