Author: mghalpin

Though we have had Aisling for 4 years, I’m happy to say I have never heard the sound of something hitting the hull, until today!! And a frightening sound it was! Are we sinking? Did we bend a prop? Do you feel any vibrations? We were approaching a channel on southern Lake Champlain where the areas outside of the channel were marked ‘drowned timber’. No lie, ‘drowned timber’!! So yes we were being cautious and in the deepest part of the channel and bang! “What was that?” slow down, listen, check stuff…. Ok, speed up. Any vibrations? Anything sound wrong? Did we just get lucky?

One can imagine that long ago lumberjacks cut trees and floated them to this area and then, well I don’t know why they left them there….. But I do know that this channel was used to move jet fuel north to the Strategic Air Command Base in Plattsburg, NY until it closed (Reagan years I think). So SAC was moving jet fuel to keep our country safe from communism through ‘drowned timbers’. Really? Perhaps my confidence in our Military should increase as someone thought to shutdown this base (maybe because they were not sure they could get fuel…..? ;-))

Thankfully, Aisling seems no worse for wear.

Our ‘glimmer of hope’ for going to Canada via Lake Champlain was dashed recently as it was announced they will keep the border closed and review yet again next month. It’s disappointing but not the end of the story (more later). Sitting here at Willsboro, its easy to see that the closed border has had a devastating effect on the Canadians. These pic’s tell a story(click them to enlarge);

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So sad. They can’t get here so their boats sit on the hard, shrink wrapped, and their summer plans wait for their own glimmer of hope. Given the shorter season here, I’m guessing many will not get wet this year. Our disappointment is minor compared to their loss.

So, I’m washing the boat today, cause Lyn said I had too, and I’m not using any soap cause this Lake is really clean and they prefer it stay that way, when a helicopter begins to circle the marina at tree top level (not exaggerating, tree top). I’m a little freaked out thinking maybe I’m not supposed to even be washing down with water and this is the Environmental Police…. and after like 15 circles, it slowly begins to fly away. Turns out this was US Border Control. I told you there were a lot of Canadians here, usually, and apparently they know that and where checking to see if any had decided to slip past the border.

(Updated 6/23: It was the Border Patrol Helo, but they were assisting a search for a stolen boat. Someone thought they could steal a 50′ boat and hide it… not so easily done and they were caught within 24 hours…)

BTW, the red line in the Sat Image is me crashing into the dock yesterday..;-) Not really, we actually handled it very well with a strong wind on our stern.

We spent the night ‘on the hook’ at Crown Point NY. Lovely if not quite as bucolic as I was hoping for on our first night anchoring. The Champlain Bridge loomed large to our port, though given the light wind and current was just as large when it was on our starboard…. But we had good holding and good protection, so all was well. We woke up to a forecast that was difficult to assess. Just as soon as we said ‘leave in an hour’, thunder was apparent from the south. To be clear, we are fair weather boaters and thunder storms are not within our acceptable parameters. The forecast for the afternoon was for severe storms. Not to be taken lightly anywhere and especially on Lake Champlain. A window in the morning was evident and the prospect of spending a night on the hook at Crown Point in severe weather was not appealing. So we motored on at 830 and found reasonable conditions with increasing wind. Just be be sure we were not over extending ourselves, we pulled into Point Bay Marina where we had be told had the best diesel price on the lake. $299/gallon is good, free pumpout (always appreciated). Approaching their fuel dock, the wind was strong (cant tell how strong because the mast is still down and the anemometer is on the mast thus useless….) but they provided capable dock hands and we got her set quickly. We had some thought of staying at this marina but having seen the direction of the wind it was clear they would take a direct impact from the south winds and the dock hand confirmed this. So we pushed for Safe Harbor Willsboro and watched the sky and the NWS radar.

Many of our family followers are not boaters so excuse me for describing ‘fetch’; Fetch is the distance wind can run unobstructed across water. More fetch, more impact. The impact is water is moved from the beginning of fetch to the end and waves start small and build further along distance wind can travel. Lake Champlain runs for the most part south to north and in a south wind the impact of fetch increases, pretty dramatically as it turns out….

