War and Peace, shipyard edition

It's been two months since my last post, and I need to try to catch up before it gets any harder to do so. I started typing this a month ago, on a train heading back to the boat after a visit to my folks in Brick, NJ, which was the first block of quiet time I'd had to be able to write. I couldn't finish in the three or so hours I had across three different trains, but I made a dent. I've come back to it on and off on every train since, and I even carved out a block of time this week to try to get it done.

Vector flying back to the water after three weeks on the hard for bottom paint.

I am once again on a train, this time on the way back to the boat from Jamestown, Rhode Island, and I am nearing the finish line. The temptation has been great, throughout the process, to declare "blog bankruptcy," provide a minuscule update, and promise to return once we are back to cruising, but we would regret that at some point in the future when we need to come back to these events for one reason or another. This blog is, really, our own record of our travels, trials, and tribulations. In any event, this will be a gargantuan update, perhaps my longest ever, so settle in with a beverage. (We have at least one friend who feeds these posts into AI and asks for a summary.)

Busman's holiday: Boarding the Staten Island Ferry to Manhattan.

A month ago passed our 22nd Nomadiversary, and Blogger tells me there are over 2,700 posts here, or a little over ten a month, on average. Whoever buys the boat will have their work cut out for them, because I am going to point them at a post back in 2012 when we were still on the bus and tell them to read all the way to the present day; there is no way I am taking any guff over some weirdness they discover which is thoroughly documented here. (No, we have no plans to sell the boat anytime soon). That's over 1,000 posts ago.

The Molinari was built long after the ferry stopped carrying cars, but it still has this small vehicle deck for emergencies. Everybody remembers 9/11, when every bridge and tunnel was closed.

Some of that weirdness will be covered later in this very post, but I will first pick up where I left off, underway from Brielle, NJ to Great Kills Harbor off Raritan Bay. Seas flattened out as we approached the harbor, and we had an uneventful entrance in spite of the fact that the Army Corps of Engineers survey overlay on the helm tablet was off by a considerable number of feet. I remember this from the last time we were here and the vendor fixed it in software, but apparently it reverted when the COE released a new survey. It was correct on Louise's tablet (she has the Android version and the one on the helm is an iPad) and my other chart was still correct.

Correct soundings on Android (left) and exaggerated ones on iOS (right).

We found "our usual spot" right in the middle of the harbor (map) wide open again; I have no idea why there are never any moorings here but it's been great. We tendered ashore to the Marina Cafe for dinner on the patio at their tiki bar, a more casual menu than the white-tablecloth affair inside that we did last time. We had a short stroll after dinner; the neighborhood is unchanged from our last visits.

The Battery as seen from the Staten Island Ferry.

After working hard for two straight weeks and then moving the boat, I took Saturday off for myself. Louise dropped me off at the Atlantis dock since we had the gate code from the restaurant, I walked up the hill to the Staten Island Railroad, which is basically an extension of the NY subway system, and I took it to where it ends at the St. George ferry dock to get the ferry to Manhattan. The train only collects fare at St. George, both entering and exiting; to go between any other two stations is free.

Mother of Exiles.

Taking the Staten Island Ferry across New York Harbor is something of a busman's holiday — we make this trip all the time — but I can never just relax and sight-see while navigating here. It was nice to be able to just amble the decks and watch the scenery go by. Once in lower Manhattan I had a nice walk past the old ferry terminal, which is now the Hotel Cipriani, took in the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, which is in the historic Alexander Hamilton US Customs House, and walked through the southern end of Battery Park before catching a return ferry.

Rotunda of the Alexander Hamilton Customs House.

After coming back down the hill from the train I had some time before dinner and I dropped in to the Richmond County Yacht Club, right next door to the Marina Cafe and on our reciprocal club list, to see if we could land our dinghy there. The new commodore, Ryan, was sitting at the bar along with his wife, the immediate past commodore, Jen, and they welcomed us to the club. They had no problem letting us tie up, so that's where Louise met me. We walked to long-time favorite Goodfella's for dinner and stopped back in to the club bar for a beer on the way home, chatting with bartender Stacey. We are very glad to have a place to land the dinghy on future visits.

Gateway National Recreation Area swim beach on Raritan Bay, as seen from the comfort station.

I took a second day off Sunday, this time strolling further afield in the marina neighborhood, where I found some more promising eateries and a well-stocked CVS. The bagel shop we had admired from Goodfellas across the street was disappointing, as the bagels are made elsewhere in town. After walking the marina area I crossed the harbor to the boat ramp and walked out to the swimming beach along Raritan Bay. It was well used on a hot day, but the sand is unappealing there and, honestly, so is the bay. We walked to Cole's Dockside for dinner, on recommendation of the yacht club, and it was much better than we had previously expected from its outward appearance.

