Start of Week 2 – Exploring Long Island Sound

The first week of cruising was done and dusted, and we were truly settling into the cruising lifestyle. It was Sunday, July 20th, and we were sailing through the Long Island Sound to Rowayton, Connecticut to meet our friends that we met while river rafting the Grand Canyon in June. Our sail to Rowayton was only 10 nautical miles due east and there was a fickle breeze of 5-10 knots blowing out of the southeast that morning. After raising our anchor, we pointed our bow south to navigate out of the Calf Islands. We enjoyed a pleasant but slow sail travelling at about 4 knots. Once we were clear of the islands the wind promptly petered out, so we turned on the motor and headed directly towards Rowayton. Our friends were members of Norwalk Yacht Club (which was across the harbor from Rowayton) with their own boat moored there and they were kind enough to set up a guest mooring ball for us for the night. Up to this point, we had never used a mooring ball on Salty Foxx, so we did a little bit of research to learn what the etiquette is. It seemed simple enough; have a boat hook handy to grab the pendent, slip the mooring lines through the fairlead and over the bow cleats. If only 1 mooring line exists, consider adding a second to distribute the force between each bow cleat for added protection in case one line fails due to chafe. Once you are secured to the mooring, test its strength by putting the boat in reverse momentarily to verify that the mooring holds.

As we approached the mooring field, we hailed the yacht club on the VHF radio and they were kind enough to send a boat out to show us where our mooring ball was. This was vital as there were over 200 mooring balls in this mooring field, and we would have spent hours trying to locate ours. Once the kind gentleman showed us our mooring ball for the evening, we put our mooring ball knowledge into practice, and it turned out it was as easy as the research said it would be (That’s a first!). The only thing that surprised us was how close we were to the other boats. The distance from the stern of our boat to the bow of the boat behind us was no less than 30 feet! Normally when we anchor, we put out between 5-1 to 7-1 scope of anchor chain. This means for every foot of depth, you put out 5 to 7 times the amount of chain. For example, if it is 20 feet deep you put out between 100 and 140 feet of chain and thus you can swing up to 140 feet away from your anchor location in any direction. This scope is vital to ensure your anchor is properly set and the additional weight of the chain helps you remain stuck to the bottom. Moorings are either secured to a heavy sunken object such a concrete block or screwed deeply into the seabed.  This means that the chain which connects the mooring ball to the seabed is only required to be long enough to accommodate tidal changes which minimizes swing distance. Even though the tight quarters were surprising to us, we understood the rationale, and no one else seemed alarmed by it so we decided not to worry about it.

Norwalk Yacht Club has what is called a launch boat service, where they drive their own boat out to your boat to pick you up for a ride back to their yacht club or to Rowayton Yacht Club just across the harbor. This was super nice for us, as it meant we could leave our dinghy, Saltine, hanging on her davits. As we were sitting there preparing to call the yacht club’s launch service, we heard our friend Richard on the radio calling the launch service as he and his wife had just returned from a weekend trip of their own. This was a good reminder that it was a Sunday, as we were starting to lose track after so many days on the boat. We realized if we hurried, we could jump on the same launch boat with Richard and solidify our plans for the afternoon. We grabbed our things, hailed the launch service, and soon the launch boat was pulling up next to us with Richard onboard. We jumped on and took the quick ride over to Norwalk Yacht Club where Richard introduced us to the staff and showed us the accommodations. After getting the full tour, we made plans to meet up later, as Abby and I were both excited for a full shower on land. Showers on Salty Foxx are fine as we have 132 gallons of freshwater tankage and a 6-gallon hot water heater which can be heated either by electricity or engine heat, but you still must be cognizant of your water usage. This means most showers are limited to 3 or 4 minutes, which is plenty of time to get yourself clean but never enough time to just sit there under the hot water thinking about life. As I prepared to get in the shower, I realized that in my haste to see Richard on the launch boat, I had left my towel hanging in the bathroom on Salty Foxx. Well, I was so excited for a land shower, I grabbed a stack of paper towels and took a nice hot shower anyway because this was my chance to sit under the hot water for as long as I wanted. Even though I felt silly, it was a wonderful shower and the paper towels worked well enough to dry off.

