Pandora – Sail Pandora

Newport and the America’s Cup Trials

July 2, 2012 | Leave a Comment

On Friday I visited Newport with a friend and had a great time watching the trials for the America’s Cup. These boats are not the same ones that will race for the cup itself as they are around 45′ long and the cup boats will be over 70′ long. Don’t ask me why they will dump these boats and go to longer ones. It’s too complicated to keep track of these guys and all their rule changes.

Back to Newport. I have to say that they have done a terrific job of making the cup a more compelling spectator sport with this new venue. They have been staging “trials” in a number of locations world wide with the current races in Newport over several days. The course is a very short one, perhaps a mile long and a half mile wide with the entire course within easy viewing of shore. To see these boats shoot by at some 20kts is really a sight to behold. Some lament the demise of the old style monohull but to me, the cup races are a lot more exciting now. And, if you are lucky, you might even see one capsize as happened on the first day of racing. Call this the water equivalent of NASCAR racing perhaps.

The first thing that we saw as we headed over to Fort Adams, the viewing area, from the Newport Yacht Club was the boats on moorings getting ready. They are really high tech machines. I expect that the tenders themselves cost more than Pandora, my SAGA 43. The boats, especially the American boats from Oracle, look even more “nasty” in black carbon fiber.

There was plenty to look at with sponsors all around. One of the major sponsors is Red Bull energy drink. Very appropriate given the frenetic nature of sailing these boats. Nice vehicle.Plenty of potential consumers to see the displays. In spite of so many folks crammed together, it was easy to get a spot with a good view. Once on the course these boats really show their stuff. Hulls flying in a very modest breeze. This boat is from France. Prada looks great as one would expect. Very stylish but not as sleek as Oracle in her black paint. While most of the races were match, meaning two boats racing at a given time, the final race of the day was a fleet race. What a mob scene, with all the boats starting at once. And to make it more exciting for the crowd, the start had them all headed directly for the crowd and tacking just off the breakwater. What a great sight. Amazingly, they didn’t hit each other.After tacking so close they all headed off toward the first mark. After the races the boats headed back to their moorings in the harbor. I was struck by the contrast of the current boats verses one of the classic 12 meters that used to race for the Cup, in wood no less. Just a little different wouldn’t you say?One thing for sure is that the current approach to the Cup will reach many more than past races that had become somewhat marginalized in most people’s minds I expect. This video is an example of the “showmanship” that has become a part of this event. A great approach for the “Youtube generation” in my mind.

And for a moment of “I was there”, here are highlights, in a somewhat longer format, of the day of racing that I enjoyed. It does look great in this refined presentation with terrific graphics, but being there was even more fun. And, the crowds were pretty amazing.

After the races we headed back to the New York Yacht Club for a beer and to hear a talk by Gary Jobsen, well known sailor and the commentator for the race series. Glad to have friends like Ken that belong to such great clubs. Besides, getting in the club launch allowed us to avoid waiting in line for an hour with all the “regular folks”. Not bad. We heard Jobsen speak in the white tent on the water just below the “club house”. Club house? That seems like a funny term for such a grant building. Very nice indeed. On Saturday Ken and I headed to Mystic to see the Wooden Boat Show, a great event at Mystic Seaport although very different with the smell of tar instead of the gleam of carbon fiber. More to come on that soon.

Pandora launched at last, free at last and a visit to Watch Hill

June 12, 2012 | Leave a Comment

Finally, after delays for reasons, some good and some not so good, Pandora finally hit the water (gently) last week in Norwalk CT. For reasons of economy, I have kept her in a yard that is a bit off the beaten path (RE: on the other side of the 95 bridge in Norwalk) for a number of years now. That doesn’t sound like a big deal except that the bridge has a vertical clearance of 61′ at high water while Pandora’s mast is 63′ plus gear, antennas and the like. Yes, not a big difference but that two plus feet makes a smashing lot of difference if we were to hit the bridge.

Well, the answer is to pass under the bridge at low tide. Duhh… With 7′ of tide in Western LI Sound, that’s not a biggie, it just takes a bit of planning. And, there are two other bridges that must open prior to even getting to the “short” bridge. HOWEVER, the day prior to the launch, the yard owner stopped by to tell me that there was work being done on the 95 highway bridge and that there was a scaffolding under the mid span, where I needed to pass under, that restricted the vertical height to 62′ at LOW TIDE. Not good.

After much back and forth, the 95-bridge-worker-men agreed that they would pull up the cables that were in the way at mid span to be sure that there would be enough vertical height for me to pass under. Well, that sounded reasonable, at the 11th hour, so it seemed that we were ready.

