Wrapping up in New York

We are under way once again in Gardiners Bay, with Southold and Greenport receding in our wake. It's been a lovely visit. We did, however, over-eat.


Sunset from our deck after returning from aLure Saturday night. The "tower" is an old chimney, absent whatever it served.

For the most part, the weather has been gorgeous. We spent part of Monday wandering around Greenport. While we're not big shoppers, it's always interesting to people-watch in a tourist town.


Vector at anchor, from the parking lot of the yet-to-open marina.

Tuesday was the exception to the nice weather. A monster storm blew through in the morning, and we opted to remain on board, manning the anchor watch, for the worst of it. Gusts were forecast to 30 knots, but I would guess we saw gusts mostly in the 20s. We did push out to the end of the chain for a while, but our Bruce anchor held fast.


Seen on the docks in Greenport. Scooters are a "big yacht thing."

Unfortunately, even after the bulk of the storm had passed, the rain persisted most of the rest of the day, and the bay was choppy, even though we had only a hundred yards or so to cross to get ashore. Louise donned her long raincoat and I my waterproof motorcycle pants and jacket for the very wet tender ride ashore.


The ravages of the sea. This cinder block was part of a collapsed retaining wall, high above the beach.

As luck would have it, we had already arranged to spend Tuesday afternoon at the outlet mall in Riverhead, so that Louise could take one of the nieces shopping in person for her birthday gift. I needed a few things myself, so I was happy to tag along.


Best part of new shoes? The box, according to Angel.

Louise ended up with a conservative dress for herself, after finding herself at Arlington a month ago without anything truly appropriate. I bought two pairs of boat shoes and some new sandals, as I've worn through that many in the past year. I also bought a nice lightweight rain jacket at the Columbia outlet, as the only other waterproof jackets I have are heavy motorcycle jackets.

Everyone needed to return to central Long Island yesterday, and so we had a round of bagels and stayed through lunch, then one last quick provisioning run in the car. We helped them close up the house before saying our tearful goodbyes at the marina when they dropped us off. It's hard to know when we will see them again, given our current cruising plans.


Sunset over Long Island Sound, from the cliff behind the house.

With so many people involved and quite a bit of chaos, we were exhausted from our whirlwind visit, and after we got back to Vector yesterday we basically just crashed hard. We nibbled on Saturday's leftovers from aLure for dinner, along with some salad. This morning, we slept in until way past 8am.

The timing of today's short cruise is driven by the tide at each end, and so we did not weigh anchor until just before noon. That gave me a chance to at least upload the photos for this post while we were still on free WiFi, and get a few things put away.

Today's first stop, just twenty minutes or so after weighing anchor, was the Mitchell Park municipal marina in Greenport. There we availed ourselves of the free pumpout, and took on as much fresh water as we could in the time we were tied up to the dock. They also allowed us to offload some trash into their dumpster.


Final sunset in Southold, after loading the tender on deck.

Today's cruise will take us around the eastern end of Plum Island, which we are passing now as I type, then across Long Island Sound to the Thames River, and on to New London, Connecticut. I'll have to condition myself to say "thaymes" rather than "tems" as they do in the older London.

We've arranged to meet our friend Eric in New London for dinner; he has an hour drive from where he lives in Windsor, but this is as close as we will come on this pass. I'm not sure if we will just stay a single night, or perhaps two. We'll see what New London and the Thames have to offer before deciding.