August Tales

Position: 41°12’47.4″N 72°39’18.9″W

We’ve been making steady progress northwards. As you saw from our New York videos, we took a small, but entirely delectable, nibble out of the Big Apple. Sailing up the Narrows and under the Verrazano Bridge was quite spectacular. I never tire of watching the endless ribbons of traffic high above our heads and thinking that but for the grace of Aleta there go I.

Decades ago as a small lad I sailed into, and out of, New York with my family as we went to England and back. Crossing the Atlantic on liners like the Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mary, and even a German ship the Bremen (née SS Pasteur) as a kid meant having the run of a giant sea-going playground for five days. It was simply the greatest fun! I think in some ways those experiences poured enough salt into my veins to inspire this adventure.

My parents spent several years commuting between the UK and the States. Mostly on family business, like giving birth to me. My maternal grandparents lived in Philadelphia and summered on Cape Cod. Once we even took a gigantic American car back with us to England. Not only was the steering wheel on the wrong side, the monstrous size of the thing meant that turning almost any corner in an English village was both arduous and an opportunity for learning new swear words. I have no idea what my parents were thinking.

New York

New York Harbor is somewhat diminished these days, as much by the vertiginously tall buildings on Manhattan, as the mega cargo ships which have dramatically reduced water-borne traffic. There’s still plenty of commuter boats zipping back and forth across the Hudson to New Jersey to keep us WAFIs (Wind Assisted F***ing Idiots), as we are known to the Hudson’s professional sailors, on our toes. Ghosts of the old Atlantic liners are still there in the shape of faded block lettering on wharf signage with words like “Cunard’ and “P&O”.

Tying up at 79^th Street gave us the pleasure of stepping off Aleta and into Central Park with the sure knowledge that within a few blocks one can buy anything, absolutely anything, right away. Why even bother with Amazon.com in New York City?

At it’s heart these days, New York is a dog city. Dogs are everywhere, happily coexisting with all the busyness of life. We walked Marlon down Broadway and marched unaccosted into an Apple Store and even Trader Joe’s where he made friends with children and old folks alike. Many parts of the country ban dogs from anywhere food is served for ‘health reasons.’ But it seems to me that if dogs are well behaved and under control, then why not let them sit quietly under your table while you eat lunch?

Oyster Bay

On leaving New York, our first stop up the East River and on into Long Island Sound was Oyster Bay where Teddy Roosevelt kept his summer home. We ogled the real estate as we motored up the sound in the limp air. Crenellated remnants of the golden age of American capitalism sit alongside the new nouveau riche’s attempts at summer-home individuality. Generally they fail. McMansions end up looking more similar than distinct. Besides, once you’ve seen forty 15-room manors with sweeping lawns lapping the waterfront, only the truly ostentatious stand out.

Our cruising guide remarked that oysters once again flourish here. The fruits of the bay are slurped for a mighty mark-up in the restaurants of New York and make a good business. That, our guidebook went on to say, gives Oyster Bay a little more of a working feeling and is all the better for it.

Landing a dinghy, though, was a bit of an expedition. After hailing the yacht club, we were whistled out of Roosevelt Park’s swimming area by the life guard. Eventually we found a state boat ramp where we tied up for a couple of hours and explored the town.

At the dog friendly Oyster Bay Brewing Company we tasted a couple of beers, then sauntered down the street for a slice of pizza from Nico’s place. Nico’s is narrow, with barely enough room for five four-tops, a counter and a huge pizza oven across the back wall. It’s the epitome of Sicilian/American comfort food with all the maps of the old country and live Italian soccer (sorry, football) games you would expect. Cramped as it is, it was pretty clear that Nico’s is mostly a take-out business.

Port Jefferson

Continuing east through the flat-calm, hot and heavy summer air we made our way to Port Jefferson, one of the busier harbors on the north side of Long Island.

Ferries from Bridgeport ply their way back and forth keeping a clear path through the harbor with loud horn blasts and hailing when necessary. These titanium white behemoths sail in only one direction. Cars enter the ferry through an articulated bow that clamps shut when it’s time to leave. The ferry then pirouettes in the small pool of the harbor and sets on its way. It’s quite a trick.

Dominating the port is a large power plant that was more benign than obtrusive. The soaring red and white-topped smokestacks kept whatever was puffed out of them from choking up the air down below.  We picked up a mooring from Port Jefferson Launch Services. Forty bucks seemed a fair price for the night as PJLS, as you might have guessed, provides launch services, showers and laundry facilities.

Launches are popular in New England, flitting about the harbors collecting and delivering crews to their boats. Like a Sunday church service in a new town, launches bring together likeminded strangers to meet and greet, many of whom (quite rightly) pay Aleta high compliments. Combine that with a dog as lovable as Marlon and, well, the world is becoming our boon companion.

