Thursday, August 4: We had a long way to go, today, to get to Joshua Cove, CT, so we weighed anchor at 7 am. The weather was balmy, but otherwise like yesterday.
We were motoring and leading MerSea out of the anchorage, calling them occasionally on the VHF to report water depths. The tide was lower than when we came in, yesterday, and had about an hour to go to the low.
We made it past one known shallow area and were negotiating the final turn to leave the harbor. It was narrow, here, and the current was running swiftly, causing a whole line of breaking waves in front of us. Then…
CRUNCH! What the?? Aground, again!!
MerSea saw what happened to us and was being pushed along by the swift current, so they quickly made a slight left turn, passed us on our port side, and made it safely out of the harbor.
Ted initially tried to motor us off the pebbly bottom, but this didn’t work. Then, he got into the dinghy and Sheila and I prepared two kedge anchors for him. Ted set the first one out from our starboard quarter. He wanted to set it more forward, but the current was so swift that his electric dinghy motor was not powerful enough to drag the kedge anchor rode through the water to the spot he wanted, so he just dropped the anchor where he could.
I cranked it in, but it had no effect.
Next, Ted took the second kedge and was able to set it just off our starboard bow, right where he wanted it. The current was already easing up, so his motor was able to get the job done. I cranked it in, but still nothing.
About a half hour later, the boat started to bob a little and make crunching noises. Within a few more minutes, we broke free! We recovered the kedges and were back on our way, having lost only an hour from our intended schedule.
Once we rounded the Orient Point lighthouse, we were hoping that the breeze would be strong enough and behind our beam, so we could have nice spinnaker run to Joshua Cove. But, alas, it was too light to sail, so we just motored.
We had a strong following current that gave us a boat speed over the bottom of 7.5 to 8 kt, so we got to Joshua Cove around 1:30 pm – quite a bit earlier than expected.
This area is very rocky. The bottom is granite. If you were to go aground here, it would be ugly. As it was, it took us two tries to get our hook to set here.
Because of our early arrival, we had time to launch the dinghy and go on a tour of the area. One of the first things we saw was that someone had built a nearly full-scale replica of Stone Hinge in their side yard. Amazing! Lots of houses with modern and other interesting architecture, as well.
We eventually went over to the Sachem Head Yacht Club, tied up to their dock (with their kind permission), and went for a walk around the neighborhood. By now, it was quite warm, so after we finished our walk, we were really thirsty. The club had set out a big water cooler for their junior boaters and we nearly drained it!
Stephanie & Lance invited us over for happy hour after which, Ted and Lance fixed their windlass controller that had stopped working. They bypassed an offending connector and just hot wired it to the boat to get it going, again.
Back on board Bottlenose and later in the evening, we had pulled pork barbecue, green beans, salad, and the trimmings.
Tomorrow, we head for Black Rock Harbor (near Bridgeport, CT).
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