Adventures on Long Island

On Tuesday we crossed to the northern side of the Sound. We came up the Norwalk River and tied up at the Visitors Dock in Norwalk, Connecticut. We mainly explored the So No (South Norwalk) part of town and ate at the Brewhouse. When Paul ordered their own microbrewery specialty, we found out they haven’t brewed their own beer in six years – go figure!

The next night we anchored off tiny Charles Island near Milford, CT and the night after we were on a mooring ball in the Thimble Islands near Stony Creek, CT. They’re said to resemble islands off the coast of Maine but they reminded us of the North Channel.


We thought about continuing east and exploring Rhode Island a bit but decided against it. It’s been quite foggy in the mornings and since our radar decided to stop working awhile ago, we didn’t want to chance being out in fog. We headed south back to the New York side of the Sound and got a mooring ball with the Setauket Yacht Club at Port Jefferson. The deal here is the mooring ball is $45 per night and the launch to go to shore is included. Port Jefferson is another town that reminded us of Fish Creek in Door County. It’s a picturesque waterside village with lots of gift shops, art galleries and the best ice cream we’ve had on the whole trip!

Here’s part of the mooring field and one of the three ferries that cross from Bridgeport, CT to Port Jefferson, NY - about a 75-minute trip. We definitely noticed when they were coming and going with the warning horns and wake they created. Thankfully the last run was at 9:30 pm.

Here’s a sculpture on the waterfront designed to honor the shipbuilding past of the area:
The best option for a grocery store here was 2+ miles out of town so we treated ourselves to a taxi ride for that. It was actually kind of fun shopping at Giunta’s Meat Farm. Their produce was mostly local and priced quite low. Also ordering from the deli was a little different from my Festival Foods in Green Bay, WI! It’s times like this that I long for a larger refrigerator. If I buy corn on the cob and too many bulky items it’s quite a challenge to fit everything in. I love melons but I guess they're out for this summer.

We headed back to Oyster Bay again. There was plenty of wind but of course it was coming from the northwest where we were headed so lots of tacking involved. At one point I counted 100 sailboats within view! Here’s a scene from along the shoreline - it’s really a beautiful area.

Here’s where the big adventure begins. As we were motoring in to Oyster Bay to anchor, our alternator light came on (not a good thing). Paul was afraid once we shut the engine down it wouldn’t start again and he was right. We thought it was a similar problem to what happened back in Cambridge, MD but we weren’t able to get it started this time. Long story short: we were anchored here FOUR nights instead of the one we’d planned! Paul called four different marinas/boatyards and they all seemed to be backed up with work. One place sounded promising, lots of calls back and forth, but we finally gave up and called a place nearby in Huntington and they had a mechanic available – yay! We thought we’d get a chance sometime on this trip to take advantage of having Boat U.S. towing insurance and this was it. The tow driver showed up Thursday morning and off we went for the 10-mile ride back to Huntington. The funny thing was he called at midnight the night before (we were asleep) to say he was in the area and did we want to go in 30 min? We declined. It would have been a circus leaving in the dark trying to unwind two anchor lines that had gotten entangled. The tow ride was kind of relaxing; just sit back, steer a little and enjoy being pulled along at 7.4 knots.

This is approaching Huntington Harbor; hundreds and hundreds of boats on moorings. There isn’t dock space available besides the cost is quite high to keep a boat at a slip in this area.

As we came into the harbor, the tow boat came alongside, tied his lines to us and steered us up to the gas dock – pretty slick.

Here’s Mitch and his co-pilot, Jessie. It was funny how Ginger and Jessie barked back and forth to each other. I think Ginger wondered how this other dog just showed up out in the middle of the water!

I don’t want to make this too long but we actually had two problems: a loose wire and a bad alternator. This is the one we had rebuilt back in Savannah, GA in May. It only had about 200 hours on it since the rebuild so this shouldn’t have happened. Now we have a brand new one and the mechanic, Bruce, was fast and very competent. We had the work done at Willis Marine Center, very good work and a fair price. They let us borrow their truck for a West Marine and grocery store run too. We used one of their mooring balls that night and we’ve never seen rain like that. It’s a good thing Ginger is going deaf – the thunder claps were unbelievable. It would let up a little then start pouring again, probably more than an hour total. It hailed for about a minute then sirens started going off. We didn’t see any funnel clouds, not like we could head for the basement, so we stayed put.

So we’re heading out today, back to Port Washington on Manhasset Bay where Kyle plans to come by train and ride back with us on the East River and through Hell Gate again. This has been quite a side trip – more memories for a lifetime and thank you Lord for keeping us safe!