Moving north we had a following sea with waves 2-3 feet. By Narraganset Bay standards, not a bad day, but we knew things had just begun to build and getting off the water sooner than later was a good idea. Making the turn around Hatch Point into Indian Bay headed us south directly into the wind. It was loud and near our defined limits, but both crew and boat were capable. Arriving at the marina and having 3 dock hands help secure our lines ensured a safe 2 day stay.

So as we tightened the lines and deployed the fenders against the forecasted severe weather for the night, we decided it was time to break out some lovely docktail presents we had received and enjoy a well deserved Margarita( actually plural as we are not boating tomorrow!)

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My AutoX hobby, which occupied many weekends from May to October each year, was severely impacted by the purchase of a boat. The seasons coincide and boats are demanding mistresses, financially, as well as in time and attention. But we had a dream, a vision, (an Aisling;-)) to do the loop and some compromises had to be made. I barely drove the Miata this spring and when I put her up on casters (in May!, not as per usual in November), fed her some ‘Stabile’, sprinkled dryer sheet about her engine and trunk, and then covered her up for a long nap, it was a sad day.

Yesterday, as we drove up the Hudson, past our first locks, into a section with a long sweeping turn, I got that AutoX feeling again and realized driving the cones and driving the cans (ATONs(aids to navigation), red and green channel markers ) is just about the same thing!! In AutoX drive poorly you go slow, hit a cone 2 seconds penalty, go off course your run does not count. In boating drive poorly you waste fuel and look stupid, hit a can you sink, go off course you go aground you call SeaTow for help.

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Aisling pays tribute to those among us who live according to simple truths, take inspired chances, go against the grain, throw themselves all in, and trust Karma to pay tribute where and when it is earned and due. (plagiarized verbatim from Druthers Brewing Co. of Albany. The New England IPA is quite good as well;-))

Lyn will have to provide the historical view of the Hudson River, as she did for me reading aloud accounts from Hudson’s first trip to the creation canals for transporting bricks and coal that help NYC become what it is. For me, having grown up near the Hudson and NYC, the image in my head is always the skyline, the Palisades, the GWB, Lady Liberty….. But now, that has changed. I have been across nearly all of the bridges; The Tappan Zee (not Mario whatever….), Bear Mountain,Kingston, Rip Van Winkle…. all by car at a pace that afforded no real sense of the river. Beginning at The Battery, the Hudson is mighty, rolling like you are on the ocean, full of marine traffic, then slowly, ever so slowly, she narrows and gets more rural until you can’t imagine that this is the same river. Here in New Baltimore, NY, it’s like a quiet backwater with a slow flow, nearly nothing but flora and fauna except for the occasional ocean going 35 ft draft ship headed to/from Albany. It’s pretty surprising to see these hulks glide past the marina ‘constrained by maneuverability’ in the midst of this bucolic scene.

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Getting off the dock in Warwick on June 1st was based in large part on wanting to get to the annual Pig Roast at Shady Harbor in the upper Hudson River. While I have only been to one other pig roast in my life, and it was very good (thanks brother Frank), this was more a matter of meeting the many Loopers we knew would be here. No disappointment. There are maybe 30 Looper boats, many boat cards exchanged, many names not yet remember, and many suggestions of places to go and see. We are clearly the newbie Loopers here( only 11 days in). Some have nearly completed their loop. Some are on their 2nd and 3rd. Every conversation provides interesting and useful info and insights. Not quite a firehose of info, but you don’t want to miss that special place or experience. Long ago I realized I learn much more from listening than I do from talking….

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How do you leave your ‘normal’ life for a year? Who chooses to do that? Your cozy nest that you have worked for 30+ years to make just right, your land based activities, your beloved Miata….. Landscaping and mowing the lawn! Oh yeah, that’s how you do it!! No holes to dig, trees to chainsaw, weeds to pull…. Whew! Happy to have those behind me;-) Emotionally, it’s a roller coaster and in the end, at least for me, it’s a return to a feeling I had several times in my life; that feeling of being more alive, more aware, more conscious of my surroundings, more connected, less automatic, less taken for granted, less filtered due to familiarity. I think that is why people travel. Not just to see what you haven’t seen or experienced, but also to just get out of the normality of daily life. Now add marine living/travel aspects and you are in a very different place.

