Life Aboard Persephone: June 2015

It has been a long time since I’ve put anything new on the persephonesail.blogspot.com website. Our big chore to do this spring when we returned from the Caribbean - sell Persephone. We were back to the US early enough this season for the sailboat buyers. And we sold Persephone! And we bought another boat! In the same week!
The “new” boat is a 1996 39 ft. Halberg Rassy. We tried to buy it in the summer of 2013 but someone else bought it….it’s a long story. Come see us and we’ll tell you all the details.
The boat was located at Morgan Marina in Parlin, NJ on Cheesequake Creek. We bought the boat not knowing if the engine would run as it had been sitting with a lot of unknowns for 2 years. You know we’re always up for a project. Last week we drove down with a carload of tools, supplies, our dinghy and 15 hp outboard. We spent 5 days cleaning, organizing, checking everything over, going over the boat to be able to put it in the water and get it back to Syracuse to start working on it. The engine did run while we had it on land waiting for our turn to launch the boat. The refrigeration, some lights, the autopilot were all in working order. With the addition of a regulator on the engine we were also able to produce power for the lights and fridge. Beats eating peanut butter sandwiches every day!
On June 4th, the day we left the marina the wind was blowing at 20 knots from the east. We came out Cheesequake Creek on to Raritan Bay into the big seas for about a mile before I went below and noticed a lot of oil under the engine. When you grow up on a wooden boat you have the urge to continually check the bilges for some reason. No oil - No problem. We pulled up the mainsail, the only sail onboard, and had a wonderful sail from Raritan Bay, under the Verazzano Bridge, to New York City. The sailing performance was exceptional! We were very pleased! Past Liberty Park and Manhattan…..that’s when the wind died and the current started pushing us backwards. The ferry boats were whizzing past throwing wakes all around. Jerry tossed the dinghy from the foredeck into the water, tied it to the port side of the sailboat, put on the outboard, and we hip-towed the boat to the 79th Street moorings at 2 knots. A conglomeration of tugs, fire and police boats, the Coast Guard were milling around in one area as we passed by. Looking back we saw the fireboat in full display with spray and chatter on the VHF radio about a parade. Now there’s a parade we were glad to miss! Just to make things a little more interesting, as we approached the mooring ball at 79th Street Jerry started to take down the mainsail and hop in the dinghy to throttle down the outboard. Oops. Outboard quits and won’t start. He pulls up the mainsail and I’m able to sail the last 100 feet to the mooring. That evening’s project - diagnose and fix the outboard. Jerry has that done in no time and we settle down for a much-needed rest for the night.
In the morning we cleaned the oil from the engine bed, topped up the engine with oil, and jumped in the dinghy to ask our neighbors if they had any gasoline they could sell us. After all, if we’re going to use the dinghy to travel the Hudson we’re going to need fuel. They were glad to help out. We hauled up the mainsail, started the outboard and were on our way. One theory regarding the engine and oil - the rear main seal is damaged letting the oil to leak out. We can still run the motor and it works fine - we just have to keep adding a quart of oil every 2 hours and cleaning it up after. We can take it apart to diagnose and fix it properly back “home”.
So we’ve been sailing, towing and using the motor some the length of the Hudson from NYC to Kingston, NY. We’ve had a day with a lot of wind and we were amazed at the boat’s ability to head right up into the north wind onto our destination. And then another day with no wind and motoring. We stopped at Haverstraw to fill up our jugs with gasoline for the outboard and to see the old Persephone at her retirement slip.
Currently we are at Kingston on the Hudson at Hideaway Marina eagerly waiting to greet Vince who runs the place. We haven’t seen him in a few years. We will take the mast down and continue on our way up the Hudson River when the tide is on the flood. Then on to the Erie Canal from Albany to Brian and Deb’s place in Pennellville where we’ve been spending the summer for the last 15 years. Many many projects to do on our new boat. If we can do enough work this summer we may be able to sail the boat south for the winter.
We are both happy with the new boat. It’s not the exact Hallberg Rassy that Jerry wanted but there are not many Hallberg Rassys we could afford and we bought this at a good price. And life is short. He keeps calling it the new Persephone. I keep saying Persephone is the old boat and we need a new name. So the boat has no name as of right now. Send in your suggestions. Hope to hear about what’s going on in your lives - please send news when you have time.