Port Jefferson, Long Island, NY

Monday, June 7, 2010

040-57.900 N
073-5.940 W

Ahoy from Port Jefferson on Long Island, NY!

For those of you closely following our route, you'll recognize that you either missed a chapter or we ended up changing our destination. As usual, the later applied. Yesterday we departed the CT river and we were having a beautiful sail along the CT coast. The winds were supposed to go from the N to the W, and of course we were headed W, so it became increasingly hard to sail into the wind. We decided the head across the sound to Long Island to keep a better wind angle. Unfortunately that only added a few more hours of sailing as the winds kept backing to the W, but it was a beautiful day regardless.

But I'm getting ahead of myself...Last Saturday we departed from Mystic just after an intense line of thunderstorms had rolled through. Another line was forecast to roll through later in the afternoon, but based upon their timing it appeared that we could make it to Essex before they arrived. So at around 8:30 we pulled off the dock and headed down the Mystic river. It was a strange day, with fairly dense fog at ground level, but you could see the sun trying to burn through. By the time that we made it into LI sound, the fog had gotten much thicker, and once again we were down to less than 100 yards of visibility.

As we approached the Groton/New London channel a large, fast moving vessel appeared on the radar. You can tell the relative size based upon the strength of the radar reflection. Suddenly a loud, low horn sounded out of the fog, warning us to keep out of his way. We took quick action to make sure that we did and based upon the wake that we encountered, it was a large vessel, but we never saw it as we stayed about 1/4 of a mile away. We also passed other vessels within 500 feet and never saw them either. At one point we were approaching what must be a favorite fishing area as there where at least 8 boats maneuvering around, and thankfully the fog lifted enough to see them as I sure didn't want to play hide-and-seek with them via radar!

The Connecticut River is really quite scenic with rolling fields and marshes coming right down to the water. It was quite wonderful to see that it wasn't over built. However, it does have it's fair share of multi-million dollar shacks along the sides. Essex is only about 5-6 miles up the river and it was quite the delightful town. Unfortunately we didn't have a lot of time to explore it, as we spent most of the weekend at Sue's parent's house attending a dinner for her sister's 25th wedding anniversary.

Sue's parent's picked us up in Essex and we drove back to Ellington, CT. As we were driving along I noted a huge thunderhead moving towards us. We had just pulled into the parking lot of a grocery store when it hit. I was driving down the isle of the parking lot and the rain was so intense that I could barely see the cars on either side! I finally found an open spot and pulled in. As we waited for the storm to end, a 3" tree right in front of the car snapped off about 1/2 way off. There were lots of downed trees and the power was out for hours. According to the weather service, the winds reached 75 MPH. I'm just glad that I didn't encounter that on the water or highway!

I'm not exactly sure where we'll end up today. We're headed W and we'll either stop in Oyster Bay or continue to Manhasset Bay near Port Washington.

-- Geoff & Sue

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For the cruiser: We pulled into Conscience Bay, which is just west of the entrance to Port Jefferson. We intended to anchor, but the entire mooring field was empty, so we just picked up a mooring. The depths on the charts are about 10' shallower than what's really there. There should be plenty of anchoring room.

Log ID: 1356