Before getting back to the bridge issue, let me digress to mention a bit about the unconventional crane that launched Pandora. It’s an 80 ton capacity behemoth, painted a lovely color of red. To me it seemed better suited to be the main character in a children’s book than the workhorse in a boat yard. And, I have to say that watching her be picked up gave me a pause. Yikes, it looked precarious.

Whew!!! So far, so good.

In the water and without a scratch. Oh yea, I should mention that at low tide, this area is just a mud flat so she had to go in at the tippy top of high tide.

Anyway, Pandora ended up in the water without incident and on Friday morning, to coincide with dead low we were off. Oh yea, we almost weren’t off as Pandora was hard aground in the mud. It wasn’t until after much back and forth along with enthusiastic pushing from three yard guys that we were able to power off. Never a dull moment. So off to the bridge we went.

As we approached the bridge we could see that some of the cables were not pulled up fully so my helper/crew gesticulated wildly for me to head more to the left where the cables seemed a bit higher. Indeed, it was VERY, VERY CLOSE as the VHF antenna, the highest part of gear on the top of the mast, plinked from cable to cable as we passed under the bridge ever-soo-slooowly. My heart was just pounding, as I had visions of all my gear being sheared off of the top of the mast, but we made it. After that fun was over we passed through two more bridges, a Metro North train bridge that required an appointment with dispatch and eight guys to open it. I have to believe that moving through that bridge cost over $1,000 in labor. Amazing! After those two bridges calling the Norwalk bridge tender to get the third bridge to open was a piece of cake. No issues there. Finally, out in the harbor and on our way.

There’s no doubt that we will have plenty of practice with bridges as we head down the ICW this fall. More to come on that. Perhaps I should drop a tape from the top of the mast to confirm exactly how tall the rig is. Yea, a good idea.

Our run from Norwalk took us up to Mystic where Pandora will be for about a month prior to moving her to Wickford RI and on to Maine. The weekend also included a wonderful rendezvous with fellow Corinthians at the Watch Hill Yacht Club. What a great way to start the season aboard Pandora. And, yes, we even were able to sail for a few hours. It was a picture perfect day out on LI Sound.

After a night in Mystic aboard we headed to Watch Hill and our rendezvous at the Watch Hill Yacht Club. The yacht club has a great view of the harbor to the west. Here’s the entrance. The entire clubhouse is out on pilings, above the water. Access to this wonderful place is just another reason that being a member of The Corinthians is a good idea.

On Sunday morning, I stopped at the Ocean House, a wonderful resort up on the hill overlooking the ocean and harbor, for coffee and a leisurely read of the NY Times. How decadent.

What a grand entrance. The Ocean House was designed to look very much like the grand structure that it replaced. A wonderful piece of work. Brenda and I will be visiting for lunch in a few weeks. Dinner would be terrific, I am sure, but it’s a bit out of our price range. We can also afford to indulge in a cup of coffee on the veranda.

Can you imagine a more serene spot to have coffee while listening to the surf? Not me.

Oh Muffy, you must join us for a round of croquet out on the lawn. Some of the locals, you know, Muffy and her pals, have money to spend and the taste to do it with style. How about this beauty?

Watch Hill is surely one of our favorite places and will be on the list again in a week or so. Life is good.

The wild horses, houses and a cemetary in Beaufort. Only the horses are wild though.

May 27, 2012 | Leave a Comment

Yes, it’s Sunday and we are still waiting on Beryl to move away so we can head north. While the winds are down, the seas are still pretty rough off of Hatteras and our Monday morning departure is still looking good. While winds are low enough for us to leave late today instead of in the morning, it won’t make a big difference in our arrival date so Monday morning it is and giving the waves a bit more time to calm down will make for a much more enjoyable ride up the coast.

Another unique feature , and source of local pride, of Beaufort is the wild horses that live on the barrier island having arrived with the early Spanish explorers some 400 years ago. What a contrast it is to sit on board The Abby and look the short distance over the harbor to see horses grazing at the water’s edge. Yesterday afternoon I went for a walk and enjoyed passing through the well kept neighborhoods and shady streets. As I have mentioned before, the homes are well maintained, and there’s not a whiff of vinyl siding or “mini mansion stucco” to be found. If the condition of the homes is any indication, it’s also a great place to be a painter, or sell white paint. Every home is white. Perhaps it’s to stay cool. And, lots of nice front porches, a throwback to the days before air conditioning.Some of the gardens are really nice. What a great spot to relax and read the paper on a Sunday morning, or later in the day, with an “adult beverage”.It was also fun to wander among the headstones in this cemetery. Many of the graves were from the civil war and the live oaks were clearly not planted yesterday. Lots of stories here, I am sure. Very peaceful.

