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.

Finally getting underway

 It seems we hung around the marina until after the July 4th holiday. Time to get out of here and, like previous summers, we decided to go to Greenport to see friends and blow the cobwebs out of our boat.

When we arrived at the Marina at American Wharf in Norwich this spring, the first thing we were greeted with was a letter telling us that there would no longer be any fuel. It seems the marina's fuel tanks had reached their mandatory end-of-life and had to be replaced. Management felt that was too much of an investment so they had them removed. All that happened before they sent out the bills for this year's slip rental, which contained a 6.25% price increase.

The owners of our marina screwed us once. They won't do that again.Wouldn't you think they would have known about the fuel tanks when they bought the marina 5-6 years ago?

As a result, the marina is now half empty and those of us who have been here for a while are shopping for new slips for next summer.

However, we did get some boat things done. We did a thorough cleaning and the boat looks great inside. He also had the side cabin windows tinted to match the back sliding door that we did last fall. It was fun to take down the dusty old blinds and really amazing how much bigger the inside of the boat looks. And for you skeptics, if anything, it improved the performance of our air conditioning.

But, in the meantime, the city put on a good fireworks display for the fourth and we loaded up for a 39 mile trip to Long Island, once we found some gas, which we finally did.

The ride to Greenport was uneventful and we were surprised at how few boats were at Mitchell's. We arrived on a Wednesday and really enjoyed the beautiful weather. By Friday afternoon, word was circulating of rain and threatening east winds that were approaching. Some of our dock neighbors left on Friday afternoon; we shoved off early on Saturday morning.

The east wind had fully developed by then and our trip down the Sound was close to as uncomfortable as we've seen it. Frances was trapped in the cabin holding on and we had to do a lot of corrective steering up on the bridge. Our air draft is about 13 ft. and we were taking big doses of water through our one open front bridge window. It took a while but we made it just fine. The boat just keeps going!

But, enough of the sea stories. We know that we all have some to tell.

Here's a little video, excluding the dramatic return trip home.