Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Northport with No Wind

The morning was dead still. Not a breath of wind, the water was glassy calm. To top it off, there was a touch of a drizzle in the air. We motored out of Port Jefferson resigned to using the iron genny all the way to Northport. Long Island Sound was like a lake, not a ripple to disturb the mirror-like surface.

In due time we reached Northport and found our favorite anchoring spot by turning to port by the first green can beyond the sand spit. Since the water was so calm, I took advantage of the conditions to run a calibration of the autopilot compass. It consists of two slow turns while the autopilot compares the internal compass heading with the GPS and builds a correction table for storage in the autopilot’s memory. The last step is the syncing of the autopilot heading readout with the GPS.

With all that done, we’re anchored in 8 ft of water at low tide, all alone in the anchorage – lots of room. We’re headed to Manhasset Wednesday, Haverstraw on Thursday and should be back at PYC Friday afternoon. We’ll spend the night on the boat and off-load Saturday. I have two major tasks to get the boat ready for our ICW trip: first is to replace the radar radome and second is to replace all the hoses in both heads. I really do not look forward to the latter but after 6 years of a lot of use, it’s time.

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