Portland to Norwich: An interesting cruise

We left Portland on Monday, May 18 at 10 a.m. for the 62 mile ride to our summer dock in Norwich.

For regular readers of our blog, we should begin by noting that the boat engines ran perfectly. We spent Gods-knows-how-many hours on the starboard engine over the winter, replacing $1,100 worth of cylinder heads and exhaust manifolds. Just for the hell of it, we also rebuilt both of the raw water pumps.

Our trip down the Connecticut River was uneventful and relaxing. The water depth in the river was very low due to the recent lack of rain and there were almost no logs to dodge.

The weather forecast for the Sound was wind 5-10 kts from the east and seas "one foot or less." At Essex, we encountered a very cool wind and that continued all the way through Old Saybrook. As we approached the outer light, we got a look at the Sound. "One foot or less?" Not exactly, There were white caps as far out as we could see and as we turned east into the Sound we rode into some scary head seas. The wind-driven waves were bigger than we usually encounter and we slammed through them at about 10-15 second intervals. There was nothing we could do at that point but slow down a little and take the punishment. On a couple of dozen occasions we rode up waves that got the boat about half-way out of the water, followed by a very solid slam as we came back down.

Francis put her head down and held on so she couldn't see what was coming.  This all sounds very scary (and it was) but the boat handled perfectly and the engines never missed a beat.

In about five miles, the water became much deeper and that moderated the wave action considerably. Eventually, we were able to run east past Waterford at what we'd consider normal seas in a stiff east wind.

When we entered the Thames River in New London, Francis went below and found the inside of the boat pretty well trashed. The larger pieces of furniture had stayed in place but everything loose was on the floor. There was stuff everywhere and all we could do is laugh and repeat our usual motto, "That's boating!"

 Looks like our Shop-Vac decided to join the party

 Good opportunity for Francis to clean out her purse

 We didn't need all those toothpicks, anyway

The ride up the Thames was beautiful and our docking uneventful, as well.

The video we put together doesn't include any of  the "bang and slam" portion of the trip because we would have drenched our forward-facing cam, which we had removed as soon as we saw the white caps in the Sound. The video is just beauty shots but they are ones that we have been looking forward to over the long winter.