O'Haras. You'd be hard-pressed to find a law enforcement agency not represented by one or more patches or stickers here.

With the weekend thus behind us, we weighed anchor Monday to have a fair tide and an on-time arrival for our reservation in Jersey City, where we tied up at the Hudson Point Marina on the north side of the Morris Canal Basin (map). We've been eyeing the north side of the basin for some time; the very popular Liberty Landing marina on the south side of the basin has never had any appeal to us. A favorable first-hand report from friends and fellow nomads Cherie and Chris (Technomadia) prodded me to get off the fence and finally try it.

9/11 memorial. I always cry, especially as I pass the names of friends. It hardly seems like a quarter century.

We made our way down the Morris Canal in the rain, which persisted through tying up on an end tie at the marina (map). The rain stopped a short while later and it turned into a beautiful afternoon; I strolled around the Paulus Hook neighborhood.  We walked to dinner at Buddy's JC, which was quite good but, sadly, closed for good last month. That put us close to Whole Foods for some much-needed but overpriced groceries, and in the evening I strolled over to the Liberty Harbor Marina and RV park next door to our digs, just to check it out. We made the right call staying at Hudson Point.

This robot passed us several times across a few days in Jersey City. We sometimes saw it several times over the course of dinner al fresco.

We remained in Jersey City to Friday. It was a great stop, if a bit on the expensive side, but we will likely be back. In fact, we considered inquiring about long-term rates in light of the fact that we will likely be spending a lot of time near NJ for the foreseeable future. What makes this an ideal stop is that it is in easy transit distance of NYC, Hoboken, and where my folks are in Brick, and yet it is also an easy drive to Brick if I need a car. That's in addition to there being enough nearby restaurants and services right in the neighborhood.

Hoboken Station.

Over the course of our four days we made a couple of trips to Manhattan, utilizing both the PATH trains and the downtown ferry, we explored the nearby parts of Jersey City, and I made a pilgrimage to my alma mater, Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken. Carlo's Bakery has fallen far enough off the pinnacle of popularity that I was able to walk right in and get a cookie. I was happy to see my old haunt, Court Street, is still kicking, and I met the new owner, who was happy to hear my story of its early years. The Hudson-Bergen Light Rail is new since these were my stomping grounds, and it made the trip easy. I spent a bit of time in the Hoboken Terminal, which is much the same as in my youth save for the fact that the ferry docks have reopened.

Stevens bought ads out on the platforms.

We dined at the Lighthorse Tavern, White Star Bar, and Tino's, a BYOB place — liquor licenses are scarce here. All were good. We also had a beer at O'Haras in the Financial District, which is a classic local joint out of sight of most tourists. Now that I am an old coot, on our first excursion into Manhattan I stopped off at an MTA customer service center in the subway and had the senior discount added to my credit card, so now my bus and subway rides are half price, and I was pleasantly surprised when that also worked automatically on the bus system in Port Washington later.

The Torch Bearers, by and a gift of Anna Hyatt Huntington; I just wrote about this piece while we were in Norfolk.

Friday we dropped lines right at checkout time for a fair tide all the way up the East River. Underway I called the city-run World's Fair Marina to see if their dinghy dock was in operation, hoping to maybe squeeze in to Flushing Bay. That would have made for a very short bus ride to get Louise to LaGuardia for her flight, but no dice; they told me they had no dinghy dock available. With the docks at 79th Street and Dyckman Landing also closed, that leaves few other options for getting ashore in city limits.

This canon on Castle Point was entirely painted white when I was a student, and there were probably 50 or more layers of that paint. I am very happy to see it restored like this.

We continued to Port Washington and dropped the hook in our usual spot (map). It was raining at dinner time and so I grilled some lamb chops aboard. We had left ourselves extra days to get the lay of the land in Flushing, so now we were early, and we settled in for a relatively long stay, just shy of two weeks.

Carlo's looks nothing like it did when I was here, but it is also not the zoo I remember from just a few years ago, with a line around the block.

Louise had a morning flight out of LGA on Tuesday, and we took the bus together down to the closest Enterprise Rental in Great Neck. I dropped her at the terminal and then continued on to NJ for a visit with my folks. The route I took in the car took me past many landmarks we normally pass from the water, including Hell Gate, the Harlem River, Dyckman Street, the Spuyten Duyvil, and eventually over the George Washington Bridge and our usual anchorage there. And, of course, I passed our former dock on the Manasquan.

