Electrical bypass.

Since mentioning it in my last two posts, several people have reached out for more information about the electrical "upgrade" that I've been working on. Rather than send the fairly detailed answer to everyone individually, I am just going to write it up here. This post will contain nothing else, so anyone not interested in electrical details can just skip it; I will return to our regular travelogue in the next post.

As a background, Vector has an isolation transformer, added by her last owner whilst upgrading the shore power system to 50-amp, 240-volt from its original dual 30-amp, 120-volt inlets. Vestiges of the original dual-30 configuration persist in the layout of the main panel at the helm, which is now actually a subpanel.

New breaker "panel" for the secondary inlet. The J-box below it will get a non-metallic cover; the stainless one was all I had in my parts bin.

The isolation transformer, which turned out to have been incorrectly wired and thus not doing its job, is principally to protect the boat from galvanic corrosion when connected to shore power. The way that corrosion happens is that the boat's underwater metals, including the anodes for the cathodic protection system, the propeller and running gear, and the hull itself, once connected to the shore grounding system, can suddenly become the "protective anode" for anything on shore, such as dock pilings, and anything else connected to it, such as other boats with poor cathodic protection.

The isolation transformer solves this problem by severing the ground connection to the shore altogether. The boat serves as its own ground for the onboard electrical system, which is isolated from the shore ground, hence the name. The other way to solve this problem is to use a device called a galvanic isolator, which goes in between the boat's ground and the shore ground and prevents the flow of current unless the voltage difference between the two rises above about 1.4 volts. That does happen sometimes, in what is often referred to as a "hot marina" — the isolation transformer does not have this problem.

Gratuitous photo of the transfer switch that connects the main panel to the isolation transformer, which only works on 240vac input. I wrote this project up in a Facebook post and not here on the blog.

One consequence of an isolation transformer on a 50-amp boat is that not only does the ground not connect to the shore, but neither does the neutral. Only the two hot legs are connected; the isolation transformer secondary has a center tap and the boat's own neutral is generated there, where it is also bonded to the boat's ground. This makes for a very safe system, but it means that the boat's 120-volt (nominal) system is always exactly half of the input voltage.

This means that we must connect our 50-amp shore cable to a 240-volt (nominal) supply. Nothing will work at all if we tried to use one of those adapters that are especially common in the RV world, but can also be found in the boat world, which connects both hot legs together to a single 120-volt hot and passes the neutral through on a 30-amp plug. The isolation transformer sees that as zero volts. We do have an adapter that lets us use two 30-amp receptacles together, so long as they are on two different legs of power.

Another consequence of this arrangement is that when we find a marina that uses commercial three-phase power instead of split-phase, we have low voltage throughout the boat. While the hot-to-neutral voltage on such as system is 120 volts, and boats with conventional split-phase power input arrangements will see that on all their 120-volt circuits, the phase-to-phase voltage is just 208 volts, rather than the 240 of split-phase, and thus all our circuits now see just half that, or 104 volts. It takes a really, really long time to toast a bagel, and all our lights are dim.

A few years back, to cope with the inability to use any shore outlet with only 120 volts, I resurrected parts of the old dual 30-amp shore system. I reinstalled a 30-amp inlet on the aft deck, where there was a an abandoned 30-amp line down to the engine room, and I set this up as an alternate input directly to our inverter-charger, which is also a 30-amp device. To deal with the galvanic issue I used a galvanic isolator, two of which were also abandoned under the helm. And to make it seamless, I installed a 30-amp, 3PDT relay that automatically switches the inverter over to this alternate 30-amp input whenever it is live.

The enclosure for the 3PDT transfer relay. This has been in place for nearly a dozen years.

We've used this numerous times and it has mostly worked well when we've needed it. But the way the inverter is wired to not just one, but two hot legs on its normal feed (from the generator or the 50-amp shore cord) meant that the "max shore amps" setting on the inverter control could not account for the loads to back the charger off correctly. Let me take a moment to explain that. The explanation is lengthy, but it is fundamental to the changes I've just made.

The galvanic isolator is under this mass of wiring for the voltage converter. Two exposed screw terminals are on the left side.

Our Magnum MS4024 inverter-charger, while basically a single-phase, 30-amp device, nevertheless actually has a split-phase input and output, which means there are two hots in and two hots out. One of those feeds the charger and any loads on Hot 1, and the other, Hot 2, is just a pass-through, until the input power goes away and the inverter starts inverting. Then both Hot 1 and Hot 2 are connected to the single 30-amp inverter output.

This is the wiring diagram for the transfer relay. The light blue lines are the neutral, which must always be switched along with the hots.

We have both inputs connected, but only Hot 2 is connected to the output. When shore or generator power is available, we thus have a full 30 amps available to the charger on one leg, and a full 30 amps for loads on the output on the other leg. In order to make the inverter work on a single 30-amp leg of shore power, the relay that switches the input simply connects both Hot 1 and Hot 2 to the single available leg.

