Seas 1 Ft. or Less

It was Saturday, October 25 and we'd been watching the weather all week. Each day there was more rain and wind with a Gale Warning in Long Island Sound on Wednesday and Small Craft Advisories just about every other day except Saturday.

The Saturday forecast held and that would be our day to make the 60 mile run from Norwich, our summer dock, to winter storage in Portland. When we got up early Saturday morning the exact forecast was:

"TODAY W WINDS 5 to 10 KT WITH GUSTS UP TO 20 KT. SEAS 1 FT OR LESS... THEN 1 TO 2 FT THIS AFTERNOON."

We're not weather pussies when it comes to boating but we'd rather not run through seas that rearrange the furniture in our cabin if we don't absolutely have to.

Our friend and dock mate, John T., volunteered to go along and that was really nice since Frances didn't really feel up to straining her eye just as it was slowly healing.

At 8:15 AM, we untied the lines and steered out into the Thames River. It was cold but the river was like glass, as you can see in the photo above. The 13 mile trip to New London was uneventful. The fall colors were somewhat muted but who cares? We were on our boat and that always makes it a beautiful day.

At New London Ledge Light we turned west into the expected wind but there was almost none. The Sound was flat and we laughed at the accuracy of the "1 ft. or less" prediction. Our course took us 3.8 miles to Bartlett Reef and as we approached, we noticed many whitecaps ahead of us. Whitecaps? To us that means wind at 20 Kts. or better. That  turned out to be fairly accurate as we turned about 30 degrees further west toward Old Saybrook. The wind came up and so did the seas, which were wind driven waves of the 4-5 ft. variety, right on our nose.

But, we we often say, "That's boating," as we slogged through the next 9.3 miles. We had to be very careful going down the ladder from the bridge just to use the head. The wave frequency was just right for the maximum bang-and-slam effect.  Sorry, no video. We were a little too busy to turn the camera on.

Of course, the boat did just fine and we got into the breakwater at Old Saybrook with nothing more out of place than a set of kitchen knives that landed in the sink and a bottle of something in the head that left the vanity and ended upside down in the toilet.

The 33 mile run up the Connecticut River was also without drama. It was great to have an experienced boater like John along and I think we discussed - and solved - most of the world's problems that afternoon.

At Haddam, we encountered several boats waiting for the East  Haddam Swing Bridge to open. We've been under that bridge 100 times and we've never had to have it open, even during the spring freshets but the Bertram in this photo appeared to be a little too tall.

We went for it (as you'll see in the video) and as we got close, John was able to read the depth gauge as 20 ft. That's probably 3-4 ft.more than we need and under we went, without even touching the tips of our antennas.

The Bertram caught up with us about 30 minutes later and awarded us with a giant wake. Nice boat driven by an inconsiderate slob, in our opinion.

We arrived at Portland Riverside and I did a terrible job of docking, but a bunch of guys were waiting and muscled our boat in while cheerfully blaming my poor docking job on the current. Since the river in Portland was swollen, muddy and filled with debris, we'll gladly take that explanation.

Next up, we winterize the engines and call the Summer 2014 boating season to a close.

We going to do some serious work to our starboard engine over the next month and we'll keep a video record of that. Hopefully, that will be interesting enough to keep some of our readers awake.