Video to the right courtesy of Russ Browning our dock neighbor and all around good guy!!

Aisling returned to the water world this past Wednesday and now the prep for June 1st get’s real.

Fortunately, having been through the commissioning routine several times, it gets just a bit easier each year. Of course that ease is tempered by the inevitable unexpected issues that arise and must be dealt with. For instance, as we had learned sometime ago, you must disconnect the shower heads because they are prone to cracking from ice if water is left in them over the winter. So dutifully I disconnect them, drain them and leave them unrestricted on the boat. Bad idea! Apparently, even a little water left in them is enough to turn these brass and chrome beauties into scrap metal. So ok, lesson learned, take them off the boat in the winter (or take the boat to a place where freezing in not an issue;-)). Search for replacement and discover they are available at 50% more than we paid last time. Oh yes, there was a last time…. You see Surveyors, boat ‘house inspectors’, don’t check non essential things like shower mixers. They leave that level of discovery to new boat owners as we found out the year we bought Aisling. Such is boat life.

“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

I don’t know Mr. Grahame, but I do believe he was a man of great wisdom. Commissioning, repairing, modifying, cleaning….. whatever is just different when you are on the water. Yesterday, as I was filling the water tanks a noise grab my attention. For the next half hour or so I was delighted to watch a young cormorant learn to fly. Flapping its wings against the water, webbed feet paddling like crazy, it would get 3 feet, then 5 …rest and repeat. I didn’t get to see it’s first flight, but I’m certain it had a huge smile and a bright future.

Back to the mundane… Disinfect the water tanks and lines, change oil, replace zincs, clean everything, test everything. And once that is all done we will begin to prep safety systems and processes. Check all PFD’s, first aid kits, new batteries in all essential equipment, install life lines, practice Man Over Board (MOB) recovery, inspect the ditch bag…. All simple, easy and CRITICAL to a safety first approach.

Boaters love upgrades!! This year we have added two that should help our state of mind. NEBO Tracker automatically logs our movements. Very much like the flight map the airlines use to show progress when flying which I plan to post to this blog for others to see where we are.

Also, Siren Marine monitor. This provides us with a view into Aisling location, movement, battery state, bilge pump activity and security in real time. So if we leave Aisling to go ashore for dinner and someone should choose to board her, open the door, move the boat…. Or if while we are enjoying a cocktail away from the boat and a leak develops….. we will be notified immediately. Such a relief.

or at least the past two weeks seemed like a hoax. Mostly warm and windy but tolerable, Spring 2021 preparations have begun a few weeks ahead of schedule. Of course that is just a reminder that we don’t have a schedule we control. At best, we get to take advantage of what Mother Nature offers. Hopefully, she doesn’t make us pay for the early season access. That possibility was top of mind as we stripped the shrink-wrap off of Aisling last weekend… Snow on the decks would not be the first time and the memory of ‘shoveling’ with a dust pan last year is not in the fond category…..

With the shinkwrap off and the bimini on, you can see what a lovely day it would be to be boating, if there were any boats…. The Tiara in the foreground had just been splashed and delivered to its slip. I’m guessing they have an interested buyer asking for a sea trial.

The early work while ‘on the hard’ focuses on the bottom, anodes, through hulls and props/shafts. Cleaning, sanding, prepping for paint and the annual research into how best to coat the props and shafts to protect from barnacles. Despite the many solutions available, and the religious fervor individuals have to their preferred method, I have yet to find an answer that requires any less elbow grease, a good sander and some barnacle cleaner at the end of the season.

That combination gets you where you want to be sooner or later….

I have become convinced that advanced degrees in both Metallurgy and Chemical Engineering (with a focus on foams and polymers) are requirements for successful maintenance of a boat. Hopefully there will be time for that once we finish the Loop and sell the boat…;-)