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...