Century Club: Jeffrey Halpern

Synergy is now 42 years old! The old girl looks great for her age. Instead of inviting a bunch of her closest friends for a party, it was a bit more of a gloomy weekend. To explain, a couple weeks back, I received the dreaded letter from my insurance company.saying that after insuring Synergy and me for the past 23 years, Synergy needed to have a value and condition survey!. Drat! and Double Drat! (sort of). 

While this was upsetting at first, I decided that it was time to look at Synergy with a cold unjaundiced eye and treat this as an opportunity to make sure that she was as safe and compliant as possible. I contacted my favorite surveyor and arranged to have a survey performed in a few weeks, and then went through the boat looking for possible defiencies that I could address before the survey..

• The sailing gear all looked up to date, Check!
• The PFD/harnesses were all serviced, and the conventional PFD;'s were in good shape and the throwable was easy to reach. Check!
• The fire extinguishers were all up-to date, Check!
• The flares/flag in the emergency kit had passed their 'best use by date' so were replaced- Check! (I will note that best not used is the best when talking about flares) 
• Out of date stuff in the first aid kit was replaced- Checkl!

That was the easy stuff. But the bilge pump had its original 42 year old hose and it was looking pretty tired and was of a type not intended for below waterline. Similarly, the 42 year olf fuel tank vent hose was not looking great and was not of a type rated for exposuer to diesel fuel. A quiclk trip to West Marine resulted in 28 feet of bilge pimp hose and 26 feet of new Fuel hose piping.

I began the task of routing the bilge pump hose through Synergy's nether regions. It was defintely a bit of Boaga (boat yoga) twisting the hose (and my body) into places unseen and untouched since the boat was built. In places the piles of dust told the story of 40 years of projects in thin layers of varying colored grinding dust,

This morning I was sailing at CRAB. It was my 'Skipper-in-training' final exam. CRAB has a well conceived program to make certain that the skippers are up to the task at hand. In my mind, the sailing part was the easy part. The learning curve has been understanding how to best serve the "Guests". I have not worked with people who have limitations and have really focused on that part of the skipper training. Today, we had guests from ARC who had limited mental capabiities. The guests are encouraqed to participate in sailing the boat by steering or adjusting sheets. Watching their joy in being out on the water and being able to steer the boat made my day. Although I passed my 'skipper in training', I decided that I was not ready for prime time and could use a little more coaching.  

Okay, so it wasn't a perfect day to teach someone to sail, but I figured what the heck. I took an acquaintance, Erik, out for the second sail of his life. To make life a little simpler and more peaceful, I put a reef in the main and did not roll out the jib. Synergy sails well with just a reefed mainsail so It was a decent day for Erik to learn to steer and experience luffing and stalling out the sail. Erik did very well, but I will need to get him out sailing on a more normal sailing day. 

Tonight was the first race of the AYC Wednesday Night Racing. Of course, that meant I had a mid-week excuse to get out on the water. It was a beautiful night to go sailing.and we sailed a pretty good race for the first race of the season. Its not that there weren't a boat load of small slip ups and less than Ideal events, but it was a good way to begin to iron out the wrinkles left from the winter's hiatus. 

Jeff