Picture: Alex and Lisa

We have been pushing hard for the last two days to make some headway south. We are currently in the Norwalk Islands, Connecticut. We hope to be in New York City within a couple of days. To back up a little bit, we spent three beautiful days enjoying Newport, RI. We had visits from my parents and sister Deb, as well as our friends Trent and Alex. Mom and Dad went shopping for us at Sam's Club and brought down some needed essentials; 40 rolls of toilet paper, 15 bags of cereal, bags and bags of potato chips and Mom's homemade lasagna, to name a few. While visiting with our friends, the kids enjoyed swimming in the hotel pool for many hours while we had uninterrupted adult conversation. We departed Newport on Saturday afternoon and headed for Point Judith, RI to fuel up for the first time since leaving NH. The next morning, we headed down the sound with the hope of doing 50 miles that day. You power boaters out there might think that's no big deal (being an ex-power boater myself), not the case on a sailboat. We averaged 8 knots most of the day while sailing on a beam reach. At times we were up to 11 knots, which is flying. The wind was pretty strange throughout the day. It would pick up to 20 knots then drop down to 8 and back up to 15 knots, it was a good day to sail. The following day was not so good with the wind on our stern the entire way which made sailing pretty useless. We could have sailed, but I am not a fan of going 3-4 knots to save a little bit on fuel, so we motored for 25 miles at 7 knots. One thing we noticed as soon as we hit the Long Island Sound, was the massive number of flies out here. We were five miles from land and these flies were coming from everywhere. The kids each were given a flyswatter and they had a competition to see who could kill the most. This continued every time we went out into the Sound, it is really disgusting. We are getting ready to head out for the last leg down the Sound to get to our staging area for passing through Hell's Gate. Hell's Gate is the small channel that all the water passing in and out of the Sound goes through. The current can reach speeds up to 6 knots, so you need to plan your passage carefully to go through with the tide and before it gets ripping.