Mattituck - At anchor

Mattituck has a great dinghy dock!

We tackled our chores that had piled up on us in the morning: laundry, took on water, bought boat supplies, washed down the boat, added 4 cycle oil to the outboard fuel tank and did a few other things; typical cruising chores. I missed my crew, Matthew. He was a big help on the boat.

Leaving our slip was not planned very well. I let the aft line go and went forward to loosen the bow line and noticed the aft of the boat drifting towards the piling. Not wanting a scrape, I pulled on the bow line to bend the boat around the piling - which was successful. However, as I pulled on the bow, the aft, naturally, moved further away from the dock and the only place I could board the boat was at the bow. Unfortunately, the bow pulpit is slanted outward and as I hung on the bow, I wasn't able to get any footing. Just short of giving up (or going in the water) I was able to grab hold of the jib roller and pulled myself aboard, whew!

Beautiful weather - beautiful sunsets

As we headed towards the Connecticut River and North Cove, we found the wind to be directly behind us, ugh. One very good thing about Long Island Sound is that you can alter course and still have a good harbor for the night. Looking at the charts and the direction of the wind, we chose Mattituck to be ideal. We had a 15 mile sail with the wind off the beam, we averaged 6 kts all across the sound.

After a year of sailing the ICW, Mattituck no longer seems so shallow. The lowest water we saw was 5 ft (corrected for low tide) and we only draw 4' 9". However, we still like to traverse Mattituck with a little tide under the keel, today we had 5' of tide. The anchorage was not crowded and we may stay here a few days to just chill out. Nice to be retired.