Long Island Sound
30 July 2019
by Paula Rolfe
We had a beautiful day sailing in Long Island Sound. There were lots of boats everywhere. The first night we picked up a mooring ball in New London, Conn. This was an industrial city with lots of boat traffic. We got up early the next morning to make our way further south in the sound.
We fought a lot of current much of the way with the boat going through the water at 6.0 knots but the actual headway speed was 2.8 knots. There was 3.2 knots of current pushing us back. This made for a long day. The tides did not help us until 6:00 pm and by then we were tired and it gets dark by 8:00pm. So we decided to stay in Port Jefferson, NY on Long Island. It is a beautiful town with very friendly people. Duke was even allowed to eat in a nice restaurant with us.
Lucky or unlucky for us we discovered another engine leak while in this beautiful port. This time it was a water leak. My Mr Handyman had a rebuild kit so we thought we could be out of there and on our way in no time. Unfortunately it was not so easy and we had to get a part in from Massachusetts. The part was supposed to be here 10:30am the next day but did not get here until 1:00 pm. While Byron was working on it we had a massive thunderstorm that rocked us quite a lot on the mooring. Luckily we were still in Port Jefferson!!! If the part had been on time we would probably be out in the sound where there was over 100 km/hr winds and hail. Everything works out!!! Plus I got Byron to take me out for supper later lol. We had 3 beautiful days at the Port Jefferson Yacht Club.
While Byron was stressing about the engine Duke was stressing about the swan! Duke is a very high strung and high energy dog and I am sure he has dementia. This damn swan kept coming around the boat teasing him and then hissing at him. It surely was a sight to behold. She would get him all riled up and then put her head in the air and swim away. It really was hilarious. Then a few hours later there would be a repeat of the same performance and poor old Duke would fall for it again. God love him but he is “some stunned”.
It is amazing how you meet people along the way!!
There was a wonderful man we met there (Alan) who also has a Catalina 400 Hull # 130. He was a great help to us.
So tomorrow we are off to City Island to stage ourselves for the right tide and current to go through Hells Gate and the East River into New York, New York🤪🤪🤪🤪.
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