Everything works, but now the loads are connected directly to the input power, bypassing the inverter logic, and thus the inverter control has no way to see how much load there is and back off the charge rate to fit it all within a given number of amps. In order to do that, the output would have to be wired to the Hot 1 output. I had to stare at the schematics for power-input mode and inverting mode for a very long time to understand this, so don't feel bad if I've lost you along the way. You can see those diagrams for yourself here; the relevant diagrams are figures 3-1 and 3-2 on pages 42 and 43.

I want to take a moment here to say that I really, really like this dual-input single-output feature, so much so that when the inverter crapped out a year ago, I bought the exact same model to replace it, after first evaluating everything else on the market including Victron models. So changing this arrangement by, for example, switching to single-input single-output wiring was not a desired option.

Connection diagram for the new setup, with arrows to show flow. Innards of 3PDT box are detailed in a separate diagram above. The SPDT is actually inside the inverter enclosure and is straightforward.

With the output bypassing the inverter logic this way when single-leg shore power was connected, I could not set the "max shore amps" to 30 when on 30-amp power, or else we would trip the shore breaker as the charger came in on top of the loads. I had to take a guess at our total load, and set the max amps to the difference between that and 30, less some safety factor. Often I was setting input to as little as five amps, which is just enough to keep the batteries from depleting but not enough to charge them.

We actually have a second battery charger connected to the house batteries, a non-programmable charger good for about 30 amps DC and drawing maybe 8 amps at 120vac. It's there as a backup for the inverter/charger if needed, and normally it runs as supplemental to it when were are running the generator. To avoid the problems with tripping the shore breaker on 20- or 15-amp shore outlets, instead of using the arrangement I have already described to connect the inverter/charger directly to this shore power, we've taken to just running an extension cord out of the boat and plugging this auxiliary charger into it directly, and letting the inverter just run the 120vac loads from the batteries.

With all that as background, I am working on two separate projects to improve things. The first, now completed and pictured above, was to simply split that 30-amp shore inlet line, which previously went directly to the relay ahead of the inverter, into two circuits — one for the inverter relay as before, and a second for a power outlet to run the auxiliary charger. No fancy relay here; I will just move that charger's standard plug from one outlet to the other when needed.

This duplex receptacle has one outlet on the regular shore/gen system, and the other on the aft deck feed. There is no danger or real downside to "forgetting" to move the plug so no need for automation.

This lets us do what we've already been doing, but without having to prop the back door of the engine room open to run the extension cord out of the boat. There's no way to lock up the boat with that arrangement, which has given us pause to use that method when we have to leave the boat someplace. Also, it bypasses the galvanic isolator. Of course, you can't just parallel a 15-amp outlet to a 30-amp circuit, so using the single 30-amp inlet line for this meant adding a small electrical panel with separate breakers for the 30-amp circuit to the inverter and the 15-amp circuit to the charger outlet. They are not intended to ever be used simultaneously.

New MCBs in their enclosure. 16a at left goes to charger outlet, 32a at right goes to the inverter transfer relay.

I did not have the room for full-size NEMA electrical panels or even some of the Blue Sea stuff, spendy as it is. I opted to go with the European-style "MCB" items, which meant a 16a and a 32a because those are the closest available ratings. They make a miniature enclosure for a pair of these, really intended for a single RCD or two-pole breaker. Bridging the input side between the two breakers was a tight squeeze, and there was not enough room at the other end of the enclosure to make all the neutral and ground connections, so I had to add another J-box below it.

J-box for making the ground an neutral connections. Ground comes in from the isolator. You can see the two hots going up to the breaker enclosure. The Wago connectors accept up to 10 AWG.

You may recall I said I used a galvanic isolator on this bypass arrangement, and previously the ground wires to and from the isolator ran from the J-box where the bypass relay is located. With this new arrangement I had to move those wires over to the new breaker box.

This new arrangement facilitates using 15-amp circuits when that's all that is available, but it does not solve the 30-amp problem, and for that I have sourced a 30-amp DPDT relay that will be mounted inside the inverter enclosure in the wiring junction area. This relay will switch the output from Hot 2 to Hot 1 whenever the bypass relay that switches the inputs is active. The big 30-amp, 3PDT power relay that switches the inputs actually has a 12VDC coil, due simply to that configuration being the only one readily available when I built it. A small transformer supplies the 12v when the input is hot, and I've run that same 12v signal over to the new relay, which also has a 12vdc coil.

This is the relay that will move the loads from the bypass side to the controlled side of the inverter output. It will go inside the wiring box to the bottom right. 12vdc control wires are hanging loose. If you look carefully you can see there is nothing at all connected to Hot 2 Out right now.

This final piece of the project is waiting on, of all things, more AWG 12-10 quick-connect crimp terminals (the ones with the yellow barrels). I'm out of plain ones and the fully-insulated ones don't fit the wells on the relay. Previously I was delayed by getting all the way as far as making neutral and ground connections, only to find my giant supply of Wago lever-lock connectors only went as large as 12 AWG. It's always something.

