Northport - at anchor

Even though it's called Sand City, the beach is mostly pepples

Howdy! Matt here. Today we had a lovely pancake breakfast. We then proceeded to remove ourselves from Port Jeff. On the way out of the anchorage we raise our mainsail and after getting a little ways farther out into the sound we raised the jib and cut the engine. Fleetwing got to experience a pleasant sail across the sound over to Sand City, Northport. She reached speeds of up to 6 knots with a strong 16 knot wind behind us. We didn’t have to tack until two thirds of our sail was over. I was caught using the head mid tack. I found myself up when I should have been down and came up into the cockpit with the swift realization that we tacked. I got some good reading in while we were sailed today. I have gone deep into the pages of the sci-fi masterpiece, Dune. We are now sitting anchored in Northport waiting to see whether we’ll get hit with a storm. Happy Sailing!

Peddles or not, the kids still enjoyed the water

At last we sailed! We came out of Port Jefferson and sailed across the Sound. Naturally, you could not point directly at our destination, that was right on the bow! We were just happy to have good winds of 10 to 12 kts and we took advantage of the opportunity. Once on the other side we tacked to point towards Northport but then in looking at the weather radar which showed severe weather on the way, we decided to motor the rest of the way (directly into the wind, of course, the wind gods know where you want to go!). It feels kind of powerful to be the only boat on the sound that controls the wind so effectively. Other boats must have fair sailing with winds on the beam since we didn't see any other boats headed in our direction. 

The front looked fierce but we didn't get much rain and no thunder or lightning

The cool front was coming with the associated storms so I made a quick trip to shore with Hoolie and the kids got some swimming in but we had to cut it short to get back to the boat before the storms hit. As it turned out, we snuck through a gap in the front and barely got any rain at all which didn't bother us any. Now it's about 15 degrees cooler and it feels nice. 

We're headed for Manhasset on Friday but there are storms coming again so we'll head out in the morning to avoid the afternoon storms. The real chancy departure date is from Manhasset heading for Haverstraw Bay. There are storms predicted all day long. If there's no opening, we'll sit Saturday out and leave on Sunday. The weather is king.