The famous Clam Broth House was a going concern when I was a student, and I ate there a handful of times. This historic sign is all that remains.

I hit even more of our familiar waterway spots on the return, crossing the Kills on the Outerbridge Crossing and then The Narrows on the Verrazzano. This so I could stop in Staten Island and hit the Net Cost Market there to stock up on the Baltic porter I had discovered when we stayed in Sheepshead Bay. I hit rush hour on the BQE in Brooklyn, so I stopped for dinner in Brooklyn Heights, which I then put on our short list of neighborhoods to look at whenever we reach the next chapter of our life. I returned the car the next morning and had brunch at the Landmark Diner next to Enterprise while I waited for a bus back to the dock.

The landmark Colgate clock, up close and personal.

Louise was gone four days, and on one of them I had dinner at Diwani, which was excellent; she won't set foot in an Indian place so I can only get my fix stag. On the day she returned I went out to Flushing Meadows on the train and spent the afternoon walking around. These are the old grounds of the 1964 World's Fair, which I visited at the ripe old age of four, leaving me with the faintest memory of the UniSphere and nothing else. The "flying saucer" observation towers, another iconic element of the park, are being restored and are covered in scaffolding. The park was nicely utilized on a pleasant weekend.

The UniSphere, pretty much as I remember it from age 4.

I walked past Citi Field both to and from the park, and the Mets were playing so the place was hopping. I think the last time I was walking in this neighborhood was for a Mets game, and that was in Shea Stadium, a lifetime ago. Preparations were also in full swing for the US Open, and I walked right past Arthur Ashe Stadium as well. I then hopped on the express bus and headed to LaGuardia to meet Louise. I wanted to get a feel for what it would be like to go between LGA and Port Washington on transit.

The observation towers of the New York State Pavilion undergoing a massive restoration. They are not alien spacecraft, no matter what you saw in Men In Black.

I had assumed that I would get to the airport and find a quick bite for dinner, since Louise was eating on her flight. That was something of a pipe dream; she came in to the new and swoopy Terminal B, where almost nothing is outside security. There is a single bar with a small menu of food items that are prepared elsewhere. At least I was able to get a beer. We took a Lyft back to the dock in Port Washington.

The lone bar and restaurant in LGA Terminal B outside of security.

Once Louise was back aboard, our reason for staying put in Port Washington had come to an end, and we started talking about where to head next. We were already well into the summer cruising season, and hopes of maybe making it to Monhegan Island in Maine while our friend Tim was still there were already mostly crushed. Even getting as far as Boston like we did last year to see our friends Erin and Chris seemed like a stretch. I ran through several scenarios to make it at least as far as Rhode Island, but before we could even get out of transit distance, I still had business to attend to in New Jersey.

"The Sphere" from the World Trade Center, now part of a memorial. I thought it was hideously ugly every time I passed it in the plaza before 9/11, but now it evokes something altogether different.

We ended up staying put while we ruminated about this for another couple of days. After looking at how difficult transit would be from further east on Long Island, we shifted gears and decided instead to head north and a little bit west to try out a new stop for us, City Island. The anchorage and mooring field here is only good in settled weather, and the forecast was favorable. Before we even left, however, Louise got a lead on a possibly suitable chair for the great pilothouse settee project, and it turned out that the mail receiving service right in downtown Port Washington was the best place to have it shipped.

Seaplane in the East River on our way north.

We figured we could still get out of Dodge while the seat was in transit, and we weighed anchor that Wednesday and made the short 40-minute trip across. The City Island Yacht Club set us up with a mooring ball at the northern edge of their field (map), and we left the tender on deck and used their included launch service our whole stay. On recommendation from our good friends Dorsey and Bruce aboard Esmeralde, we walked to dinner our first night at The Black Whale, which was good.

Stormy skies in Port Washington.

City Island is actually in the Bronx, and so this officially was our fourth of the five New York City boroughs, having already anchored in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. The entire island is walking distance from the yacht club, and I also got on the Bx29 city bus and headed off the island to the end of the subway line just to check out what it would take to access the rest of the city. I had a nice walk around the part of Pelham Bay Park that is south of the Hutchinson River.

Saturday market at the harbor, Port Washington.

