Mystic, CT. Home number one.
We got here about 12 days after leaving Annapolis. It's never taken us more than a week or so and lately it has been much quicker but this time we had a stop for Carol's travel.
We left Annapolis by noon the day Carol got back from California and went all the way to the Bohemia River which is the northern part of the Chesapeake Bay, almost to the C & D Canal. It was another new anchorage for us. This snowbird round trip cruise saw us go to quite a few new to us anchorages. This would prove to be the last. It wasn't bad, a little exposed but only slightly to the wind direction expected. It was fairly shallow but nothing we're not used to. Just not used to being shallow in the northern part of our cruising range.
We were looking at a very small weather window to get to Long Island Sound with wind easing a bit then returning with rain along with it. We departed at first light and headed to the canal against the current. By the time we got to the eastern end we had current with us and it it stayed with us most of the way down Delaware Bay. We encountered America 2.0 a couple of times and got some photos while they were sailing.
We were motoring, what wind there was was on the nose, and they were tacking back and forth across the shipping channel. We believe they were timing their arrival to New York City. We were trying to time our arrival at Hells Gate the next day so we had different agendas.
Towards the end of the day the sun came out and it was merely cold and choppy, not cloudy, cold and choppy. Going around Cape May was slightly rough but not too bad, mostly swell just off the nose. The wind and seas faded as we got into the overnight hours but it got cloudy again and started to rain. Due to the cold we only did hour on hour off watches and didn't get much sleep. On watch we were cold and wet, off watch we were only cold but we've had worse. Much worse.
Did I mention it was cold? In Annapolis I had days in the high 70s and a day it got to 85. The very next day it was 55 and it stayed that way for quite some time, nearly two weeks. Yuck.
We got to the Narrows-Veranzano Bridge (New York Harbor) at about 1100 Sunday morning, tried to see Mike and Heather on the Brooklyn shore and went through Hells Gate around 1300. Didn't see them. They saw us.
We picked up a free mooring at Port Washington, Manhasset Bay and they were nice enough to let us stay a week without paying. Not a busy time of the year yet. Carol flew off to Chicago and we went to brunch with Mike and Heather at the end of the week. A very cold, rainy, windy week.
From there it was to our usual spot at Port Jefferson and, because of the weather, we stopped in Mattituck for a night before heading home to our Mystic mooring.
Here for the summer. Not as much boating planned this year but we'll get some in. Wedding planned for September so that may keep us busy.
