Tomorrow is March 1st. What's on tap? More snow!

Over the near twenty years that I've been sailing LIQUIDITY, I've pretty much honed my seasonal routine. In particular, my pre-launch, spring routine is pretty simple:

• Take off winter cover, buy sandwich and soft drink, climb on board, have lunch, go home.
• Wax and buff hull
• Service sea cocks
• Touch up or paint the bottom and boot stripe

The calendar for all of the above? Cover generally comes off mid-March, and everything else is finished the week before tax returns are due. Launching while April is still in single digits has always been my goal.

So, with two weeks to go until "Take Off The Cover Day," the marina looks like... THIS:

Seriously, the only land in that picture is what you see in the background. What's in the foreground are the docks, slips, pilings, and finger piers at the west end of Marina Bay. That, starting in about five weeks, is where the boats go!

I'm going to ignore the forecast that's calling for more snow Sunday evening into Monday. With two weeks to go, my plan (at least for now) is to stick with my well honed spring routine.

In January, we do the best we can

I stop sailing in October, and by Thanksgiving, LIQUIDITY is under wraps for the winter. Holidays aside, December is spent sorting gear in a less than perfect triage: save for next year, hold aside for repair, toss in trash, sell on eBay, recycle at a gear swap. That brings us to January.

The cover comes off LIQUIDITY in March. February is the boat show. January, squarely in the middle. So, with sailing three months behind me and three months ahead, I've done what sailors for centuries have done in their free time; I (figuratively) picked up pencil and paper, and wrote verse after verse after verse of lyrics, all to the quite well known rhythm of Blow the Man Down.

Given my propensity for volunteering on The Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, and given the notion that "blow the man down" is a bit violent for the 5th graders who walk the deck of our beloved sloop, the chorus was changed up a bit. The tune though, is easy to write to, easy to sing, and as I said, quite well known.

If you want to try a practice verse, this is among my favorites:

Music's more fun when it's done with a crowd... Way, hey, hauling away...
If you can't sing on key you should sing really loud... Hauling away on a Clearwater day!

Having never before performed in public, or at least not since chorus in 7th grade at Walt Whitman Junior High School in Yonkers, I wasn't sure about actually performing a shanty. My new found hobby was writing them! But, then came the invitation to Clearwater's "Open Boat" pot luck and song swap, in Kingston, NY, coincidentally on my birthday and conveniently located near family willing to provide overnight lodging. So...

Have as much fun watching as I and select members of the Clearwater crew (past and present) had singing. The lyrics were written specifically for Clearwater and condense about 500 years of Hudson River history down to less than four minutes. It's bad acoustics, off key singing and cell phone video; it will look and sound better if you join in and sing as you watch!

It's 2015 already!

See how fast non-sailing season is going? Thanksgiving is gone, Christmas is gone, New Year's is gone. So I'm thinking there's St. Patrick's Day, Easter or Passover depending on your inclination... wait... that's pretty much it!

Okay, so I left out Valentine's (or is it Valentines') Day. Also a couple of three-day-weekend holidays, which are more about vacations than whatever we used to celebrate, so I'll ignore those.

We're down to just two more check marks then!!! See how fast non-sailing season is going?

I'm more than a Boston Sailor

Yes, I'm a Boston Sailor, and LIQUIDITY has been home ported in Boston (technically Quincy, but on Boston harbor) for decades. But returning from my 7th volunteer week on the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, I've been thinking about my affinity for spending time on a vessel focused on Hudson River environmental issues.

Part of it is the opportunity to live, work and teach on an iconic tall ship. Part, I suppose, is growing up in Yonkers, and still having most of my family in the New York area. But overall, it's more than that.

Restoring, preserving and protecting the Hudson is important, of course. It's more than that, though... the Hudson is a metaphor for all rivers, all bays, all oceans, the air we breathe, the only planet we have. Teach kids about the Hudson and Boston harbor benefits. It's not complicated.

It's that time of year

No different from any other October for me, I suppose. It's post-Columbus Day and I've been packing up gear and hauling it home, a carload or so at a time. Sails are off and stowed, galley's stripped clean, cans and jars and bottles are off. There's still bedding, foul weather gear, electronics and more still on board, perhaps two trips worth. The last offload will likely be cabin cushions.

It's not really a sad time for me... I see it more as the beginning time for winter boat projects and getting to all the whipping and splicing I don't get to while I'm sailing. And, of course, it's the beginning of the countdown to taking the cover off in the Spring!

Can you whistle up the wind?

I don't usually race LIQUIDITY, with one exception. Annually, in support of the Boston Harbor Island Alliance, I've entered their regatta.

