Shelter Island

Wednesday, August 3:  It was a cool morning, with blue skies and wispy clouds and light winds.  We had a really short distance to go to get to Shelter Island’s Coecles Harbor, NY, so we just motored over.

One area of the channel leading in to our anchorage looked on the chart like it would be a little shallow for MerSea, so we went in first and radioed depth soundings to her as we went.  It turns out that there was depth to spare as we never saw less than 9 feet and MerSea draws only 4’ 9”.  Even allowing for the tide, this would be fine.

We invited Stephanie & Lance over for lunch on Bottlenose and had deli sandwiches, fruit, cookies, cool wine, and a nice visit with them.

In the early afternoon, we picked up Stephanie (Lance decided not to go) and dinghyed over to the marina and rented a bright yellow, four-passenger, all electric, smart car that looked like a overgrown golf cart.  It was the same price as renting four bikes and allowed us to see twice as much of the island in the time we had.

No pun intended, but “what a gas!”  We turned heads everywhere we went.  And, we saw pretty much the whole island in a couple of hours, including a stop in town for gelato.  Lots of water views and fine homes, many with lawn sculptures of sea monsters, dinosaurs, and other big animals.

We were just about to wrap up our tour, when the car started emitting this piercing alarm sound.  It was telling us that we were just about out of juice!

We immediately headed back toward the marina, but the car died just before the top of the last hill we had to climb to get there.  The rest was all down hill.  So, three of us got out of the car (Ted was driving) and started to push.  We felt so ridiculous that we all got the giggles and almost fell down laughing.

Nevertheless, we managed to get the car over that hill and literally coasted the rest of the way to the marina, right to the normal spot where they park this little jewel.  We advised the yard hand that came out to greet us that the car batteries might be a little low.

Back on the boat, we had a nice baked chicken breast stuffed with broccoli, wild rice, cheese, and herbs.  The rain showers that the weathermen predicted for today, finally arrived as we ate our dinner snug and dry in Bottlenose’s ample bridge deck saloon.

Tomorrow, we have a serious sail of over 35 miles to Joshua Cove, CT.