Once this is complete, with charger management working correctly on a single 30-amp circuit, we will most likely opt for 30-amp power instead of 50-amp in marinas that use three-phase power when we do not need either the big air conditioners or the clothes dryer. And we have a marina stay coming up where 50-amp power is $50 per night, whereas 30-amp is just $25 per night, so we will take advantage of it then, too.

Connecticut river cruise to Hartford.

We are anchored in the Thames River at New London, Connecticut (map), after a pleasant five day cruise up the Connecticut River, stopping in Old Saybrook, Essex, Middletown, and Hartford. The weather has mostly been great and we enjoyed the entire cruise.

Vector anchored in Hartford.

Wednesday, after pushing against the flood all afternoon on the sound, we arrived to the Saybrook jetties and then had it behind us, for a nice push up the first few miles of river. We arrived to Saybrook Shoal around 5:30 and dropped the hook outside the buoy line (map), close to the entrance to Old Saybrook Harbor.

Approaching the jetties and the Saybrook Jetty Light, the symbol of the town. Older Saybrook Lighthouse is in the background.

We splashed the tender and putted at low speed all the way down the harbor to the town dinghy dock. As we strolled toward our planned dinner venue, Jack Rabbits, we noticed people setting up their folding chairs in the city park for some kind of concert. Jack Rabbits is basically a bar with a few food items, and their specialty is hot dogs, so that's what we had. They were very good. On our way back the music had started in the park, a pleasant-sounding duo.

Old Saybrook clock. People are gathered in the park for the music.

We had dropped the hook in this spot because it was the end of the day and it was convenient to town. There are a pair of no-wake buoys bracketing the channel, presumably to keep big channel wakes from rolling down into the harbor, but they seem to be mostly ignored. It was pretty miserable in the morning when the traffic started, and it would have been more so had we not awoken to pea-soup fog, which apparently extended all the way across the sound. I started the fog bell as soon as I got up.

Approaching the Old Lyme Draw. This carries the Amtrak Northeast Corridor over the river and is closed quite a bit.

We had arrived to the river at exactly the wrong time in the tide cycle, with the ebb starting in the morning and running through late afternoon. We waited until after lunch to weigh anchor so that we would at least be past the max and on the descending side of the ebb, figuring on a short day to about Portland/Middletown, with an early start on the last of the flood in the morning. Just after leaving the anchorage our odometer roller over the 55,000 nautical mile mark.

Approaching the East Haddam swing bridge. To its right is the Goodspeed Opera House.

We were against the ebb all day, and between that and the freshet it was more than I had counted on and we had to run at a higher RPM to make the hourly opening of the swing bridge at East Haddam, The river was an absolute zoo until we got north of Essex, when it became quiet and even bucolic. As densely populated as Connecticut is, we found ourselves cruising through lush green forest almost the entire way.

Much of the river looked just like this. It was beautiful.

Weather alerts came in all afternoon about a fierce storm that would hit us right at dinner time, and we figured we'd be stuck on the boat for the evening. But at 4:30, as we set the hook in the Portland anchorage just across from Middletown's Harbor Park (map), the forecast and radar had pushed the arrival back to 6:15. We figured we had just enough time to go ashore for dinner if we ate at the place right on the dock, Tate's.

South Church, Middletown.

We were very happy to find the Harbor Park courtesy dock open and unrestricted, if only half as long as depicted in the satellite images. This river is very hard on infrastructure during the spring floods. Tate's was actually quite good, if a bit pricey, with several nice drafts, and on a beautiful evening we ate on the patio. The first drops of rain started to hit us on the very short tender ride home, and we were inside and secure when the storm hit.

Middletown has a real downtown, and mostly going concerns. The hardware store, which I could have used, was closed for the holiday.

The storm was heavy and fast-moving. We had 30 knots of wind and lots of rain, and we manned the anchor watch until the worst had passed. By 8pm it was all over and the sky was clear, while the temperature had dropped 20°. Knowing we had an early start in the morning, I went back ashore to explore the town a bit. I found a vibrant main street with over two dozen eateries and lots of shops, with only a couple of empty storefronts for lease. I did not have time to walk the Wesleyan campus, but my overall impression was that we could easily spend a few days here.

I liked how the fire station was lit. Hard to see in this photo.

We weighed anchor first thing in the morning to catch the end of the flood, which was overwhelmed by the freshet. No surprise, considering how much rain fell in the region. It was an easy three hours to Hartford, and the river was quite lovely the whole way. Considering it was a holiday and the weather was beautiful, there was surprisingly almost no traffic.

It's always something. This section of wire rope, with clamps, came up on our anchor.

We dropped the hook mid-river south of the Founders Bridge (map), just past the end of the federal channel. There would have been enough depth for us to continue past Founders or even the Bulkeley Bridge, but swing room would have been more limited and it would have been further from the dock. After that the river becomes too shallow for Vector, the shoals shift constantly, and the NOAA charts end. Fortunately, the whole river is no-wake through the entire city.

Vector anchored in the Connecticut, as seen from Hartford's Mortensen Riverfront Plaza.