We had a nice three-day stay at City Island and will most likely return. In addition to the Black Whale, we also ate at the City Island Diner, where we opted to have lunch Thursday due to forecast rain at dinner time, and The Snug, which happens to be attached to the diner and is open in the evenings. There are four or five other dining options in easy distance of the yacht club. Nothing about City Island felt to me like the Bronx, where I worked in my youth, and instead it felt more like Staten Island or the outer reaches of Queens, a much less urban environment. It was much more Bronx-like at the end of the bus line.

Manning the anchor watch in 25 knot winds, Manhasset Bay.

Saturday we got back underway for the return trip to Port Washington to await our delivery and take advantage of the close grocery store. We made a stop at the yacht club courtesy dock on our way out of the mooring field to offload our trash and top up the water tank. We were past the Big Tom rock before the eponymous sailing races began, one of our reasons for heading back across before the weekend got in full swing. We dropped the hook in Manhasset Bay just a few dozen yards from where we left three days prior (map).

Fans headed to Citi Field on the pedestrian overpass. I'm going the other way.

The chair arrived Monday and we hiked up to the mail place with our folding wagon to retrieve it. I dropped off the enormous stabilizer valve while we were there, on its way to a hydraulic service for testing. By the end of the day I had the chair mostly installed on a pedestal I ordered from Amazon, albeit with a couple of hardware store trips involved. Shields Hardware right in town turned out to be a great source of stainless fasteners.

The proportional valve for the starboard fin. I wish I had something in the photo to give it scale; it is massive.

Waiting for the chair had us still in Port Washington for Tuesday, when I had a scheduled meeting with an accountant at my mom's house in Brick. So I was up at dawn to catch an early train to Penn Station and thence to Point Pleasant. I had a half hour layover at Penn Station, enough time to walk over to H&H Bagels in the lovely Moynihan Train Hall for a breakfast sandwich.

Arthur Ashe Stadium at the Billie Jean King Tennis Center, home of the US Open, beyond the rail yard.

It was a long and busy day, including three Uber rides to and from the train station and in between the house and memory care. I was back in Port Washington in time to meet Louise for a late (for us) dinner at Toscanini, which is closer to the train station than our normal venues. We had the same funny waiter we remembered from our last visit a couple of years ago. On the train ride back, the accountant called me to set up another meeting for Saturday with a banker; I am in the midst of trying to consolidate my parents' accounts to simplify their lives.

Fiery sunset over Great Neck from Manhasset Bay.

The scheduled Saturday meeting again kept us from making any eastward progress, and I spent a good part of Wednesday working on where else we could be besides Port Washington. Going back across to City Island was an option, but it's actually a longer commute from there to Brick. After a bunch of phone calls we finally lined up another new spot for us, one bay west at the Douglaston Club in Little Neck Bay, on our reciprocal list. We put off moving until Thursday because we had an afternoon conference call scheduled before dinner.

If only there was some kind of reflecting pool. Maybe with a blue liner.

Across a little over two weeks in Port Washington we ate at all the usual places, including Salvatore's Pizza (cash only and probably our favorite joint in town, in part because they have Brooklyn Brown in bottles), Pepe Rosso 24 (convenient to the Manorhaven dock), Amalfi, Finn McCool's (excellent and run by an actual Irishman, despite the name and the fern-bar decor), and Bosphorous. We also tried a new place in town, Riva Blu, which was a decent Italian place, and we finally made it to Lia Dim Sum, which turned out to be great if a bit overpriced. We also made our first return visit to Louie's in many years, a place with its own dock popular among the Instagram crowd and people celebrating special occasions, and found it to be excellent, if pricey.

Landmark Diner, a classic, next to the Enterprise car rental.

We also hit up all the usual stores and services, including Stop & Shop, Target, T.J. Maxx, and the Ace hardware. I also stopped into West Marine twice; the store is closing permanently and everything is on clearance sale, but I found even the clearance prices, no returns allowed, to be barely competitive with other retailers and I walked out empty-handed. With a pump-out boat, water at the dock, and three free dinghy landings, this continues to be one of our favorite stops on Long Island Sound.

West Marine, looking pretty picked-over even though the deals were lousy.

With over two weeks in that one spot, you'd have thought I could hammer out this blog, especially since I started working on it on the train to and from NJ. But I was a bit over-committed. In addition to all the travel, I spent a huge amount of time on boat projects. I counted a full nine days in my notes of working on the settee project, demolishing the forward part of the "L," then carefully cutting all the finish and trim pieces and putting them back together in a different orientation like a giant puzzle. That part of it came out pretty nice, and saved us a ton over having a finish carpenter do the work.

