Back to Portland for the winter

This blog began on Friday, September 27 when our boating friend Stu and I made an 8 AM visit to the boat for the trip back to Portland, our winter storage location. Frances was anxious to accompany us but unfortunately, her legs (while improving a lot over the summer) weren't quite strong enough to enable her to get off the boat once docked on the very unsteady slips at Portland Riverside.

Before we docked for the summer at Norwich, we got new 4-step boarding stairs that enabled her to get on a off easily. You can see them in the video below and they were well worth what we paid for them.

Last year, I made this trip at the end of October and it was, to say the least, difficult and not what pleasure boating is supposed to be. With that in mind, we picked what looked like a good day and made the trip a month earlier.

As it turned out, the weather was nearly perfect. We saw few other boats and the sea conditions (predicted to be "one foot or less, wind from the north at 5-10 kts") was exactly that or better. As you'll note on the video, there were times where we didn't seem to be moving and the boat would hold course without any steering adjustments. It was that nice!

Our buddy Stu, a former long-time boater and I passed much of the time laughing at the foolish things we did on our boats 20-30 years ago.

It was warm and sunny when we got to Portland. I was sad to dock the boat for the last time this year and all we had to do was secure the lines, grab our unused winter coats and drive home.

While we didn't cruise on the boat a lot during the summer, we did visit it most weekends starting in July and Frances always enjoys seeing all of her dock-mate friends.

Next summer

We will be another year older and that has taken its toll. My night vision isn't great and our maintenance on the boat takes a little longer to accomplish that it used to. Frances should be back fully on her feet by spring but even she has to take things a little slower.

American Wharf in Norwich, where we dock in the summer, is for sale and there are now many vacancies, although the dock crew is as helpful as ever. We looked at moving the boat to a slip at another marina but finally decided that our friends were in Norwich, so why not just stay there?

The boat, now 40 years old, is dry and comfortable and has all the stuff on it we need (and a lot of stuff that we probably don't) . Our engines are sound and take us where we want to go. It is definitely our "summer cottage" so in January, we'll write that big check for our summer 2020 slip rental and come May, make the trip back to Norwich, once again.

The video shown below covers a number of weeks from the fall cruise through winterizing the plumbing and engines. That took a little longer than expected due to the discovery of a kink in the hose from our fresh water tank. But we replaced that hose and the pink antifreeze finally flowed.

The video will be a good time to take a 13-minte nap, it's that calm. But it's fun for us to look at during the winter and perhaps it will be for you too.

Sunday morning in September

A couple of people have noted that we've been neglecting our blog and that's true, although we have been posting videos. Our summer got a late start but we have been using the boat, perhaps more as a summer home than we have in the past. But the old boat runs just fine and we did use it to visit Mystic Museum a over Labor Day and had a great cruise. A video of that is on You Tube.

Frances' health kept us from using the boat as much as we would have liked but we bought a new set of boarding stairs that is four steps high and that makes it possible for her to get on and off the boat much more easily. Once aboard, she is definitely the "old Frances," cooking up great dinners and talking to all of her neighboring boat buddies.

We know how good Frances' doctors are and how much she respects them but a weekend on the boat seems to be very good medicine for her right now.

Of course, it's fall here so the boat has to go into winter storage soon. You'd think we'd be used to that by now but filling the engines with antifreeze is never fun.

It rained last Saturday but we were in the boat anyway. Sunday was warm and while loading up the car, we took a video tour of our dock. Nothing special but it will be a nice reminder of how much we enjoy the summers on A-dock.

Winterizing the boat - after the snow

NOTE: If you didn't see our last blog post, it's because we didn't publish it when we should have. If you want to catch up with our boating adventures, check out our blog post for November 1. It's called "A difficult cruise to Winter Storage."

We managed to get the engines winterized last weekend and today, we finished the job by making sure that the hot and cold water lines in the boat were full of that pink antifreeze, including the head.

