Well, this past weekend, had me working on three different boats on three different days. Three days and three different boats—Saturday: an O’Day Javelin; Sunday: an O’Day 302; Monday: a Gemini 105Mc Catamaran.
It started out on Saturday, when I was helping my friend's son and a friend with the O’Day Javelin that they bought a couple years ago.
One interesting thing that we found on the Javelin was the smallest whisker pole I’ve ever seen. It is about an inch in diameter and about four-and-a-half feet long. Of course, it is for a 14' boat, so that's pretty much the right size.
Saturday afternoon, I drove down to Connecticut, to visit Denby. After meeting Denby and his wife at their house, Denby and I headed down to the boat, which is kept in Milford Harbor. Here is Denby’s boat, tied up to one of the docks near the parking lot.
At first, I wasn’t sure why Denby named the boat as he did, but after seeing what the conditions on Long Island Sound are like... that’s probably all he ever sails in...
His boat has a CRT-based Furuno Radar that is almost as old as me... and the radar mount is, at least according to his friend, the original prototype for a gimballed radar mount. PYI has come a long way from this, if you’ve seen Gui's radar mount.
Here’s Denby prepping dinner.
Not a bad cook, but his boat lost points for not having fitted sheets in the v-berth. He did gain a point back for the sailing motif on the comforter.
Here’s s/v Slight Breeze motoring out to where we anchored overnight, behind Charles Island.
On Sunday morning, we went sailing. The weather goddess was kind enough to give us about six knots of wind... here you can see Denby resting... old guys like him need lots of sleep.
Denby decided to take over the helm, and the wind immediately died. The weather goddess did not approve of his helm technique, seen here.
We got back into Milford Harbor and walked over to the car. On the way to the car, we saw this little submarine.
After a quick trip to West Marine, to pickup some supplies, we headed back to the boat, and Denby went up the mast. He was using a pair of ascenders, a bosun’s chair, a spliced foot strap and I was using the new main halyard as a safety line.
Well, a few bugs need to be worked out so that his self-ascending system will work. As it is, the ascenders dig too deeply into the line for him to be able to release them without me taking up his weight on the main halyard. If he had gone up by himself, he’d probably still be there.
(Hey Denby, time for that new diet to start).
After getting Denby back down, we headed to the house for dinner. After fixing Denby’s WiFi network and his computer, so that he doesn’t have to steal his wife’s laptop.
The next morning I headed off to Defender, to pickup a few things. While I was there, I called my friend John, owner of s/v Felix and asked if he needed anything. He asked me to pickup some SOLAS flares and a shore power cable for him, and asked if I wanted to drop the stuff off at his boat in Marion. Since I could go sailing if I did that, I did.
I drove to Marion and met with John, Lorie and Chris and off we went. Here’s John looking aft on s/v Felix.
On our way out of Marion, we had about 10 knots of wind. After being out for a while the wind got very light and fluky, and then stopped almost completely, so we fired up the iron genny, so we could back in time to make the last launch.
Lorie took the helm and as we got closer to Marion, the wind picked up to 17-18 knots, and we dropped the engine into neutral and unfurled the genoa and sailed back into Marion. Here’s Lorie at the helm and a photo of the run into Marion.
After we got back into Marion, we went to dinner at the Mattapoisett Chowder House. As we were going into the restaurant, I got a call from Denby... he was wondering why I hadn’t been online yet... and my excuse was a good one—"Sorry, I was out sailing in 18 knots of wind..." For some reason Denby started swearing...
BTW, Denby and Sway are definitely two triplets that were separated at birth, since Denby has an evil twin...
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I'm actually impressed you got it out... 