The deconstruction begins in earnest. The tufted back was rolled over and stapled down before the entire unit was set into place, an option we did not have in the other direction.

I also ordered and installed the new pedestal and the helm seat to go where that part of the settee used to be, rerouted the HVAC system, and cut down, trimmed, and reinstalled the old vertical duct chase, making it into a sort of corner nook (removing it altogether would mean having to re-do the ceiling, an even bigger project, and leave more unfinished holes in the wall). Besides the settee, I did the aforementioned stabilizer work, spent many hours on paperwork and dealing with professionals for my parents, and even made time to get a haircut and a massage.

Down to just the supports, showing the absence of finished wall paneling behind.

I took on one completely discretionary project: While I was cleaning out my father's things now that he is in memory care, I came across a Ronson Adonis cigarette lighter engraved with his initials. It is the only smoking accessory he'd kept for the five decades since he quit, and rather than part with it I decided to keep it for myself as a memento. After a half century of sitting, it needed to be completely disassembled and refurbished to get it working again. The only things I really use a lighter for (formerly a disposable that I found lying around someplace) are to shrink the occasional piece of heat shrink or melt the end of a small nylon line when I am too lazy to drag out the heat gun or the hot knife, respectively.

Ronson Adonis, restored.

Thursday we decked the tender and weighed anchor just as the rain started for the short trip around the tip of Great Neck to Little Neck Bay. There is an enormous but empty anchorage here, with plenty of room for Vector, but the club wanted us to use their lone guest mooring, and so we worked our way all the way in to the northern edge of the mooring field and picked up the ball (map). We had just a couple of inches under the keel here at low tide.

Low spring tide at the dinghy dock. I have to tilt the engine up to keep the prop out of the mud.

We sat right there until the rain was done and had the club launch pick us up for a 6:30 dinner reservation in the club's Tap Room, which was quite good. After dinner we had a peek in the other rooms including the main dining room, being set up for a wedding the following day. The club even has bowling lanes in the lower level. The clubhouse is a couple of blocks from the waterfront, which has a swimming beach and other facilities for use by the residents of the neighborhood.

Forwardmost support and base removed, and the old cushions from that section relocated so we at least have something there until we get new ones. New chair pedestal base test-fit.

This stop put us a lot closer to an Amazon locker, and Friday morning I hauled the e-bike ashore on the launch and ran down to the locker to pick up some 6" HVAC duct I had ordered for the pilothouse settee project. On my way I also scoped out the "town" of Douglaston, really a neighborhood of Queens. This is our fifth and final borough to land ashore in NYC. On the launch home I ran into Michel, the commodore of the club, and he gave us a warm welcome. We walked back into town together for dinner at Il Toscano, an excellent Italian place just across the tracks. That required crossing them via a pedestrian subway.

9/11 memorial, Jersey City. Actual debris from the collapse.

Saturday was my trip to NJ, involving a Port Washington Line train to Penn Station connecting to a NJ Transit train all the way to Point Pleasant. I had enough time, so I thought, for a nice bagel sandwich at H&H in the station. When I arrived to Penn, however, the NJT board said my train was canceled, with the next option a full hour later. More time for breakfast but I would be late for my meeting. While I was standing there trying to figure how to get to the house from a different train that ended at Rahway, the board changed and they canceled the Rahway train and un-canceled my train, but with a delay. All the back and forth aced me out of H&H and I just wolfed down a slice of pizza from the joint near the NJT status board.

Uh oh.

I made it to the house right on time for my meeting, which ran till 4:30, and got a lift back to the station. Consistent with how the morning went, NJT was late coming into Penn and my planned dinner at the lone pub in the station evaporated and instead I grabbed a salad at Chopt which I washed down with a canned pint from Beer Table, a to-go beer retailer right in the station that will sell you an individual can of hundreds of beers. They even give you the stealthy brown paper bag so you can drink it New York style, but the LIRR allows open containers on their trains except on holidays. The launch nominally runs till 11 on the weekend, but the skipper told me they quit at 9 if none of the boats is out. I had Louise radio them to wait for me and I made it back to the launch by 9:30.

Yes, this is an actual NYC police car. Just outside Citi Field during the game.

The yard manager at Derecktor Shipyard had called us Friday afternoon to say they had a last-minute cancellation and could haul us out on Monday, which we immediately accepted. So even though we had planned to stay in Douglaston until Monday, we instead dropped lines Sunday at mid-day and headed back to Port Washington, the most convenient pump-out option, so we could begin our yard stay with an empty tank. Rather than pull up to the minuscule pump-out dock at the head of the harbor, we instead dropped a lunch hook in the anchorage closest to the entrance (map), next to the superyacht Top Five, and called the pump-out boat.