For us, winterizing includes putting old sheets down on the floors and covering the furniture. Of special importance is our table, which always get a new table covering. That keeps Bill from damaging the table top during his many winter boat-project adventures.

As it turned out, our boat made it into the shed just hours before the season's first snowfall. That was four inches of wet snow that tied up all the terrible drivers in Connecticut and delayed schools openings on Friday. It was mostly gone by Saturday morning but by then, ACT THREE was safely in the shed and waiting for some attention.

Today, we poured in all those gallons of pink and ran everything through the faucets, the head and the shower sump as well as the air conditioning.

We shot a little video using our look-alike GoPro camera, which doesn't win any prizes for quality but you'll get the idea.

Next up, we remove the towels and bedding and somehow, we don't think that will merit any video.

A difficult cruise to winter storage

We finally got underway for our cruise to winter storage on October 30. That's about two weeks late for us and, it seems, for many other local boaters.

The marine weather for our area has been terrible. Lots of days with Small Craft Warnings or Advisories and a couple of Gale Warnings. Not good, so we waited and waited until looking almost a week ahead, October 30 looked okay. Not great, but something we could do, as we often say, "without rearranging the furniture" on the boat.

As October 30 drew closer, the weather forecast deteriorated. Nothing terrible but "sunny with the wind from the northwest at 10-15 KTs gusting to 20" isn't fun, mainly because we'd be running into the wind just about all the way.

But we needed to to get going before it got really cold or even snowed.

We also had to realize that Frances' health, while vastly improved, wasn't exactly 100%. She would not be able to climb up to the fly bridge in any kind of difficult seaway. This would be a 62 mile trip and it didn't seem fair to have her down in the cabin just holding on for much of that distance.

So, we discussed having me (Bill) run the boat up myself. She definitely didn't like that idea but, since I've done it before, she agreed,

I arrived at the dock on Tuesday morning dressed for the cold, because it was. Long underwear, sweater and heavy winter coat. The hat that Frances assigned to me looked dumb buy ended up being perfect.

The manager at our summer marina gave me a hand with the lines and off I went. It was a windy but cold, run down the Thames River to New London.

 Once out into Long Island Sound, I turned right (west) and into the wind. The Sound, as far as I could see, was whitecaps.  I steered into them at about 16 MPH. Within 1,000 yards or so, I slowed down to 10 MPH just to ease the slamming. This wasn't fun and I had 15 miles to go before i could turn north into the Connecticut River.

Just to be clear, I wasn't in danger of sinking. Our old Silverton banged up and down without ever missing beat. but after while, I slowed again to about 5 MPH. I couldn't hold a course going any faster and I was getting wet up on the bridge.

Our front video camera became covered by the rolled down front bridge window that was caught in the wind and do what a might, I couldn't keep the window from being blown into the camera's view. As a result, there isn't much to see of the waves on video during our 15 miles in the Sound. Too bad. I found it invigorating, to say the least.

The trip of the river to Portland was cold, with fairly bright fall foliage. Thirty-three miles is a lot of foliage, in fact, enough for me for some time to come. Did I say it was cold?

After about two hours, we turned the corner on the river at Middletown and spied Frances waiting next to her car. The good, hot dinner she had waiting for me was exactly what I needed.

Some video...

October again!

Early evening on September 30 and a view of Frances' many artifacts displayed across the front windshield of the boat as the sun goes down. Another summer seems to have passed and with it lots more rain than we are used to.

It's a beautiful evening and everyone has left. It's nice being alone on the dock once in a while.

We paid our annual visit to Wal Mart today and bought the pink antifreeze, engine oil and filters that we'll need to winterize the engines and plumbing once we get to winter storage. It's actually easier to load up here in Norwich, so everything is lined up ready to cruise.

 The inside of the boat is crowded with bags full of stuff to be taken home but Frances is in the galley cheerfully making dinner.

 We were looking forward to some Indian Summer but now there's a chill in the air as soon as the sun sets. We had the heat on in the boat last night and it looks as though we will tonight, as well.