After lunch we splashed the tender and headed off to explore. We went upriver to sound the area between the bridges and just north of the Bulkeley Bridge in case we needed to move up there for whatever reason, and we spotted the dock at the Riverside Park boathouse, one of our landing options. We then landed at the floating dock at Mortensen Riverfront Plaza, where we had seen pleasure boats docked in several promotional photos of the city. The sign on the dock was fairly welcoming, outlining the rules and prohibiting overnight docking.

Seems straightforward.

At the top of the gangway, however, was a locked gate. It was easy to bypass, and there were no restrictive signs on either side. Fortunately, one of the employees of "Riverfront Recapture," the agency that runs the river parks, was passing by on a maintenance cart and I flagged him down. He was the consummate ambassador for the city, giving us some information and explaining how to get to town. When I asked about calling someone for permission to dock, he was certain we would not reach anyone on July 4th. He explained the gate was generally only opened for park events, but allowed that we would probably not be ticketed or even asked to move, and sounded almost apologetic.

This pedestrian suspension bridge connects Mortensen Plaza to one surrounding the Nassau Financial Group building.

We headed back to Vector to regroup, and a short while later I landed at this same dock stag to explore the town. While I was tying up the police marine patrol went flying by me with lights blazing, and they hardly gave me a second glance. Downtown was an eerie experience on July 4th; it's essentially all major business, with insurance topping the list, and very little residential. Consequently, every restaurant and most shops were shuttered for the holiday. There was no traffic and I crossed streets willy-nilly with impunity, as if in one of those post-apocalyptic films where there are no humans left. It did make for a very fast walking tour.

The old State House. The gates were closed for the holiday.

The waterfront is completely separated from the city by I-91, and the only connection from the long skinny waterfront park to downtown is a pedestrian overcrossing that is part of a large, elevated plaza connected to the Connecticut Science Center. Pedestrian bridges connect this to the convention center to the south, or a business plaza to the west, and this is where I came down to street level.

The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum. Inadvertently this was also the best shot I had of the century-old Travelers Tower as well, even with the street lamp in the way.

I had a nice walk past the Old State House, through Bushnell park and past its antique carousel, past the new state house, through Union Station, back through the central business district, and finally through the UConn Hartford campus before returning to Mortensen Plaza by way of the Marriott. On my entire walk I found just two restaurants open, and at dinner time we returned ashore to Bears Smokehouse, an upscale BBQ place adjacent to UConn with an impressive array of draft handles and excellent BBQ. We sat in the bar, the only full-service area; the main dining room is cafeteria-style.

The White Oak Leaf Throne of Bushnell Park, a dead offspring of the Charter Oak, was carved into interactive art by a local artist. 

Hartford did not have any official fireworks on the 4th, saving that instead for the finale of the big Hartford Bonanza festival in Bushnell Park on Saturday. But there were plenty of amateur fireworks we could see from the boat, including some fairly impressive ones. The pops and explosions had died to a dull roar by bedtime. It was actually a very quiet and low-drama 4th.

I had to press my phone to the window glass to snap this photo of the carousel.

When we first arrived we had thought we might spend two days. But we were a little put off by having to bypass the locked gate to get ashore, no matter how welcoming the park staff sounded. The Bonanza did not call us, and I had seen most of what I came to see on Friday. We decided to forgo the second night here in favor of spending another night in Middletown instead.

Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch.

Even with the freshet behind us, I wanted to wait until the ebb to get underway. Saturday morning I made another pass at dialing in the engine alignment, then dinghied down to Charter Oak Landing, another dinghy dock option, finding it also closed due to ramp damage. I then crossed over to the Great River Park, across the river on the East Hartford side. That had a lovely riverfront trail, and I ran into more Riverfront Recapture staff, who were again very welcoming.

Connecticut State House.

We got underway on the ebb, and with the current behind us it was a quick trip back to Middletown. Sadly, my adjustment did little to mitigate the driveline vibration. We dropped the hook mid-afternoon just a few yards from where we stopped on the upbound leg (map). I tendered ashore and walked up to the Wesleyan campus just to stroll around; on a holiday weekend in the summer I had the whole campus to myself.

Union Station, upper (track) level.

I walked back through downtown, stopping in the downtown branch of the Wesleyan RJ Julia bookstore, which was quite nice. In the evening we returned ashore together and had dinner at Sicily Coal Fired Pizza, which I chose during my walk because they had a wall of draft handles. Sadly, the pizza was not the best. Like Hartford, Middletown's waterfront is separated from downtown by a highway, with either a pedestrian tunnel at the north end or a road bridge at the south as the only options; we made a loop of it.

"Stegosaurus" by my fellow alum, Sandy Calder.

I returned in the morning to offload trash and recycling and to pick up milk at one of the c-stores downtown. That took me past Tate's, right at the top of the gangway, who were serving a nice-looking brunch, with the smell of bacon wafting down the river walk. It was very tempting. Afterward I took yet another stab at the engine alignment; I've now lost count of the number of adjustments I've made.

The heart of UConn Hartford is the old Times building.