This pair of swans hangs out in Manhasset Bay looking for handouts from cruising boats. We greeted them but did not succumb to their wiles.

After taking care of business we headed across the sound to Mamaroneck for a high-tide arrival and tied up at the dock closest to the crane. We walked around the boat and marked all the topside paint damage with blue tape before heading off to "our" pub, the Village Station, for dinner, where we met a new barkeep, Jen. We missed being greeted, but that proved to be a temporary situation.

This does not get old, and apparently I keep taking photos.

Monday morning they moved us into the slings and flew Vector onto the hard stands for the bottom job. We went to brunch at the excellent diner next door and then spent most of the day in the customer lounge area while the boat hung in the slings being pressure-washed. They had us blocked and a boarding ladder in place before they closed up shop. I found a length of rubber hose in their dumpster that I was able to rig up as a discharge for our gray water before dinner.

Classic counter and stools at City Island Diner.

We sat on the hard stands for a full three weeks, though we were expecting just one. As they started sanding the areas that had worn to bare steel, the neighboring epoxy barrier coat kept coming loose, and on the third day the yard manager came over to say they thought they should blast the hull down to bare steel all the way around. That's a lot of time and a lot of money, but it's been nearly nine years since it was last done, and clearly it was just time. There is really no better place to do this kind of work than right here, so we swallowed hard and gave them the go-ahead.

Whitestone Bridge, the moon, and New York City all lit in one photo.

I picked up a rental car Thursday of that first week for a Saturday visit to NJ. With the holiday weekend, I had to book at least four nights anyway (I would have to pick it up on Friday and could not return it until Tuesday), so I just took a full week. That let us drive over to Larchmont Thursday for groceries and dinner at Larchmont Tavern, one of our old haunts. On Saturday we drove to NJ for a visit and to wrap up some of mom's banking before the banks closed at noon, and after lunch we stopped by memory care to visit with my dad. On our way back to Mamaroneck we stopped at Ikea, where each of us got a new easy chair for the saloon. We were thankful the rental company had upgraded us to an SUV.

Piecing together several recovered trim pieces to make a straight bench.

That made us late enough that we stopped off in Secaucus for dinner, landing at the Carnegie Diner, where we shared one of their enormous sandwiches. On Monday we returned to NJ to visit three different CCRC's that might be options for mom, now that she is rattling around the house alone. The CCRC research has consumed a great deal of my time, and I am glad Louise came with me to investigate because she has already gone through some of the process with her own family. We got back to Mamaroneck just in time for dinner, again hitting up the Village Station, where we were stunned to find Hannah, the barkeep from our five-month stay here, who is back after a hiatus. We just caught her before she left on a two-week vacation.

The dart board at City Island Pub is the Vector model.

Understandably the yard did not want to work on the topside paint while they were making dust, and so that part of the work waited until we got off the hard. By last Friday morning they had four coats of primer and two coats of bottom paint on everything but the stand pads, and with decent weather they got two and two done on those by the end of the day and flew us back to the dock. It was good to finally be back in the water, where we can use every sink on the boat along with the big HVAC units. On Sunday we drove the boat around to the other side of the dock (map) so first thing Monday they could sling the tugboat whose hoist had been delayed by our unplanned extension on the hard.

Sunset over The Bronx from City Island.

Last Saturday was another whirlwind trip to NJ. I had not planned on this one, and we were hoping to take the train to RI for the weekend to see our friends there, but I got a message from my cousins mid-week that there was to be a family conclave. And so Saturday morning I again boarded a train, but these trains only go to Grand Central, which is two subway trains away from Penn Station. From Penn I grabbed a train out to Secaucus, where my cousins and uncle picked me up on their way to the house.

Taking shape. The flooring under the table will be extended all the way to the wall.

The Secaucus Junction train station is unique on the New Jersey Transit system. In order to get either to or from the train platforms, you need to pass through an automated turnstile system were you have to scan an active ticket. This sometimes trips up unsuspecting passengers with paper tickets who leave their trains without them. I think the reasoning is that conductors often can't get through the whole train checking tickets between Penn and Secaucus, so this ensures that riders who have figured that out can't just take their chances and ride without a ticket.

A very happy anode at West Marine.

