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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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"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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.