Norwalk Cruiser Report

[Don Pantino DDS PC]

Hi everyone,

Believe it or not we had a wonderful adventure to Norwalk Cove Marina this weekend when the dust settled, we had three boats join us Miya, Ohana and Artful. We had the tide with us, but not much else we had all kinds of wind, rain, very poor visibility so it's what I would have called a perfect day to brush up on your instrument sailing using your radar, AIS and radios. From the time we left Mount Sinai Harbor once we passed Port Jeff I did not see land again until the Lighthouse in Norwalk. For Kathy and I, it was a rousing sail about 80% of the way. During the trip we experienced no rain, light rain, horizontal rain and all kinds of wind allowing us to practice our reefing skills. We were almost to Norwalk when the thunder and lightning showed up at which point we dropped sails and motored down the Long channel. Eventually everyone else did about the same. We did meet up with a very large tug and barge, and we learned about the importance of using your  radio either on scan or I prefer to use two radios. I had one set as always to 16 and the other to 72 which we were all communicating on. We were almost to Norwalk when the tugboat captain was trying to hail Carl John on Miya who happened to be right in his path. Dave Visser on Ohana heard the call and hailed Carl John on channel 72 in time for him to adjust his course and communicate with the tug captain on channel 16. We learned later that when using his two radios, Carl had both of them set to channel 72… a good lesson for us all! Arriving in Norwalk was interesting as the weather was so lousy. The marina sent everyone home so in driving rain and wind we managed to help one another in to our slips. Everyone had time to get into some dry clothes take a hot shower, a nap or watch the World Cup. 

We decided to push the cruiser party till later and we all met on Blue Angel for dinner. What a great time. We had fried chicken, homemade coleslaw, potato salad, a wonderful pasta chicken salad, pigs in a blanket, homemade cookies and fruit for dessert as we shared our individual adventures trials and tribulations! Everyone slept very well that night and thankfully, there was a nice breeze low humidity and the temps had gone down. Sunday morning was a whole new day blue skies a few white fluffy clouds… just gorgeous! Two boats Artful and Miya were the first to leave Sunday morning while Blue Angel and Ohana decided to stick around for brunch at the Sunset Grill, where we met up with some longtime friends from Long Island, who had moved to New Haven and came for brunch with their dog Ellie. There was a beautiful breeze, live music, a wonderful guitarist strummed in the background, and I had probably the best lobster omelette I've ever had. Brunch was indeed a success! Ohana left shortly after brunch and later informed us that they preferred the trip over on Saturday, although the weather was much nicer on Sunday they were set upon by those mysterious and nasty black flies making the trip back even more challenging than the trip there. I recommended they have a spray bottle of Windex and a towel around next time. That's how Kathy and I handle them! We decided to stay another day and went back to the boat with our friends from Norwalk to catch up on life. They left shortly before the final World Cup match which Kathy and I watched afterwards we met some very nice people who had come down to enjoy the afternoon on their beautiful boats on either side of us. I love how friendly and warm people are when they are enjoying their boats…. one of the many benefits of cruising!  I decided to grab the tide in the morning got up a little early… another beautiful day we made it back to Mount Sinai in a little over three hours thank goodness the flies never arrived!!!