Through luck and circumstance, I've managed a fair number of trophies. I won the Cape Dory 28 class trophy one year. With four of us registered, heavy weather the day before and fog the day of the race, there's were just two of us on the course. 50/50, I suppose, for evenly matched boats. Last year, I sailed away with the Master's trophy, being the only senior in the cruising division to register and race. Other years, well, they tell a different tale.

The 2014 race was something I looked forward to, as defending Master's champion. All I needed was a small enough number of competitors and a Cape Dory wind in the low to mid teens. That's not what we got.

At race time last Saturday, wind speed was, well, ZERO! The start was delayed, delayed, delayed, then postponed to Sunday.

Sunday just a handful of the registered boats returned. Wind speed... marginal... delay, short delay... then off we went, in light but sailable air! We passed the committee boat just a few seconds after our scheduled start time and headed off on a comfortable starboard tack. With a good line on Nubble Channel, we tacked... and the wind went to, well, ZERO. Now, at the mercy of the flood tide, we were, before long, behind the starting line (and well to the left of the course!). Seeing little prospect in the afternoon forecast for recovery, we scratched. I fired up the motor and headed out around the course to see watch the lighter, faster boats.

All told, there were just four or five boats left on the racecourse. None had made it half way around the loop and time was running short. As we headed back home, we could see the committee boat, heading out to the few remaining boats... pretty much shortening the course to wherever they happened to be at the time. (Extra credit goes to the Catalina 30 who was the sole "finisher" in our division, without making it to the first mark after trying for three hours to sail in near zero wind against the flood tide.)

It was a disappointing weekend because it's a fun race and usually a good sail, trophy or not.

Stay tuned for 2015, where if all goes well, we'll be back. And note that none of the Masters finished, so I remain the defending champ, for at least one more year.

Pre-Fall sailing at its best

Cooler weather on Saturday, combined with a 10-15 kt. NE wind cut the traffic in Boston Harbor significantly. A smattering of boats out fishing plus fewer sailboats than usual for a summer Saturday, made for traffic control a lot easier for us.

With Scituate as our destination I avoided the short tacking through Dorchester Bay and motor sailed until we passed Thompson Island and could take the turn into Western Way. From there it was an easy reach under the Long Island bridge and around Sunken Ledge.

About that time we heard a report of a dog lost overboard in Nantasket Roads, between Georges Island and Hull Gut. Yellow lab was on board, then not on board, and nowhere in sight. We didn't get there for an hour or so but didn't notice anything, no dog but also no search boats.

Hardening up to close hauled, we sailed almost to the anchorage at Peddocks Island, than tacked toward Rainsford. Our next tack took us to about Hull Gut, where the effect of wind vs. current was heaping up some nice waves. At least the current was favorable. With a good breeze, we punched easily through the head seas.

Four more tacks and we were outside, sailing close hauled toward the buoy marking Harding Ledge. We passed just inside of the mark, well outside of the ledge and had a spirited sail on a close reach to Minots Light and then on a broad reach to Scituate.

Those gentle right hand turns made life easier and the sailing faster as we headed down the coast. Ordinarily, with the prevailing SW summer breeze, it's exactly the opposite! Excluding the two hours it took to clear Boston Harbor on the beat, we probably made our best time ever to Scituate. Surely, the ten miles from Harding Ledge to Scituate could not be done more quickly... we were at 6+ kts. the whole way!

Mooring in Scituate was an uneventful comedy of errors. First assigned to and picking up the wrong mooring (the launch driver thought I said 48 feet!), we were escorted to a mooring closer in. First pass at pickup, our boat hook broke trying to pick up a tangled buoy (i.e., the pickup stick was lying flat). We went around again, dredging the #2 boat hook from a cockpit locker, put the bow right on the mooring ball, snagged the buoy, hauled it up and lost the mooring as the line securing the buoy parted. Around once again as the bow blew off, third time we managed to snag the mooring underneath and find the pendant. Safely moored.

As Bear and L headed ashore, I stayed on board to tidy up. I watched as a neighbor cast off her mooring and motored about two boat lengths before the outboard died. They did a slow drift through the mooring field, running under bare poles in a light breeze and landing safely on a dock several hundred yards downwind. There was no panic on board and no heroic efforts required to keep them safe.

We also listened as a boat heading to Scituate reported that they had lost their rudder, and later watched as they were towed in, also safe.

It was a great pre-Fall sailing day! Little traffic, beating first, reaching last, and interesting goings on inside Scituate harbor, where no blood was spilled and no boats were crunched. And as for the yellow lab, I checked twitter later; he was picked up by a passing boat and is just fine.