We took the launch boat back to Salty Foxx, tidied the boat up a little and hailed the launch service once again to this time drop us off on the Rowayton side of the water. After a 10-minute walk, we arrived at Richard and his wife Kathryn’s beautiful home. Unfortunately, we got there at the same time as Tots’s archnemesis, the Amazon delivery driver.  So, after some rather loud barking, Richard welcomed us in. Richard and Kathryn’s kindness was incredible because, as sailboat cruisers, we are constantly thinking about when our next grocery or laundry stop will be, and they immediately offered up their laundry machine and their car to take care of both tasks. After we got our laundry going, Richard took us out to the car he was offering us, a Rivian R1T electric truck with an electric motor attached to each wheel and 800 plus horsepower.  After checking a few times if he was sure, we jumped in and immediately couldn’t figure out how to turn it on. Richard laughed and told us to just put it in reverse; it is automatically on if the key is the vehicle. We slowly backed out of the driveway and were on our way. The regenerative engine breaking took a lot to get accustomed to - I legitimately did not touch the break pedal once during our drive as the regenerative breaking was so strong. After we were done with our errands, we headed back, and I realized I had heard so much about electric cars acceleration, but I had never felt it myself. I waited for a stretch of straight flat road with minimal traffic and floored it. The force of the acceleration was so intense, it threw Abby back up and into her seat yelling. It was at that point I realized I should have warned her first and this was what they called an intrusive thought…whoops.  After some forewarning, I tried it again and man was it exhilarating.

As soon as we got back to the house Richard excitedly asked us how it was to drive and wanted to make sure we tried flooring it at least once. After a quick laugh about the experience, we went inside to find that Kathryn had switched our laundry for us, seriously the kindest humans. Soon after, our friends Arick, Katya, and their son Aksel who we had also met on the Grand Canyon, came over and joined us for dinner. We broke out a special bottle of wine which my mom had grown and began to discuss our trip so far. We felt lucky to have met such cool people on the Grand Canyon and to be able to connect with them again on our sailing trip. We ordered some food to go from a local fish house and headed to a beach club that they were all members of to eat dinner and watch the sunset and what a sunset it was! On the public beach next door, Peter Anspach from Goose was playing a free show with his own band, so of course we had to go over and check it out. I first heard of the band Goose when my coworker sent me a vacation request titled “Goooooooooooosssssseeeeeeee” with no other amplifying information which I later came to find out was a band that was playing at the local amphitheater in New York. After dancing the night away, we made plans to stop by on our way down the Long Island Sound in late September, then we said our goodbyes and headed back to the boat. Norwalk and Rowayton surely didn’t disappoint!

The stunning sunset and our friends in Rowayton, CT

The next morning, we got up and continued on our jounrey with the goal of making it the 35 nautical miles to the Thimble Islands. The wind was consistently out of the south which led to a very pleasurable sail all the way to the Thimble Islands. We chose the Thimble Islands as they were conveniently located in the direction we were trying to go, and because one of the islands was a public nature preserve. As we sailed, Abby and I reminisced about what a nice night we had in Rowayton. Rowayton had never been a planned stop until we met these wonderful people. We wondered what other towns and islands existed like this throughout the Long Island Sound. We were on a schedule to get to Portland, Maine by August 5th to meet my parents, and thus were doing a lot of long days on the water. While there was a little bit of regret, we knew that we still had a few 2-night stops planned in the coming weeks and it just meant we would have to plan a trip back. Amidst this moment of reflection, we were swarmed by biting flies even though we were probably 5 to 7 miles off the Connecticut coast. Abby went down below to put up all our bug netting and I grabbed the fly swatter. We had experienced this once before in the Chesapeake next to where all the container ships anchor while waiting to pull into port, but here we were alone on Long Island Sound. In the span of an hour, I killed maybe 100 flies! Then as quickly as they appeared, they disappeared. We still don’t know what caused this random swarm, but we were happy it was behind us.

