7/11 – 7/12: Chocomount Cove, Fishers Island

Another great weather forecast greeted us for the weekend of June 11th and 12th.  So far we’ve only had one washout this season, which is amazing.

This weekend we decided to return to Fishers Island and check out Chocomount Cove, which is near West Harbor.  I was intrigued by the way it looked on the chart, and Active Captain reviews indicated that we would be alone (which isn’t so easy here in crowded Connecticut), so I was excited to check it out.

Saturday morning we looked at a boat for sale (the subject of a future post), and then we returned to Pegu Club and got her ready to sail.  Winds were light, but we had a pleasant trip, retracing our steps to West Harbor from the previous weekend but continuing a bit farther east.  As promised, we had the place to ourselves.  It wasn’t as “cove like” as I thought it would be, but it was still quite lovely.  We dropped the anchor, it bit right away (boy we like our Rocna), and we proceeded to chill out for the rest of the afternoon.

My one complaint about West Harbor is that there are a ton of powerboats going in and out, so we were getting waked a lot during the day last weekend.  And I mean a lot.  To the point where it was getting very irritating.  Chocomount Cove had some wakes, but probably 1/10 of what we had experienced the previous weekend, so comparatively speaking it was quite peaceful.

It was an uneventful, relaxing afternoon except when Jeff became the unlucky one to suffer the first boat injury on Pegu Club.  He was manning the grill, and when he went to flip the lid back the boat bobbed at just the right time for his three fingers to make contact with the extremely hot lid.  One finger started to blister, one was on the verge, and the other was simply pink.  We broke out the trusty first aid kit and put some burn ointment on which seemed to help.  Poor guy.  Lesson learned.

After a peaceful night’s sleep, Sunday morning dawned with a lovely forecast.  We had a hearty breakfast and chilled out a bit, waiting for the current to change in our favor.  Eventually, Jeff the human windlass hauled the anchor which came up clean.  Must have been sand in that area.   This time I kept the outboard in neutral the entire time, which was very helpful for me to gauge how slowly we actually drift along under those conditions.

The winds were hovering between 8 – 12 knots, primarily from the direction we were heading, so we decided that today would be a great day to practice tack, tack, tacking and beating into the wind.  We sailed out of our anchorage (easy to do when no one else is around) and were off into a slack current on a glorious, sunny day.  Sailing in short sleeves and shorts.  It doesn’t get much nicer than that!

We had a lovely sail back.  In the past we have been known to feel like we weren’t making any progress when beating so we’ve eventually turned on the outboard, but this time we decided to be patient and sail all of the way back.  We only misjudged when we should tack once (requiring us to throw in an extra one to clear Groton Long Point).

Arriving back at our mooring, we were surprised to discover that we had made it in just three hours, even with all of the tacking.  It felt longer, but not at all in a negative way.  It’s kind of hard to explain.  Anyway, it was a glorious afternoon sail and we truly felt like we had accomplished something with the sail back.  Another great weekend on the Pegu Club!