Last cruise of the year

For us, that's the 60-mile trip from Norwich, Conn., down the Thames River to New London, west on Long Island Sound to Old Saybrook and then up the long Connecticut River to Portland Riverside Marina, were we have stored our boats since 1987.

The photo shown above was taken by our friend Ed, who was kind enough to leave his warm office to get some shots of us in the cold as we passed. We rarely leave the bridge windows down but today, it was really necessary.

Ed and his wife are the proud new owners of a 1988 40 ft. Silverton and we hope to see a lot of them next summer.

Our trip was uneventful, as it should be. Pooka, our boat cat, loves the boat but doesn't like cruising. Frances makes up a nice bed for him in a closet and he tolerates the boat being underway quite well.

When we turned north into the Connecticut River, the cold wind hit us on the nose. Frances knows how to dress for the cold but I (Bill) selected a big winter jacket and a ski hat. Some have said that I looked like the Pillsbury Dougboy, but it did kept me warm.

Below is some video of the last turn in the Sound into Old Saybrook. Nothing special, but we'll enjoy watching it during the winter.



Frances took some good pictures as we went up the river. The Hadlyme Ferry pulled out of its slip right in front of us. One more day and the ferry goes in for the winter. See you next year, when maybe you'll have the courtesy to sound your horn before entering the channel.

 The East Haddam Swing Bridge is always our half-way mark. Frances took pictures as we passed under with at least three feet to spare.

In the no-wake zone above the bridge, we slowed down and consumed some deli sandwiches. No sense in starving the crew.

This last cruise of the year gave us a chance to check out the Polar View chart software on our little Acer notebook. Our boat is just too old to spend the money on an expensive chart-over-radar display.
Like others, we've been marginalized by fuel prices and the cost of slips. We'd like to cruise safely and take advantage of electronic chart displays but not at the cost of those multiple screen display we see on on newer boats.

 For now, this is a good solution for us. Laugh if you like.

The Acer has more than enough processing power to update the charts as we move and the quality of the chart display was amazingly good. The Acer has a much larger screen size than our Standard Horizon GPS and the Polar View software seems to update more often. It is also a lot easier to chart routes and establish waypoints with Polar View, which we even can do at home on our workstation and then transfer to the Acer as a simple comma-delimited .csv file.

Where does the Acer get GPS info? We use a simple USB GPS puck receiver that we slip under the bottom of the enclosure. It just hangs there and works perfectly. On this cruise, it acquired the satellite signs as soon as we plugged it in and never dropped out all day. In contrast, our Standard Horizon chartplotter with an external marine GPS antenna takes up to 90 seconds to get enough satellite signs to show our position and from time to time while underway, will lose and reacquire the satellites.

That's it for Summer 2013. We'll continue our blog through the winter but maybe not so often. We'll miss the friends we have made in Norwich, but only until next summer.