Saturday, September 1, 2007

Branford - Great Sail and Lenny's


We had a full moon tide running down river this morning with the boat reaching 9 kts at some points! We had a strange incident at the bascule bridge. As we rounded the bend in the river, we saw that it was up, hurray! But as we approached we saw it start to descend, darn (and a few other words...) However, after it came about 3/4 down, it stopped and after a bit started to go up again! We called the bridge on channel 13 to find out what was happening (would it start to go down again as we crossed under the bridge?) but we never got a reply. Regardless, we barreled on through without incident and never found out the reason for the strange behavior.

Wind, wind, glorious wind!! 25 miles of glorious wind to Branford! We had a beam reach all the way and even with a reef in the jib and main we were routinely reaching 8 kts (8.3 max) over water (9.3 over land per the GPS). With the wind coming off the land, there were little in the way of waves, nice smooth water and lots of wind.

At Branford we were met on the dock by our refrigerator repairman. We've known him for three years and he came out to meet us so he could start work right away. He found that indeed the compressor was the problem. He said he works on 50 or so boats a year and the compressor is usually the most dependable part of the refrigeration system, lucky us. He will be installing a new compressor (cost of one boat unit) and tonight we will be serenaded with the sounds of the vacuum pump evacuating the coils in preparation for adding cooling fluid tomorrow. So if all goes well, by tomorrow at this time we will be back in business with an operating freezer/refrigerator.

Naturally, when we're in Branford we eat at Lenny's. They have the best fried seafood of anywhere I've eaten. We sampled up and down the coast from Maine to Florida and Lenny's is simply the best. Lest someone think I'm free with my praise, here's what the New York Times had to say about Lenny's in their 8/29/07 edition:

"Putting together the experience from the trip, I decided to try my hand at customizing my meal at Lenny’s Indian Head Inn in Branford, Conn.... What was placed in front of me 10 minutes later was a platter with clams nearly as large as those at the Clam Box. They had a light golden almost tempuralike coating. And the bellies? They were briny, sweet and so juicy a lobster bib wouldn’t have been out of the question."

Here's a link to the complete review, click on NYT, the review of Lenny's is in the last paragraph on page 2. We'll be here one more day and we'll have to put up with going to Lenny's again - tough work! Follow our progress at Return Trip.

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