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.