Frances is jumping on and off the boat like the old days so all's well with our world  She'll also be taking the long cruise to winter storage so well be able to chat and take pictures, just like the old
days.

Time to get out the boat's winter to-do list. It's not long and it's fun and interesting for us. Just seems as though October got here quicker than normal.

The annual Blue Mass cookout

On September 7, we unloaded our stuff at the boat and headed to the nearby East Great Plain Volunteer Fire Department in Norwich for the annual cookout held as a fun raiser for the upcoming Blue Mass to be held at the Cathedral of Saint Patrick. As I'm sure our readers know, a Blue Mass is held for active and retired law enforcement officers and their families.

Needless to say, it was fun. Our A-dock folks all sat together and enjoyed a great steak dinner, grilled by dock mate Lou and his son Tim.

Of course, there was a raffle and in the photo above, dock mate Sue reacts to dock mate John T. as he wins $120, which was the top raffle prize.

We shot some video even though it has nothing to do with boating. Just nice people turning out to support an event that is important to the entire community.

Cruise to Greenport II

After waiting out several weekends of bad weather, we shoved off for Greenport to see our friends Ellen and Dave who were away during our July visit.

Once again, we left on a Thursday and came back on Monday. Weekdays are ideal for getting to and from a slip at a popular marina such as Mitchell Park. Friday afternoons are very busy and Sunday mornings almost equally so. We heard  the Captain of a 100 ft. yacht on the radio refuse to tie up at his assigned spot because it was too narrow. "This boat is 25 ft. wide and we will not fit," he said. Then he took is 100-ft. yacht someplace else.

We met lots of nice boaters (as we almost always do) and our friends, Ellen and Dave, found us and spent some time catching up on what we and they had been up to. On Saturday night, we all went to dinner together despite the fact that it's not easy to find a restaurant on a weekend night during high season.

Claudio's

Claudio's, the East End's most famous restaurant, was sold and is now owned by new people, although the iconic building and the docks remain unchanged. We had a reservation and were seated promptly in a noisy dining room. No problem there; it was a Saturday night in August. The food was another matter. I know we're just New England rubes, but isn't dinner supposed to be hot? I guess not because our's wasn't. One of us ordered the "Fisherman Platter," that was not hot, devoid of flavor and probably right off the frozen seafood truck from Brooklyn. Our advice? Skip Claudio's, at least for now.

Fire boat

When we got there, a large part of Mitchell Park's east pier was taken up with a 300 ft. ex-NYFD fire boat, which is being restored by volunteers. The fire boat was there as a fundraiser and at about 1 P.M. on Sunday, they fired up its engines and backed it out into bay. Once there, they turned on the boat's dozen or so water cannons and let the people in their go-fast runabouts get wet in the spray. Pretty cool, I'd say, although no pun intended.

We left an almost empty marina on Monday morning. As the temperature approached 90 degrees, we had a nice cool ride down the Sound and visited our old Buddy, "Smokey" at Shennecossett Yacht Club in Groton for 143 gallons of gas. Best gas price in this part of Connecticut and you can't beat Smokey's conversation.

"American Wharf, this is Act Three!" No response

Very few boats seen as we covered the 15 miles back to our home marina in Norwich. As we went farther  north, the temperature went up. It was going to be warm, very warm, once we tie up.

Once we had our marina in sight, we called them on Channel 68 for some help docking. This is exactly what we always do and all we need is one person to grab and tie down one stern line.

Nothing heard on the VHF so Frances called the marina on the phone. Answering machine picks up, so no luck there.

So, in we go. We back into our slip and slowly drift away from the finger, as we knew we would. Frances takes our boat pole and hooks a dock cleat and drags the boat close enough so we can temporarily fasten a stern line. Our boat is docked and everything is fine. The two senior citizens at the end of A-dock have returned safely once again.

We find the new marina manager driving out of the parking lot and let him know that he and the morons who own (and are trying to sell) this marina have forgotten that some of us expect that dock help would be available during business hours as it has been for many years. Wide-eyed, he promises that it will never happen again. We'll see.