After the family pow-wow, instead of dropping me back at Secaucus, I rode along all the way to Glen Rock, less off the route for the three of them, and a bit further north, and we stopped at Stone & Rail right by the train station for dinner. It was great to catch up with everyone and I caught a different train back to Secaucus Junction and onward. It was a long day and I got home around 9:30

Test-fit of the Llebroc helm chair.

The excellent topside painter, José Maria, started first thing this Monday, and as I wrap up typing here he is mostly finished. In addition to the two damaged areas from our last two dock incidents, we marked out another two dozen chips, dings, holidays, and scratches that needed addressing. Most of them are the result of improper prep three years ago, and I will ask the yard manager to take that into consideration when he sends in the billing, and I will also have him break out the side scratches so we can send the bill to Progressive, who covered both of the last two boats to hit us (and the one before that, too, but that one is already fixed and settled).

I am already out of this excellent porter and I need to make my way back to Net Cost Market for more.

When we first arrived we asked the yard to recommend an upholsterer to make the new cushion assemblies for the settee, and they suggested the one that is a tenant in the building. I had the yard cut four plywood backer boards for the project and we gave them what was left of our old cushions. They came back last week and they look great, but as soon as we sat on them we sank all the way to the underlayment. This is more of a design studio than an upholstery shop, and they do almost no marine work. It turns out that meant they know very little about seating foam, and now we will wait another week while they replace the foam with something more appropriate. Annoyingly, they are charging us for that privilege. It's a payment-before-delivery place, so we have no leverage.

Mostly complete here, just waiting on new seat backs and bottoms. In this view you can see the damage to the starboard edge of the cushion that party motivated us to tear the whole thing out.

Projects here on my own plate, when I was not bouncing back and forth to New Jersey, included dealing with the recalcitrant stabilizer valve, which failed its test but then had to go to yet a different shop for repair. The authorized Bosch Rexroth shop that was finally able to fix it was Global Electronic Services in Buford GA, who is strictly B-to-B so I had to go through the shipyard; the problem was a bad driver board. I also removed the last of the settee back cushions (and in the process discovered the whole assembly needed even more fasteners to keep it in place), replaced the spouts on all our gas cans, replaced the guts of an electrical panel, repaired a battery charger, and replaced the satellite compass. These last three items were necessitated by all of those things failing in place right here at the boatyard.

Thermistor melted right off the board.

The electrical panel came to light when we found the batteries not charging and the inverter powering the loads; it turned out that the inverter's input breaker had partly melted the bus bar. The auxiliary battery charger blew its thermistor while powering the inverter to overcome the yard's low-voltage problem. And the sat compass, an ancient ComNav unit that I bought used a decade ago, announced its demise via alarms on the chart plotter and the AIS.

Not only did it come loose, but the ceramic case blew apart.

The electrical panel failed in the exact same manner 11 years ago, and I repaired it the same way, by buying a whole new panel and just moving the busbar assembly into our old enclosure (Square-D does not sell just the bars). The charger has also failed in this same way in the past, and I had a spare thermistor on hand because I bought extras back then. We have since tried to use the charger more sparingly since the repair, just letting the voltage be low most of the time except when we want to use the microwave.

Fried busbar finger, alongside an undamaged one.

The sat compass was a different matter. I bought a brand new Furuno SCX-21, which requires different wiring and connections from the ComNav that it replaced. I am hoping that moving up two decades in technology will also give us better performance with the autopilot. The new unit is also more compact and looks less out-of-place in the mounting location.

The new sat compass is very compact.

The multiple failures and unplanned repairs contributed to the delay in getting this out, and to make matters worse my laptop died an ignoble death this week. The power cord had worn through from work-hardening, and I replaced it before it could separate completely. I bought a 65-watt USB-C brick and cord in lieu of the 65-watt barrel connector that came with the laptop, which takes either type of power supply. Evidently the Amazon Basics brand unit that I bought was not polite, and after just a day of use it fried the power FETs (or something nearby) on the motherboard.

Replacement bus bar assembly removed from its panel enclosure. The brand new enclosure went right into the steel recycling bin.

That sent me into mad scramble to find a replacement that had specs to my liking (14", backlit keys, 3:2 aspect ratio) that was known-working on Linux and had the same type SSD slot as my dead one so I could just move my drive wholesale and not have to reload everything from scratch. After hours of research I finally had to compromise on the screen and settle for 16:10. The new machine is similar to my old one (both Acer Swifts) and is fully working now, but has useless CoPilot and Acer keys displacing the more useful right-Ctrl and Print-Screen keys I had previously. I was at least able to remap the CoPilot key, but the Acer key generates no code and so is just fallow.