We once again weighed anchor on the ebb, timing our arrival to the East Haddam swing bridge for the 3pm opening, where we were just a few minutes early. In stark contrast to Friday, where the river was mostly quiet north of Essex, from here south it was go-fast boats and jet-skis in every quarter. We ended up abreast of Essex at 4:15 and we dropped the hook on the Essex Shoal (map), across from the town. This is a no-wake zone, aggressively enforced, and even though traffic was thick for the rest of the afternoon, everyone pretty much kept to the 5kt speed limit.

Louise at The Travelers umbrella.

At dinner time we tendered over to the free city dinghy dock and walked to the historic Griswold Inn, locally known simply as The Gris, for dinner. In continuous operation since 1776, we planned to eat in their historic Tap Room, but live music sent us to The Library instead, where it was not as loud. Food and drink was excellent, if the service a bit slow and inattentive.

The Bulkeley Bridge, completed in 1908, is nicely lit and can be seen from our deck under the Founders Bridge. It nowadays carries I-84.

Essex understands cruisers, with three free dinghy docks, a pumpout boat, and a three-page document that includes a guide to anchoring nearby. This morning I tried to call the pumpout boat, which would have been very short notice, but we learned the pumpout was free at the Safe Harbor Dauntless marina, who also let us stay for 45 minutes to fill our water tank. We had a short walk in town via one of the dinghy docks before weighing anchor for the pumpout, and managed to get caught in a rain shower on the way home.

Vector in Portland/Middletown as seen from the Wesleyan boathouse.

We had a fair tide from Essex all the way here, a short cruise of just 20 nautical miles. The last time we were here, a decade ago next month, I wrote that we had no need of coming back, but after reviewing all our options to wait for good weather to leave Long Island Sound, it really came down to this, or try to hunt for one of the unobtainium spots in Mystic Harbor.

Memorial Chapel and South College on the Wesleyan University campus.

We are, just as last time, literally the only boat in the anchorage, here in the height of summer cruising season. Of the two dozen moorings the city installed back then, just two are occupied, neither by a transient boat. Going ashore we were the only dinghy on the free dinghy float. No one comes here.

The Arrigoni Bridge, from Middletown to Portland, at sunset.

We went ashore at dinner time and strolled the main restaurant row, Bank Street. Lots of places are dark Monday, but Blue Duck was open and had decent food and draft beer. The place we ate a decade ago is long gone. Still, there are plenty of going concerns and the city is doing a good job with the downtown. We need provisions and in the morning I will walk the half mile to the grocery store.

Essex waterfront.

We are waiting on calm seas to cross from the sound to Narragansett Bay. That crossing is open to the fetch of the entire North Atlantic to the south, so we need these southerlies to clock around. That might happen Wednesday, but more likely Thursday. In either case we will move to an anchorage just north of Fisher Island to stage for the crossing. We expect to visit with friends in Rhode Island, and when next you hear from me, we will be under way eastbound toward the Cape Cod Canal.

Mattitucked in.

We are underway eastbound in Long Island Sound, bound for the Connecticut side and the Connecticut River. We got a late start from Mattituck, New York this afternoon waiting for enough tide to comfortably transit out the channel and inlet.

Vector looming in the compact anchorage in Mattituck.

Tuesday after I posted we headed ashore and landed at Danford's marina, in our usual dinghy spot. I went to check in at the office and get the gate code, expecting a complimentary tie-up for eating at their restaurant, which is what we were told on our last visit, where we used the dock for a full week and the new dockmaster waived the fee when we told him we'd been in and out of the restaurant a few times. Evidently between then and now the marina sold off the restaurant and no longer provides dock & dine, but at least our $10 dinghy fee was good for a full 24 hours.

We walked into the restaurant and, sure enough, it was completely different. Somehow I had not noticed when I made the reservation that the name had changed from the Ferryman's Grill, a fairly casual joint, to the Black Pearl Seafood and Chophouse, which is a white tablecloth joint with stratospheric, steakhouse-style prices. However the entire staff, apart from the manager, is still kids on summer break, not the 40-something veterans you'd find at a real steakhouse.

Both our brains initially registered this motorcycle helmet in Port Jeff as a ball fender and we did a double-take.

Louise's burger, ordered medium-well, came almost raw, and my chicken Cesar was overdressed and limp. The server knew nothing about the menu. At least they comped us for the burger and also a dessert once the manager got a glimpse of the under-cooked burger, but we'll not likely be back. There are plenty of better choices in this town, and the dinghy fee is the same no matter what.

Miniature version of the P. T. Barnum at the ferry dock, I assume a parade float. The real ferry in the background is her sister ship Grand Republic, backing out.

Monday morning I was up early to have coffee, tender ashore, tie up, and catch the 7:50 bus up the hill to the Staples, a procedure I ironed out last visit as we waited in Port Jeff for our yard visit. I was expecting two items from Amazon, but I already knew one was delayed and would miss us. It was a long morning to pick up ten bucks worth of Wago connectors. Any regrets I might have had about not waiting around another half day for the other item, a clamp for lifting the engine, were put to bed when it was later delayed yet another day, and as of this writing it's still not there.

