Long, slow day on the Sound

We are again under way in Long Island Sound, on the all-day run from Port Jefferson to Gardiners Bay. There are really no other inlets along the north shore of the island accessible to us between the two. At this moment the tide is against us, and we're doing less than five knots, although we had a bit of a push for our first two hours this morning.

We ended up spending the night in the cove outside the inlet, as the swell was tolerable once we rounded Old Field Point. This time we dropped the hook closer to the point (map), to keep a bit of distance from the channel and the endless procession of ferries. After sunset things got even calmer and we had a very pleasant night under the slowly rotating red and green beacon of the lighthouse.

Zeepaard had turned into Huntington Bay yesterday, shortly after they passed us in the sound, and I was somewhat surprised to see her again just as we were setting the anchor. She passed us and turned into Port Jeff, and later I could see her tied up at one of the marinas from our flybridge. She's only a few knots faster than us, so it's hard to imagine what she did in Huntington Bay that only took a few minutes.


Approaching the Orient Point Light and Gardiners Bay.

Several folks wrote me directly and in the comments to say that the interesting sailboats we saw yesterday are a type known as a Nonsuch®. According to the owners' group, some 950+ boats were made, and it would appear that many are here in the Sound and along the New England coast. Considering I've not seen one before, I would guess they are less common elsewhere.

A couple of folks wrote to say they were catboats, and, technically, this is correct, although the catboats with which I am familiar are more usually gaff rigged with a more conventional boom. The Nonsuch has, instead, what I've learned is called a "wishbone" boom or wishbone rig, which is what made them appear so unusual to me.


Vector must also be a catboat -- here's the cat to prove it, in her usual under-way basket posture.

Catboats are more than a little familiar to me, as the boat on which I first learned to sail, an Alcort Sunfish, is really a lateen-rigged catboat. Alcort is long gone, but the Sunfish is still made, now by Laser, and is still a workhorse of the youth training fleet, as well as a popular rental at watersports shacks everywhere.

After a nice dinner on the aft deck, I descended to the engine room with my bag of freshly acquired plumbing parts and hooked up the wash-up sink. One of the great things about having replaced all the fresh water distribution piping in the engine room with PEX is that it is super easy to tee into a line for a new fixture. The parts I bought were to adapt the sink-strainer style drain down to a 3/4" vinyl hose, to run to the stuffing box sump for discharge overboard. It's working great and I even got to use it after getting my hands dirty on some engine checks.


Hot and cold running water!

Today's cruise has been very pleasant, with no traffic and one long, five-hour leg in deep water (over one hundred feet) where I could work on the blog, update some routes, and even clean up after some project work around the boat. I've also started working on the write-up for the transfer switch project, which is at the stage where I am ready to swap it into place as soon as I can get a few hours in a cool engine room without the generator running. We even ran the water maker for several hours, adding about 50 gallons to the tank.

Update: We are anchored now in Gardiners Bay, near the town of Orient (map). Right after we rounded the Orient Point Light, we once again saw Zeepard coming in right behind us; apparently Port Jeff was an overnight stop for them. We can see the ferry landing from here, and a marina with a restaurant, which we might sample for dinner. Tomorrow we will either head west toward Greenport, or south toward Sag Harbor. We're waiting on word from our good friend Cora, whom we have tentatively arranged to meet somewhere in the area, pending her flight schedule from the west coast.