A Tale of Two Chemists: 75 Miles in one day

75 Miles in one day

Tuesday 6th October 2020

I have to confess that it’s actually Wednesday morning. There was absolutely no way we were going to write a blog last night – we were much too tired.

Yesterday we sailed from Fisher Island on the east end of Long Island Sound all the way to Oyster Bay, about twenty miles east of New York. It had been a very peaceful night in the west harbor on Fishers Island and we awoke to clear skies and flat water. We left the anchorage at 8am, about an hour before the start of the “north west flood” at Race point, which would mark the start of favorable currents to help us moving westwards. We expected with the predicted winds from the south-west at 5-10 kts that we might end up motor-sailing the whole way, but for much of the trip the winds were a little stronger and from a more southerly direction and that gave us long periods of excellent sailing. Towards the middle of the day we reverted to motor-sailing when the winds went light and then in the later afternoon we again switched on the motor to augment our sails when the wind turned more on the nose and current turned against us. When we left Fisher Island our destination was Port Jefferson, ~ 50 miles down the coast and the first suitable anchorage on the north shore of Long Island. However, we were aware that increasing winds and a possibly a gale were forecast for the days ahead so we decided to push on another 20 miles to Oyster Bay, which is a better harbor and closer to New York. The last three hours were quite bumpy with short wind driven chop and spray coming over the bow. We watched the sun set over the west end of Long Island Sound and motored the final five miles into Oyster Bay in the dark, dropping the anchor at 8pm having covered 75 nautical miles in 12 hours.

I asked Gloria and Will what the highlights were for them. Will replied that having spent his entire career in drug-discovery, he was excited to see the Pfizer research site in Groton, Connecticut. He also really enjoyed the spectacular sunset as the sun dipped below the water with the first tall buildings of New York appearing in the distance. Gloria was “excited” to see the large tug-barge combinations, in particular one tug that was stowing an enormous crane! I think in her case the emphasis is on “excited” as in “pants-load” rather than highlight. I myself enjoyed the sunset a lot, but the most interesting part was entering the harbor in the dark on instruments alone (chart plotter and radar).

As I write this we are delighted we made the decision to carry on. It’s already blowing 15 knots and is expected to increase to 25-30 knots with gusts to 40 knots. We are going to move to a more protected spot in the anchorage, but are happy that we don’t have to go anywhere today.

Mike

40 53.038 N, 73 30.747 W