With a half hour before my return bus I looped through Shop-Rite looking for beer, and picked up a few bagels at a place right next to the bus stop. I was back at Vector by 9:15 and we immediately decked the tender and weighed anchor to catch what little was left of the ebb on the sound. The sound was again calm and we had a nice cruise.

I caught this suburban deer as we passed on the bus. Sorry, best framing I could get from the moving bus. I thought it was a statue when I first spotted it.

We arrived to Mattituck Inlet at a tide of +3', which made it very comfortable to be exploring a new inlet known to be challenging. We had a Corps of Engineers survey from November of last year, which made it all pretty easy. The navigable channel is very narrow in a few spots, and at low tide we would have mere inches under the keel, but we had no issues and now we have a breadcrumb trail.

We were pleased to find the anchorage completely empty on arrival, save for a small runabout on a permanent mooring encroaching on the designated anchorage, which is clearly delineated by four spar buoys. We picked a spot right in the middle where we had good swing room for our 6' draft (map); by nightfall three more boats were sharing the anchorage.

We snapped this photo of the Erin Miller in Port Jeff for our friend, Erin Miller. The boats behind her and alongside her were both with us on the hard at Derecktor Shipyard.

I splashed the tender and went ashore to have a look around. I had been told the dinghy dock was free, but there is a brand new sign this season with pricing and QR codes to pay. The fee is for "one weekend," whatever that may mean in the context of arriving on a Monday. That's still a bargain, considering anchoring is free but the marina not even a hundred yards away is (gulp) $8.95 per foot, with a two-night minimum. That's a whopping $465 a night for Vector, and they don't even make the beds. Trash, bathrooms with showers, and a water spigot are provided at the park with the dock.

New fees for the dinghy dock. They were putting larger floats in place while we were there.

Love Lane, the main street downtown, comprises a little over one block of shops and restaurants. I found a nice, surprisingly well-stocked hardware store, a very nice high-end bodega, a couple of restaurants, and an LIRR station. The Village of Mattituck is in the Town of Southhold (as I have written before, NY political boundaries are byzantine), and it feels a lot like the other villages in Southold where we have spent quite a bit of time.

A little further along are a brew pub, which does not seem to be open much, and a high-end Italian place. I did not walk the next half mile to the big shopping plaza out on Main Road, which sports a supermarket, drug stores, and a couple more restaurants.

Quaint downtown Mattituck.

In the afternoon we got a video call from our friend Tim, who crossed the Atlantic last month on his sailboat s/v Paquita and is right now cruising Spain. He spent a lot of time pumping up how nice it is and that we need to go ourselves, lamenting we are not there together. I've been providing some remote support and troubleshooting for his electrical system over there, and so of course the call ended with me looking up circuit breaker specs. In the evening we returned ashore together for dinner at Love Lane Kitchen right in the middle of town, which was pretty good.

At 1:20am we were awakened by the weather alert going off, and we staggered upstairs to see if we needed to prepare. The radar showed a severe thunderstorm headed right for us, and so we pulled down all the outside covers and put out another 20' of anchor chain. Of course that made it miss us altogether and all we got overnight was a sprinkle.

Lombardi's Love Lane Market. It smelled really good in here.

Our friends Dorsey and Bruce have been hanging out in Block Island, and every morning we've been checking the forecast to see if we could make it across to join them, maybe staying through the 4th. Tuesday was no different, but this was really our final attempt. When the weather turned out, once again, to be uncooperative (and getting worse) we had to wave off the whole affair and decide we'd be stuck on the Long Island Sound side of The Race until after the holiday weekend.

With that there was no reason to rush out of Mattituck, and given how hard it was to get there, we decided to just spend another night. We then turned our attention, while we were in a town with a Walgreens, to filling a prescription that, due to a controlled substance, must be filled every 30 days, and which we last filled in Hampton, Virginia. I'm glad we took the day off, because this ended up being a two-hour ordeal.

These buoys put to rest any concerns about anchoring in what looks like a turning basin on the chart.

Half of that time was spent fighting with the phone tree and being hung up on by the local branch three separate times. We finally decided it best to just walk into the store and speak to the pharmacist in person, and so I took off solo and make the mile trek down to the shopping plaza. While the store in Virginia had told me on the phone that it was just a matter of the pharmacist in NY calling them to effect the transfer, I learned that NY law does not permit pharmacy-to-pharmacy transfers and the doctor would have to send a new script. And the med probably could not be here until after the holiday anyway.

As long as I was down there I went in to the Mattituck Market grocery store, which turned out to be very nice, to see if they had any beer I liked and to replenish the strategic cream cheese supply, which had been exhausted by the morning bagel deployment. On my way back home I stopped into yet another high-end mini-market, Center Cuts Two, which includes a nice butcher department — North Fork people apparently are real foodies.

These breakers give us more flexibility in using the smaller cord. The minuscule breaker enclosure had no room to make the neutral and ground connections so I had to add a J-box below it.