Around early afternoon, we spotted the Thimble Islands and consulted the charts on where exactly to anchor. The islands have buried phone and power lines between them, thus you had to ensure you were anchored nowhere close to these cables. We picked an anchorage that was a reasonable distance away from the cables, close enough to the public nature preserve island, and protected from the strong southerly breeze that was expected. After checking to make sure our anchor was secure, we lowered the dinghy into the water and headed towards the Stewart B. Mckinney National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge had a nice floating dock where we could land and tie the dinghy up while we explored. The island itself was pretty small, and the northern half was closed to the public due to it being nesting season for a local bird, but wow was it stunning. After thoroughly exploring the island, we headed back to the boat for a quiet evening. After a few sporting games of cribbage and a nice pasta dinner with tinned mussels, we were off to bed as the next day was another 8+ hour sail.

We woke up early the next morning, took Tots to the nature preserve for a quick morning walk, and then set our course across Long Island Sound for Sag Harbor, New York. Sag Harbor was about a 40 nautical mile sail, with a current rip at the 30 nautical mile point which you needed to pass through at high tide to minimize the risk of standing waves. The high tide was about 1500 so if we crossed between 1400-1600, we would be fine. The wind was lacking, so we turned on the motor and pushed onwards to ensure we passed the current rip before it got too bad. We crossed right before 1500 and made our way the last 10 miles into Sag Harbor. Now Sag Harbor is part of the Hamptons, so we knew to expect some nice mega yachts there, but the amount of multimillion dollar yachts was truly unbelievable. At 40 feet, Salty Foxx was probably the smallest vessel in the anchorage. We quickly dinghied into town to see what all the hype was about. The number of mega yachts we went by was unreal and they were stacked 4 or 5 deep at dock T-heads. With some back of the napkin math, I would estimate there was more than 2 billion worth of yachts in Sag Harbor. We landed on the public dinghy dock, had a nice evening stroll, and took a quick uber to the pet store to get Tots some more food. After the pet store, we found a local brewery which was just what needed after a long few days on the water. I got a mixed flight of a Lager, a Pale Ale, an IPA, and a NA Beer. The beers were good enough that I ended up bringing a 4-pack of the NA Beer back to the boat! We were tired, and we planned to spend the following day and night here, so we headed back to the boat. After finishing our leftover pasta and playing another game of cribbage, we went to bed.

The next morning, we got up and packed a picnic bag so that after exploring the town, we could walk down to the beach and have a nice lunch on the water. We quickly realized we were out of our element when we walked into a wine and cheese shop and not a single thing had a price tag on it. After some perusing, we realized we were out of our price bracket and began to leave. It must have been our day because as we were leaving, we lucked into $100 worth of caviar for free! We looked at each other and decided that if there was ever time to be bougee and try caviar, it was today! With this, we added it to our lunch bag and took it to the beach. When we got to the beach there was a big sign not allowing dogs, so we found a shady spot under a tree and ate our caviar and lunch. Honestly, I was not a fan of caviar and after two bites I decided I didn’t need anymore. We ended up only eating half of the two ounces and because we planned to go to the whaling museum after lunch, we threw the other half out. I was sure glad we didn’t spend the 100 dollars on it.

The whaling museum was very interesting and spoke to how Sag Harbor was originally a small little whaling community. We found some rad old-school brass shot glasses for sale at a pretty good price and happily picked them up as a souvenir. After the whaling museum, we went back to the brewery we had found the day before. I enjoyed a quick brewski to get the lingering taste of caviar out of my mouth. While it was a really cool experience to see what the Hamptons were like, I don’t think Sag Harbor is a place that I personally need to go back too.

