Whisper Returns to New England

After a coupe peaceful nights in Mamaroneck, NY, Whisper made way on a quiet, windless morning. I pointed her bow between two moored boats toward the outer harbor, completely oblivious that the channel marker to starboard should be to port. It was this big, red, pointy thing known as a nun buoy. The mnemonic for the U.S. Lateral Buoyage System color scheme is red right returning, which implies red left leaving. Sure enough, Whisper skidded to a stop in unseen mud.

My immediate reaction was to reverse the engine, to no avail. The mental calculus thereafter was: is the tide coming in or going out? and has anybody seen me? Thankfully the tide was rising, floating Whisper free in a few minutes. With tail tucked tightly between my legs, I very very carefully motored out onto a mirror calm Long Island Sound.

LI Sound lived up, or down as the case may be, to its reputation for light winds and strong currents. Being anxious to be in New England, we motored down sound to the eastward. It wasn't until day 2 that the breeze filled in from the southwest giving Whisper favorable wind and current for a race towards The Race where LI Sound meets the open Atlantic. Currents over The Race can reach 4 knots which, for a small sailboat, means you must go with the current to make any headway.

As the day was getting late with inclement weather closing in, I opted for Fisher's Island Sound and a night in Stonington, CT. As it happened, both night and rain descended simultaneously making our approach to Stonington, in confused currents, a rather tenuous affair. Finding a spot to drop anchor amongst the hundreds of moored boats at night was a bit of a trick, but with the anchor finally down I dropped into my bunk for the sleep of the dead.

At first light, with favorable current, we exited Long Island Sound between Fisher's Island and Watch Hill, RI. The eastern end of Fisher's Island is named Wicopissett Point, known to generations of Down East mariners as "Wicked Pissah Point". The path through rock and reef is known as Lord's Passage, no doubt a reference to a particular prayer uttered by many of those seamen, as this is a particularly thorny little patch of water. Judging by the number of shipwrecks noted on the chart, either those seamen were not praying earnestly enough or God was busy doing something vastly more important like making sure those heathen Democrats didn't get health care reform passed.

Short of sleep and feeling the broad Atlantic swell for the first time in 3 years, I set course for that most beautiful of out islands, Block Island. A tourist zoo in summertime, early autumn is a most pleasant time to be at Block. As the next day turned out to be "frisky" in the monotone parlance of the National Weather Service automated marine broadcast, I enjoyed an extra day of island life, rowing the dinghy through the Great Salt Pond's estuary and walking to the far corners of the island.