With parts in hand I spent the afternoon finishing up my electrical project in the engine room. This is to improve our ability to use 30-amp or 15-amp shore power when 50-amp is unavailable. We have a marina stay coming up this month where this will come in handy.

With the Italian place dark on Tuesdays, we decided to try the restaurant at the fancy expensive resort marina, Windamere. The restaurant web site said they had free dock-and-dine Monday through Thursday, but this was apparently news to the marina staff. They honored it, because it was on the web site, but by this morning they had taken it off. Dinner was fine, if overpriced, which seems to be the norm around here.

We're going to miss this kind of absolute calm. A view of the anchorage toward the park, from our flybridge.

This morning we finally had to come to grips with the fact that we had no concrete plan for the holiday weekend. It's a bad idea to be driving aimlessly or hunting for anchorages on a holiday, especially this one where they close off parts of waterways for fireworks. We spent the morning ruminating about heading to Peconic Bay and maybe Greenport or Sag Harbor, but we expect both to be crowded and we've been there a lot.

After spending some time with the chart looking at where we can get that would be protected, interesting, and still keep us behind the protection of Montauk Point today, we decided to cross over to the Connecticut side and poke into the Connecticut River at Saybrook. We've managed to miss it on every previous pass, so it will be something new. And who knows, maybe we'll take the river all the way to the head of navigation at Hartford.

Weather whiplash.

We are underway eastbound in Long Island Sound, headed for Port Jefferson. It's nearly flat calm out here, excellent travel conditions. We got a fairly early start to catch the last of the fair tide, but as I start typing just a little after 11am we are pushing against it. We should have the anchor down in the early afternoon.

Sunrise over Great Kills Harbor, Staten Island, NYC.

Monday was a very long day. Seas picked up a little as we approached New York, but it was just a light chop. We had a nice dinner underway before intersecting the Sandy Hook Channel, and were surprised to find ourselves threading through the menhaden fleet, whom we had left behind in Reedville, Virginia just a week earlier, at anchor off the ocean side of Sandy Hook.

One of Ocean Harvesters' big menhaden boats, a long way from Omega Protein's Reedville plant.

We dropped the hook in a familiar spot just of the Coast Guard station (map) around 7:15. It was a very warm evening and we ran the pilothouse air conditioner the rest of the evening, starting the gen just before bedtime to cool down the rest of the boat and charge the batteries back up for the night. Seawater temperature kept us comfortable overnight in the stateroom.

The air conditioning was back on before 8am on Tuesday as a heat dome descended upon the entire region. The tide was absolutely wrong to try to make our way past Manhattan, and we ruminated over morning coffee about where to go to wait things out. We could not stay where we were, as the ferry wakes are miserable. It's only tolerable overnight, when the ferries are not running.

We're anchored in 25' but the beach is just a few boatlengths away.

With temperatures headed for the century mark, a dock with power would be ideal. But we are in the part of the country where a marina slip is north of $350 per night, if there is even a slip in our size range to be had. By contrast, it costs us maybe $2 per hour to run the generator, so even running it 24/7, which was not likely to be necessary, is less than a tenth of the marina rates. We decided to just head across Raritan Bay to the protection of Great Kills harbor, on Staten Island, for the day.

Here, we reasoned, we would have wave protection all around, but still get enough of whatever sea breeze there was to keep things a little less brutal than they were forecast to be inland. We had the hook down in one of the few open spots (map) before noon. We spent the rest of the day inside with the air conditioning running.

Battery Weed, Fort Wadsworth, defending The Narrows as we pass under the Verrazzano.

On the way to the harbor I had reached out to Kim and Michael aboard The Perch, who were docked in the harbor. I was hoping to connect over a beer, but by the time we got settled in, all agreed it was just too hot to even try. With the mercury over 100, Louise was not sure we could even go out for dinner unless it involved no walking at all.

A little before dinner time I called the Atlantis Marina and asked if we could tie the tender up for dinner at the Marina Cafe, which is right on their property. I made a dinner reservation for 6, after the worst heat of the day would be past, and we had a brutal five minutes in the dinghy to get ashore. The restaurant was blissfully cool and the food was good. Despite the very casual-sounding name, this is a white tablecloth place, with prices to match as well as what I like to call the waterfront surcharge. They also have an outdoor tiki bar right next to the dock, which is more casual. I felt for the staff, working in the heat.

We passed this research vessel completely motionless in the river, despite the current. She is using dynamic positioning to hold her position.

Wednesday was another brutally hot day, but first thing in the morning, while it was still in the low 90s, I tendered over to The Perch and spent a pleasant hour with Michael, Kim, and their pets Whistle the dog and Margo the bird. Whistle spent a good part of the hour in my lap. After I got home we again spent the entire day inside with the boat closed up and the air conditioning on. I cranked out what indoor projects I could.

