Greenport: First cruise of the summer

We've been visiting Greenport's Mitchell Park Marina for years to see our good friend Ellen Creighton on or near her birthday.  This year, we missed it by a week due to bad weather but on June 16, we shoved off for the first cruise of the year.  This time, we had an extra crew member, Pooka, Frances' cat. We had no idea how this normally inside cat would take to six days on a boat but as it turned out, he did just fine. Pooka needs special medication twice a day and it saved Frances lots of money to bring him along.  Vets cost big bucks and when it comes to taking a pill, cats prefer their owners to apply the medication.

Our first stop was in Groton at the Shennecossett Yacht Club.  We pulled up to the club's gas dock and met Smokey, who was manning the pumps. Smokey is a club member who lives during the summer at the club on his 43 ft. Hattaras.  We chatted about boats while he pumped 156 gallons of 89 octane into the boat at $4.30 per gallon. Shennecossett will probably be our gas stop this summer since our marina is no longer able to sell fuel.

Smokey also pumped out our holding tank and then we headed out across the Sound.  We kept our speed at about 10 mph, having just spent almost $700 for fuel.

Four hours after leaving Norwich, we docked at Mitchell's only to find that we were the only boat there.  No problem. Ellen arrived and we had a great dinner, courtesy of Frances.

Friday morning dawned as foggy as we have ever seen it.  The visibility was down to 50 yards or so and even the Shelter Island Ferries were waiting for the next boat to come into sight before they left the Greenport's railroad dock.

Once the fog burned off on Friday, the weather was great, with nice warm days and cool nights. I think we used the air conditioning only twice, once we soon found that opening the windows and the front hatch kept us very comfortable. We checked out things on Front Street, did a little shopping and returned to the boat just in time for cocktail hour.

On Saturday, we had some new dockmates, all from Rhode Island.  Nice to see the place fill up.

Late Saturday afternoon, Frances began cooking dinner.  She and Ellen spent some time figuring out how the new cheese grater worked.

Meanwhile, Pooka joined us in the cockpit and soon found a nice place to sleep.

When dinner got going, Pooka wanted his too.

On Sunday evening, Ellen treated us to dinner at our favorite spot on the North Shore, Skippers.  It's on the North Road on the way to Orient Point so it's too far for us to walk.  Bill had his usual, the Fisherman's Platter (hold the scallops). In the 20+ years we have been going there, that dish has never changed. It is always great.

Monday was another great day and we took the ferry to Shelter Island and had lunch at the Chequit Inn.  We usually just stop there for a cold beer but today, the garden in front of the inn, shaded by a big tree, just looked too inviting. We had a great lunch and later walked down to Deering Harbor to check out the shops and, unfortunately, the two really big boats that were hogging this usually nice spot.

Eventually, we walked back down to the ferry and headed back to Greenport. Funny seeing Greenport harbor from a boat other than ours.

On Tuesday morning, we started the engines, Pooka assumed his cruising spot under the sofa, and we motored out in beautiful, but cool,  weather. The Sound was smooth and we increased our speed to cut the trip down to three hours.

Once back in the Thames River, we had to slow down to allow the young Coast Guard midshipmen to use up most of the channel learning how to sail.  We got a nice wave of thanks from them and Frances took the helm for the rest of the ride up to Norwich. Does she look like a captain or what?

Our next trip will be to Block Island but in the meantime, Frances wants some helm time to practice conning the boat in close quarters.  I think we'll find time to get that done, too.