Nice views in every direction.

Plenty or churches to choose from but our crew decided to attend a service on the water, at the town dock, provided by the Intracoastal Waterfolk Ministry who had dropped off a flier at our boat on Saturday. It was a nice service with about 30 in attendance in a nice shady spot on the water. Seeing the wild horses in the distance certainly set the tone. During one of the hymns there was a bird chirping in the tree over my head that was even more enthusiastic than the congregation.

The service was at the public landing which was very nice with a big sign welcoming all to visit Beaufort.

I have really enjoyed our visit here and look forward to visiting with Brenda in November on our way south. However, it’s my hope that our visit won’t be sandwiched between two tropical storms or worse. We will also likely be anchored out in the harbor with the little people. Not a bad place to be. Besides, we will be a lot closer to the wild horses of Beaufort.

Where’s Pandora? Perhaps better to say where’s Bob?

May 12, 2012 | Leave a Comment

For some months I have been looking for a service that will allow me to provide real time location information here on where Pandora is at any given point. This will be particularly valuable when Brenda and I head south in the fall so that family and friends can follow us as we make our way south for the winter. Of course, the natural question that some to mind is “why would we want to follow your trip?”. Well, that’s simple, because you can…

There are a number of services available that will track progress and I settled on a unit called SPOT. This is a nifty device that’s just a few inches long and sends a signal to low orbiting satellites to keep tabs on where the unit is at any given time. With an update every 10 minutes when it’s turned on, it’s an amazingly simple way to keep in touch. This is an amazingly affordable service and you can click here to learn more about this remarkable device. Even more interesting is this overview of how the unit works. As simple as the device looks, it’s part of a system that looks REALLY COMPLICATED and EXPENSIVE.

This video gives a good overview of the tracking function. What an awesome gadget!!!

“Spot” will be aboard Pandora most of the time but for now it will be with me as I head this coming week for Nassau Bahamas to help my friend Bob bring back his South African Islander 56′, The Abby, to Norwalk CT. At least, that’s where I think we are going. Not sure as the boat spends a lot of time in Newport. Well, I guess that will learn more when I head there on Tuesday. I know Bob from my years as a member of the Norwalk Yacht Club and also as member of The Corinthians.

There will be a total of four of us on this trip and we expect to leave on the 18th or 19th of May and will arrive at some point late the following week. As I understand it, we will head out into the Gulf Stream and ride it north. This will allow us to make the trip as quickly as possible given the fact that the “stream” moves north at several knots which will give us a boost in speed as we head up the coast.

Anyway, back to the issue of tracking our progress. With SPOT aboard, there will be a real time record of our progress as we head north. I won’t turn the unit on until we leave the harbor except briefly when I get to Nassau to post an initial position on my SPOT page. You will have to pan out on the map to get a better feel for where we are as the link defaults to a close up view.

It should be fun and I hope that you will enjoy “ride” with me.

More to come.

The wild life aboard Pandora and a Mother’s day greeting.

May 10, 2012 | Leave a Comment

Even though Pandora is still on the hard in Norwalk CT, she’s still a hopping place for some. In this case, the feathered kind. When I went forward the other day to check out the anchor windlass I was surprised by a Ground Dove that had built her nest under the cover. I was loath to interfere but had to attend to the anchor so unfortunately, disturbed her. It was amazing just how brave she was and only flew away when I carefully prodded her with my outstretched finger on her back. However, I did have to give her a poke as I really needed to lower the anchor to the ground for some work I was doing. Most important is that the windless makes quite a racket, something that would surely have sent her “over the edge”. I wanted her to fly away but not forever.She did make a run for it and I quickly snapped a photo of the egg while she was away. I came back a few days later and she was still there but this time I kept a respectful distance.

With Mother’s day less than a week away I certainly don’t’ want to be accused of being tough on mothers. Besides, my own mom might get the wrong idea about me.

Pandora has proven to be a great home for me and Brenda and it seems fitting to have another family living aboard while she is on the hard.

Let’s hope that the chicks fly the coop by early June when Pandora gets launched. So, how fast to doves grow? For their sake, they had better be quick about it.

While life goes on aboard Pandora, I am headed to Freeport Bahamas this coming Tuesday to help a friend bring his boat back to CT. It should be a great trip and I am sure that some fun posts will come from the journey.

More to come and soon I hope.