Louise needs a footrest to be comfortable, and it needs to swivel with the chair. Unable to find one commercially available, I rigged this up from a pair of corner braces, some ¾" ply, and a fold-down footrest. If this works out I will replace the plywood with something nicer and paint the footrest hardware black.

In the course of now four weeks in Mamaroneck (and counting) we've been to all our old haunts, including Sal's Pizza, Frankie & Fannuci's, The Village Station, Pizza Gourmet, Mamaroneck Diner, Red Plum, Mr. Chen's, Ginban, Herradura, and Barnstone. In addition to Hannah, our other favorite barkeep, Cindy, is still at Village Station, which has become "our pub" as I've mentioned, and even the owner, Henry, came over to introduce himself in an Irish brogue and buy us a drink. Dave is still behind the bar at F&F three days a week, and we try to go on days when he is there. Barnstone is again relegated to the "why bother" category, and the rest of the list is decent and good for a change of pace.

Third coat of primer on.

We did not put the scooters on the ground at the outset, thinking we'd be here only two weeks or so. Now that we're at the one-month mark and counting, we regret that decision, but it's harder to do now from where we are. So we've been having Amazon deliveries sent to the shop, which more often than not means intercepting the driver on the street after the yard closes at 3pm, and we've been limited to the restaurants and shops in walking distance, apart from when we have a rental car. The next one will be this coming weekend for a return trip to NJ.

I had the yard remove the underwater light that died five years ago. Here they are about to weld a plate over the hole.

A couple of weeks ago we took the train into the city for an evening, meeting up with our friend Roberta for dinner. We've both been to the dentist while we were here, and I've been in for a massage more than once, in consideration of having pulled muscles in my back at least twice during project work. One of those was while assembling the new Ikea chairs; the extensive pictorial assembly instructions were silent on this matter. When we had a car Louise made it to the laundromat (we can't use the washer on the hard) and I made a run to the beer store in town to stock up.

Final coat of black bottom paint going on over the undercoat of red bottom paint. This is PPG's ABC-3, a commercial paint.

Since we had to wave off our planed excursion to Jamestown last weekend to catch up with good friends Dorsey and Bruce, we decided to try for this weekend instead. When I booked the reservations on Tuesday the nor'easter that has just passed was not forecast to be nearly this big or strong, but that deteriorated over the week. By Friday morning we were ruminating on whether we needed to stay with Vector, but the harbor is very protected, so we just doubled up the lines and fenders and checked to make sure all our remote cameras were working. I've been checking in all weekend.

We had the yard needle-gun some corroded areas in the tiller flat and coat with POR-15.

It's two tickets but three trains from Mamaroneck to Kingston, changing at Stamford and again at New Haven. Amtrak was a half hour late getting in, as per usual, and our friends picked us up at the station and whisked us off to their favorite joint not far away. Saturday, while we were driving around Jamestown looking at what the storm was doing to the landscape and the moored boats, Louise got a text from Amtrak that our Sunday afternoon train was canceled. We scrambled to try to re-book something the same day, but they canceled so many trains that everything left was fully sold out before we could grab a seat. We rebooked for first thing Monday morning and were lucky to get a couple of the few remaining seats, and Bruce and Dorsey graciously extended our accommodations an extra night.

Tug boat sniffing our butt.

We had a wonderful visit with Dorsey, Bruce, Ollie, and Maisie. Once we realized we were not getting Vector that far east this season, we really wanted to connect this way because they are not taking their boat south this season. Dorsey ran us back to the Kingston station this morning, and we should be back at the shipyard before they close this afternoon. I texted the yard manager Saturday to let him know we'd be off the boat all morning. Just to spice things up a bit, Louise's cell phone bit the dust Saturday, when she plugged it in to charge (do you detect a theme here?) and we had to load the train tickets on my phone to get home.

New settee cushions. They look great but we need better foam on the bottom.

We have another week before the updated upholstery is ready, and the yard still has a couple of final details, so I expect to be right here at the dock until at least Monday. We're completely out of season to do any more of Long Island Sound, so apart from perhaps a quick stop back in Port Washington, we will soon be headed back to New York harbor to await a window to transit the NJ coast. We will try to make time in all this somewhere to take a jaunt to upstate New York for a visit with the cousins before moving on.

I think Ollie has melted.

My next update here will be while we are southbound off the coast of NJ between Sandy Hook and Atlantic City. The way things have been going I don't even want to venture a guess when that will be. But that kind of offshore coastwise passage is a reliable time for me to update the blog.