Done with exploring, we headed back to Salty Foxx where it was time to clean the bottom. I put on my wetsuit, grabbed my mask, and jumped in. The water temperature was a shock, as it was easily 10 degrees cooler than Virginia. The only water we had swum in on our adventure thus far had been off the beach in the much warmer shallows. After taking a moment to get over the cold, I grabbed the brush and began with the starboard side of the boat. Each side of the boat took me roughly an hour, and then an extra 30 minutes at the end to get the keel and the rudder. Cleaning the boat bottom is one of the few times I wish we had a smaller boat and made me a lot less jealous of all the Mega yachts around us. I don’t have a scuba tank or hookah apparatus so I can only stay down for as long as I can hold my breath. I usually dive down to centerline and do a 12” to 18” section scrubbing back and forth before repeating 12” to 18” down the waterline. It is an utterly exhausting task, but our bottom paint is about 3 years old, so we get a fair amount growth rather quickly which slows us down considerably. I clean the bottom every 2 weeks to keep us fast and minimize the risk of any barnacles grabbing a hold on the hull. Done with cleaning the hull, I made Abby and I each an old fashioned and we relaxed on deck. That night, we were treated to one of the most stunning sunsets I have ever seen. The low-lying clouds were a deep orange and the sky behind us became various shades of purple, it truly felt like we were lounging in a painting.

The next morning, we got up at 0600 to catch the tide running out of the bay and raced back across Long Island Sound to New London, Connecticut. We chose New London as our friends, Kirsten & Dan, lived across the river in Mystic, the defender marine warehouse was nearby, and there was a vet close by for Tots. Tots had been bitten by a tick on our stay at the Calf Islands and had been having stomach troubles ever since. We decided to once again get a dock space, as Dan had recently broken his collarbone and the dinghy ride was probably a little much to ask of him. As we pulled into the dock at Burr’s Marina, the gentleman at the marina helped grab our bow as Abby jumped off to grab our stern. Almost immediately after Abby jumped off, Tots jumped off in chase. This was an unfortunate new skill Tots apparently just learned, and Abby had to go chase her down which left no one holding the stern. After finally wrangling Tots and getting the stern tied down, we filled up on fuel and water.

This was our first fixed dock on Salty Foxx, and the tidal range was about 5 feet, so we were a little nervous. The wind direction was from the west which pushed us off the fuel dock but our slip for the night was a port tie which would have had the wind pushing us onto the dock. After talking to the marina, they told us we could stay on the fuel dock all night as they weren’t expected to be very busy if that made us more comfortable. We gladly accepted and immediately went for another one of those land showers at the marina. After we were all settled, the marina guy called and asked if we wanted a ride to Defender Marine, as he was having to go for a client anyway. This could not have worked out more perfectly! I jumped in the truck with him and 15 minutes later we were pulling into the Defender Marine warehouse parking lot. I had ordered three things for store pickup; new charts as ours were last updated in 2019, a tea tree oil odor eliminator, and a new regulator for our grill that I had broken two nights prior. Defender Marine was two for three as the grill regulator was on backorder and wouldn’t be in for at least two weeks. Oh well, my parents would be in Maine in 12 days, so I decided to just ship one to their house and have them bring it. While not having a grill was annoying, of all the things to break it was low on the necessity list. With my charts SD Card and the tea tree oil in hand, we headed back to the marina.

Once back on Salty Foxx, we downloaded the new charts onto our chart plotter without any hiccups and were now kicking back before Tots’s vet appointment. At around 5pm, our friends came and picked us up and gave us a ride to the vet. 300 dollars later, we found out nothing was wrong with Tots and that she probably had eaten a rotten crab on the beach. Oh well, the peace of mind in knowing that Tots did not have a tick-borne illness was worth the cost and we went back down to the marina where we could walk to a restaurant. After having a nice meal with our friends, we said our goodbyes and wished Dan luck on his shoulder surgery the following day before heading back to the boat. That night was probably the worst night of sleep I had on the boat. As we were tied to a fixed dock, the lines had to be set for low tide and thus are often too long if you are not at low tide. This made me paranoid enough to wake up every hour, put on pants, and go check on the dock lines and fenders to make sure we weren’t rubbing up against the old pilings. By morning, the boat still looked in one piece, so we cast off our lines and headed out of Long Island Sound to Block Island, Rhode Island. I don’t think we will willingly be tying up to another fixed dock.

Honestly, Long Island Sound really surprised me in a good way. When we were first plotting this summer cruise, we thought Long Island Sound would just be a blip on the map as we raced up to the promised cruising lands of Maine. After the experiences of the past week, it became clear that Long Island Sound was much more than a blip and that we should plan to do some future gunkholing around these waters.