Snippets of Southern New England

When I last left off we were debating whether we were going to head north for awhile or spend some time in Long Island before moving south. Ultimately we decided to take the slow route though Long Island, but Mother Nature (also known as our desire not to motor everywhere) dictated that we first spend another 12 days in Fishers Island Sound.

Criss-crossing the Sound, we spent some time in West Harbor before moving to Mystic. Mystic personifies the growth in our confidence over the past year. Before we went cruising we had talked about taking Pegu Club up the river into Mystic, but several things made us hesitate: the long motor up the river, having to time the openings for two bridges (the first of which doesn’t keep an opening schedule because it’s a busy Amtrak railroad bridge), and the fact that the charts indicated that the water above the Seaport was extremely shallow even though we had heard it had been dredged.

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Vacation (part two): also known as the week I lost all faith in NOAA.

Wednesday morning NOAA was calling for 8-10 knots as we prepared to head from Stonington to Shelter Island. Since the wind was going to howl on Thursday, the plan was to pick up a mooring at Shelter Island and spend the day in Greenport, then continue our journey on Friday. Not so much.

We were enjoying a nice sail through Fishers Island Sound with approximately 10 knots of wind, but when we were out of the shelter of Fishers Island the 8-10 knots turned into a steady 18-20. What the?? I suspect 18-20 is a lot more comfortable in other areas, but on Long Island Sound the water turns into a bit of a washing machine. Combine that with having to sail close-hauled, and this was not going to be our idea of a good time. In fact, it was looking like a repeat of last year’s slog from Block Island to Three Mile Harbor.

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A change of scenery.

After several weekends at Shenny, it was time for a change of scenery. We tossed around different anchorages we could try as the weekend of the 27th drew closer, but by the time Friday rolled around it was clear that winds would be light. Still wanting to go someplace, we decided to head off to West Harbor on Fishers Island. At only four nm we could ghost there if possible, and at least if we had to turn on Thumper it wouldn’t be for too long.

We left Shenny by 8:30 a.m. on Saturday morning, trying to catch the last of the light north wind before it died. We made it about halfway there before we were becalmed, so we fired Thumper up and motored the rest of the way to West Harbor. After finding a good spot in the anchorage, we relaxed for the rest of the morning and watched boat tv. We even got lucky enough to watch Aphrodite come into the harbor.

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Guests!

One of the things we’ve been looking forward to about having a bigger boat is the ability to host guests more comfortably and easily. Since we’ve been back from vacation, that’s exactly what we’ve done.

During the weekend of July 23rd and 24th we hosted our friends Vanessa and Kurt for the first time. They had been on Little Bristol a few times and had seen Pegu Club over the winter, but this was going to be their first visit with her all put back together.

The weekend called for sunny skies and breezy on Saturday with winds from the northwest overnight, then less windy on Sunday. Northwest winds meant that our traditional standby anchorage of West Harbor on Fishers Island was out (too exposed), so Jeff and I had decided that we would anchor out at Ram Island by Noank. It would be our first time there, but it looked nice and it was well-protected from the wind.

One of the many things that I love about Vanessa is that she truly enjoys spoiling us with homemade food when she sees us – whether it’s our house, their house, or the boat. It doesn’t matter. True to form, she and Kurt arrived on Saturday morning with a cooler full of scrumptious meals and snacks. We sailed out towards Fishers Island with plans to sail along the coastline, round Latimer Light, and head back towards Ram Island.

A brisk breeze pushed us from behind as we went down Fishers Island sailing with just the genoa out. I noticed the wind gauge and the whitecaps, but it wasn’t particularly pronounced sailing downwind. Once we got ready to turn around towards Ram Island, however – whoa Nelly!

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Vacation, part one: We’re going where the wind takes us!

As we drove down to Shenny on Friday, July 8th we were psyched. We were finally taking Pegu Club on vacation for 11 days! Traditionally we take vacation after Labor Day when school is back in session and everything is much quieter. Work changes meant that wouldn’t be possible this year, however, so a vacation in July was going to be something new for us.

The initial plan was to sail Pegu Club to Martha’s Vineyard, but since I really don’t like going to crowded places we decided Martha’s in July wasn’t such a great idea. We decided instead that we would go wherever the wind blew us. The hope was to get a lot of sailing in so we could continue to get comfortable with Pegu Club. The only firm plans we had were for the first weekend, when we were going to Stonington with two other couples from Shenny.

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Fourth of July weekend: watching our first dragging boat – but fortunately not ours!

Fourth of July weekend arrived with sunny skies, warm temperatures, and on Saturday, a small craft warning. Sigh. We had planned to go for a sail around Fishers Island Sound and then anchor in West Harbor for the long weekend, but it looked like Saturday was now going to be set aside for small boat projects. Beginning on Sunday, however, things were going to be looking up!

The main thing we wanted to get accomplished on Saturday was to come up with a way to make our swim ladder more user-friendly. Pegu Club came with a nice removable swim ladder. As I had unfortunately discovered last August, it was really hard to climb out of the water because the ladder legs are all the same length while the hull curves inward. New ladders are pretty pricy, so we were hoping to come up with a cheap way to fix it.

Jeff (aka MacGyver) had a great idea using PVC and two tennis balls. A quick measure of the outer diameter of the existing legs on the ladder, a short trip to Home Depot for the PVC with the inner diameter matching the outer diameter of the ladder legs (we already had the tennis balls), a little sawing, and voila: Continue reading “Fourth of July weekend: watching our first dragging boat – but fortunately not ours!” →

Fourth of July Weekend

Hooray! A three-day weekend with a fantastic weather forecast. How lucky and rare!

Our original plan was to spend the holiday weekend in Montauk on Long Island. A group of Shenny members were going to head over there and it sounded like fun. However, a bit of research led us to decide that we would be better off going on a different weekend. I was interested in going to see the lighthouse, but the shuttle bus wasn’t going to start running until July 5th. It makes no sense, but there you have it. Also, Lake Montauk is very large and without an outboard yet on our dinghy (also known as “The Ugliest Dinghy on Fishers Island Sound”), rowing wasn’t going to be practical. So we decided instead to head to one of our favorite spots, West Harbor in Fishers Island. Continue reading “Fourth of July Weekend” →