I attended the Interim Board Meeting at the Harlem; a nice dinner as a way the Club rewards its hard workers with good fellowship and a good meal "on the house!" And they gave out fire-engine-red fleece vests with the Clubs logo. I felt a bit guilty because as outgoing Fleet Captain I did not do much work for the Club in 2015. I have been searching out a locale for our annual dead-of-winter outing, to take place in February. Another scraping day was followed by a good brunch at the Club before a visit to the City Island Maritime Museum. Its collection has evolved a bit in the last couple of years but the highlight was a lecture by the unofficial"Official Historian" of City Island, who is a sail maker by profession. His knowledge of the numerous businesses, their owners and craftsmen and the boats that were built here over the past couple of hundred years is intense, with slides to illustrate most of it. Big names in the history of boat building and sail making worked here. I met two couples of Harlemites and there were about a dozen Corinthians, who invited me to join them for dinner after the lecture. But after brunch and refreshments at the museum, I went straight home and had an apple for dinner.
I renewed my Corinthians membership and signed up for their one week cruise in the Mt. Desert Island region of Maine next July and August. I also joined the Seven Seas Cruising Association, after Bob, of Pandora, had encouraged me to do so for years. It appears that Im eligible for "Commodore" status based on the mileage I have logged off shore and the time spent aboard, but the third requirement for that status is that one be a member in the lesser class for a year. They do a lot of information sharing and I responded to two requests for information, about Angelfish Passage through the Florida Keys and about sailing in Turks and Caicos. I simply referred the questioners to the relevant posts in this blog. And I have spent some time trying to get the Nova Scotia portion of next summers vacation organized. I asked the other members of the SSCA to share their experiences with me and called Landfall Navigation, an excellent chandlery in Stamford CT, who sent me information on the relevant paper charts, published by the Canadian government, that we will need, and cruising guides. And I selected the right electronic chart, but I will not buy charts until next spring; you want them to be as up to date as possible. And I contacted Fernando, who did stainless steel and fiberglass work two winters ago, to get him lined up to repaint the blue boot stripe when it gets warm enough next spring. So work is continuing apace.