By dinner time we were on the down side of the heat wave, and with the temperature hovering right around 90 we tendered ashore for the half-mile walk to Goodfellas, which we remembered as being good from our last visit. I was seated where I could see the enormous stack of fresh, uncut loaves of Italian bread, and as we paid the check I asked if they were for sale. Yes, as it happens, for $3 apiece, and we went home with one. This after eating more or less a whole loaf with dinner.

Downtown Manhattan as we leave the Buttermilk Channel.

By Thursday morning the tide had shifted to be in our favor with an early start, and so we weighed anchor at 0600 and headed for The Narrows. The ride got progressively choppier the closer we got, and rounding the eastern end of the island we found ourselves in 25 knots of wind on the nose. Against the incoming tide that made for a "rage" most of the way through the harbor. At one point on the East River our anemometer topped out at 43 mph, or 37 knots. Subtracting our forward speed that's still 30 knots, just below gale force.

We whizzed through Hell Gate at 11 knots, and were on track to have a push almost the whole way to Port Washington. But it ran out somewhere around the Whitestone bridge, and we soon found ourselves pushing against nearly a knot, even thought the tables said it was still behind us. This is the effect of those same high winds piling all the water up into the western end of Long Island Sound, with some of that water looking to escape down the east river.

I had to snap this because that is, I kid you not, the "Tooth Ferry."

We had the anchor down in our usual spot in Manhasset Bay (map) before lunch. By this time the temperatures had dropped into the 60s, a full 30° cooler than it had been just the day before. We were glad to be out of the oppressive heat, where we were running the AC all day and the generator about one hour of every four to keep the batteries charged. I warmed up by working in the engine room on an electrical project that has been on my list for a while, and whose parts were in my last Amazon shipment.

At dinner time we put on full fall regalia and tendered ashore for casual Italian at old standby Amalfi, followed by a provisioning stop at the Stop & Shop in the same plaza. In the evening we were treated to an unexpected but distant fireworks show over the sound at City Island, apparently in celebration of the last day of school in New York City.

I love this glass chandelier at Bosphorous.

Now that we are in the protected waters of Long Island sound and are well on track to make our commitments in a month, we can be on a more relaxed pace. So when it looked like conditions on the sound would not be great Friday, we opted to just spend another day in the familiar harbor of Port Washington. I spent the morning trying to finish my electrical project, at least until I ran into a brick wall when I found I do not have the right size Wago connectors on hand.

The last of the Edmund Fitzgerald porter that I picked up in Hopewell. I am on the hunt for another porter.

On a very pleasant afternoon I had a nice walk down to the Ace Hardware, who had the screws I needed for a hatch project. I also stopped at West Marine, who had nothing I needed, and Target, where I expected to pick up some wine until I realized, after two circuits of the grocery aisles, that NY is one of the states where you can not buy wine in the grocery. I stopped at a bottle shop instead.

At dinner time we tendered over to the Manorhaven dock, figuring on a pleasant walk to dinner, only to find the gate padlocked. It's a seasonal dock, but we are well in season and the village web site says the dock should be open. Oh well, nothing to be done about it on the weekend and so we just tendered back around to the North Port Washington dock and walked to Salvatore's from there for pizza and beer.

Sunset over City Island, or thereabouts, from Manhasset Bay.

Yesterday would have been a good day to continue east, with conditions similar to today, but while we were in Port Washington we decided to try a new stop, in Mattituck, as we head east from Port Jeff. It's a tiny anchorage there, with room for just a few boats, and word is that it gets crowded on the weekends. So we opted to slow down by a day, which also allowed me to place an Amazon order to Port Jeff that would not arrive until today. We'd rather spend the extra day in Port Washington, where everything is easier, than Port Jeff, and so we just stayed put.

That gave me a full day to try to dial the engine alignment in a bit further, and once I had it, I got out the big torque wrench and tightened everything down. In the afternoon I made use of my newly acquired screws to install a pair of handles I had ordered on Amazon onto our aft boat deck hatch. I'm not sure why it took me a full decade, and a friend's broken fingers, to get around to doing this; I think it is because we were afraid we'd kick it when standing on the hatch as we deck the tender. We ended the day with dinner at Bosphorous before doing exactly that (without kicking the handle) for an early start.

New hatch handle so we don't have to work our fingers under the edge any longer.

Update: We are anchored in a familiar spot off the power plant in Port Jefferson Harbor (map). When we arrived some sort of alarm was blaring from the plant, which went on for a very long time. I am sad to report that the alignment change did not help and actually made things worse, so we stopped mid-trip to back it out, which also did not help. So tightening everything down is the culprit this time and I will have to do another iteration. It is said that a pro can align an engine like this in a couple of hours but that an amateur can expect to spend up to six, and I am well out of pro territory now.

As long as I had to drill two bolt holes, I put this one on the other side to make it easier to close, too.

My Amazon packages are coming to a drop at the Staples store, which closes at 6, and since they are not yet delivered it looks like I will be heading up there on the county bus first thing in the morning. That should still give us plenty of time to get to Mattituck. Tonight we'll dinghy ashore to Danford's Marina and eat in their restaurant, which is actually pretty good.