Dining with Marlon in tow our options skew towards the pet friendly, which translates to a garden or patio-enabled locale. The Port Side Bar and Grill has tasty sandwiches and bar snacks, along with a thrash metal playlist and a rollicking selection of microbrews from across the country. I opted for an IPA from Cigar City Brewing out of Florida. It was surprisingly quaffable.

Faulkner Island (or if you prefer, Falkner Island)

GRIBS, gridded binaries, are a digital tool for presenting weather forecast information. Sometimes they’re right, often they’re completely wrong. Relying on GRIBs is probably best done as an indication of what might be, while continuing to do all the other things that prudent mariners do when trying to predict the weather. Meanwhile, high pressure over the region moved sluggishly, stagnating air in cities and stalling sea breezes on the water. We hoisted the iron genoa (turned on our engine) and pointed Aleta’s bow northeast.

Faulkner Island and it’s pretty octagonal lighthouse, built in 1802, is now a National Wildlife Refuge and home to thousands of extremely happy terns, gulls, and sandpipers. We found 18 feet of water on the west side of the island with a boundless view of the lighthouse and dropped anchor. Given the heat, we quickly changed and all three of us jumped in the lagoon to cool off, forgetting momentarily that when the weather radio talks about sea surface temperatures, it means just that, temperatures at the surface. A foot into the water things cooled considerably, but we were all that much happier for it.

Falkner lies only three miles from Connecticut’s southern shore and our cell signal was simply dandy, dulling the unexpected sense of remoteness we’d been enjoying. Downloading the latest GRIBs, we saw they called for 10 knots of wind from the southwest, gusting to 16 and then dropping back down overnight. If the forecast was correct we could expect some moderate waves and a bouncy night. If it was wrong, we’d either be stable and hot, or dragged onto the reef in need of rescue. The forecast was broadly correct and Aleta did her securely-at-anchor-bow-nod all evening. Such was the tradeoff of enjoying Faulkner’s western side with its spectacular sunset and bird show, for calmer waters in the lee of the island where we’d have slept more soundly.

Block Island

Currents and tides are a thing up here. Getting out of Long Island Sound means either navigating The Race, another spot of raging tidal currents, or rounding Fisher’s Island. Either option is best done on a fair tide with the current moving the direction you want to go.

Waking early, the evening’s winds had once again dropped to nothing. We timed our departure to coincide with maximum flow through The Race. Once moving the current gave us a big shove in the right direction. Zipping past Valiant Rock we turned Aleta towards Block Island and the entrance to the Great Salt Pond. At last the wind picked up to 15 knots and with the favorable one knot current we were making 8-8.5 knots under jib and main alone.

Block Island is many things, but most importantly it heralds the end of the mid-Atlantic states and the start of New England proper. As if to prove the point, its main town is New Shoreham. Shoreham is both a suburb (kinda) of London, and a resort on England’s south coast, Shoreham-by-Sea. Anyone care to guess which one Block Island’s main drag is named for?

We launched Nell, our erstwhile dinghy, and made our way across the harbor to a brand new dinghy dock next to Dead Eye Dicks. From there it was a short, one mile walk into New Shoreham for dinner, ice cream and touristika. Some of the town’s restaurants have been in business for 100 years, such is the timeless attraction of the place.

PACAs

Back in the Pond, we slept soundly and awoke to service boats hawking ice, collecting rubbish, and a couple of singing entrepreneurs selling coffee. Hauling up the 200’ of chain we had deployed in the high winds the night before, we turned towards Block Island Sound. The channel into and out of the Great Salt Pond is narrow, well-marked with buoys, and overrun with morons, particularly those driving stinkpots.

Hemmerdinghy, (MMSI 367615840), an expensive looking 52’ motor cruiser, hung on our starboard stern quarter most of the way out. A Freudian psychologist could have easily predicted what happened next. Stupidly named, Hemmerdinghy was even more stupidly captained. Anally retentive, sexually repressed with an Oedipal complex to boot, the pinheaded MOFO sped up as soon as he pulled onto our beam. Putting all of his scant testosterone into opening the throttle, he kicked up a five foot stern wake that would have swamped a lesser boat than Aleta and worse rudely awoke Tai.

Carol, at the helm, retained most of her sang froid, while I waved a series of digital salutes and farted in his general direction. Needless to say, I called both the Coast Guard and Block Island’s harbor master to lodge a complaint. Perhaps a new mnemonic, PACA (Power Assisted Complete A***ole) is appropriate. The rest of the day was smooth sailing.

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