August 6 -- Watch hill to Coecles Harbor, Shelter island, NY.

An interesting passage though very little sailing. Our course took us out of the eastern end of the Long Island Sound/Fishers Island Sound body of water into the Atlantic Ocean via Lords Passage, a Passage I had never sailed before. Every other time I have been in the northern part of the Sound we traversed either The Race, south of Fishers Island or Watch Hill Passage, north of it. These are the paths over which tons of tidal flow pass in or out. And the strong tidal flows through these areas roughly parallel our course, speeding or retarding our passage. But today we went south to the "Between the Forks" area of eastern Long Island, NY,  and Lords Passage (closer to the eastern end of Fishers Island) was more direct. I imagine that the sailing challenge here is that the water is flowing E-W and hence pushing the boat to one side of the passage or the other as we head N-S. The trick is to avoid being pushed out of the passage onto the rocks, though the passage is rather wide. I image this potential problem because we did not experience it. We successfully timed our departure from Nappatree Beach to get us to Lords Passage at slack, with no current. 
Once through Lords, we found ourselves near Miraval and fog came up. I had the pleasure of doing for Huck and Cindi what Selwyn Feinstein on "Evie F" did for me, many years ago: I turned on our radar, locate d Miraval as a dot on the screen, locked onto it as what the military calls a "Target" and kept Huck and Cindi informed of where they were and what else was in the neighborhood. At its worst we could not see them when they were only 1/8 of a mile away. I finally had the opportunity to pass Selwyn's kindness forward. Here is Miraval, much closer, after the fog had lifted to just a gray day.

Staying with Miraval meant a very slow passage, less than four knots. We moved  part of the time under Genoa only (plus tidal current), but mostly by engine. But the slow speed was also needed, to delay our arrival at the Coecles Harbor Boatyard until the tide came in, because there is a stretch, within the harbor but before one gets to the Boatyard, where the water is only five feet deep.  Our course, approximately 240 degrees magnetic, meant that we passed both Fishers Island and The Race on their SE sides, with flooding westerly into the Sound through The Race giving us favorable tide. And as predicted, it rained. Not heavily (and we do have a dodger and bimini) for about an hour.
Once on our mooring at the Boatyard, we lowered the dink because they do not provide launch service and took bike rides through the bucolic countryside before showering and another delicious dinner aboard.