September 1and 2 -- Newport to Chocomount Cove on the North Side of Fishers Island,to Port Jefferson, 34 and 55 Mil

The first of this pair of days was a lovely sail and since we did not get off the boat (in either port) I have no land based activities to report. We planned to stop at Stonington CT, where Dodson would rent us a mooring for $58. But NOAA forecast only five to ten knots from the southeast at night and so the security/cost of a mooring seemed unneeded and a bother. We have walked the one lovely main street of historic Stonington many times and saw no need to go ashore there. So we looked for an anchorage. One, on the east side of Mason's Island, where Past Commodore Tom keeps his boat, "Rally Point", would have done nicely and his is a very hospitable Club, but it is exposed to the southeast. Chockomount, on the north side of Fishers Island, on the other hand, was new to us, ideal for the wind, and we anchored in 24 feet of water with 80 feet of snubbed chain, and were the only boat in the broad cove. Great view of the Connecticut coast. well lighted by the several towns across Fishers Island Sound. The land on Fishers is all privately owned and no access to the island itself by dink was available from Chocomount had we wanted to go ashore.
How we got to Chocomount: There was so little wind in Newport Harbor that we raised the main while on the mooring. We passed this craft docked by Fort Adams

while motoring out and then the Crystal Symphony, the very ship on which we cruised Alaska, June 2-10, anchored in the harbor. Of course, it got here by sea through the Panama Canal while we flew between the coasts.

Once out in Narraganset Bay, the wind was a broad port reach and not really strong enough to fill our big sails which flopped about. Once we got away from land the wind built. After the starboard turn and gybe off Point Judith, we were on  a broad reach, almost a run. I connected the preventer lines to protect against the accidental gybe and we sailed slowly until the wind built up a bit more. To get more speed we would have had to steer north of west --  close the beach and I saw the possibility of avoiding that by sailing wing on wing, with the genoa out to starboard. This worked for about an hour and a half, until it too had us closing the beach. But by then the wind was sufficiently south of west and we jibed the main and sailed on a port broad reach all the rest of the way along the western half of the Atlantic coast of Rhode Island.

We saw the big modernized but intentionally old fashioned looking hotel on the hill and then Watch Hill Light.

We sailed through Watch Hill Passage and most of the way through Fishers Island Sound to our cove. It is circled by the large homes of the rich-who-do-not-want-to-be-famous. Underway almost six hours at an average speed of 5.9 knots with a lot above 7.5 but a lot of time going in the fours as well. A warm sunny day with good visibility and enough wind to actually sail. Hooray.
I recalled making the same passage with my friends, Jim and KC, before this blog started, when it was cold, grey and nasty and we had to beat into it all the way. This time, just the opposite. And we timed the tide right too. Sunrise at Chocomount:

Though Chocomount was nice, my  mistake was not going 20 or thirty miles further with the good sailable wind on the first day, becaust the next day's long passage from Chocomount to Port Jeff was windless. Here is a view of the Connecticut coast to starboard  from eight miles away (the white dot on  the horizon is a 53 foot power boat
(AIS told me her length) half a mile away) and next the North Shore of Long Island, from six miles off our port beam. A bit boring, won't you agree?

Well actually there were brief interludes of weak wind, but from behind us, at speeds less than our six knots of boat speed over the bottom, causing a couple of knots of apparent wind on our nose. The main was up throughout but it did no work.

In Port Jeff we chucked a right, anchored behind the beach and checked for possible dragging. In came a boat that looked like it had a Harlem YC burgee. And a Past Commodore Burgee, too! It was "Thai Hot", Bob and Laura's Island Packet, in from Block Island. I had helped him sail her back from Bermuda in perhaps 2008, and he crewed with me on ILENE's big passage in 2010, from Hampton Virginia to Tortola, BVIs.  Again it is a very small world. And here are views the next morning around the anchorage.
Thai Hot with the Port Jeff smokestacks to her port side and the town further left.

The west, north and east sides of the anchorge with one of the ferries just come in from Bridgeport through the cut in the beach.