Sun June 13: Branford/New Haven to Old Saybrook mooring ball

 In which we impersonate yacht club members ...

We were sad to leave Branford yacht club.  Really, over the last 3 days we felt we had become part of the family.  We made friends and even met grandparents and grandchildren - we are about to run out of boat cards.  As we were getting ready to leave our neighbor came over and said “Where are you going? I thought you said you’d be here ALL weekend.  There is a band tonight and you should be here”.   Maybe it is like Stepford and they want to convert us into “Yacht Club Members”.  

 

We could see this monstrosity as we left the area.  That is just embarrassingly awful.

 

The coast is beginning to look like what Mel remembers from summers in Maine.

We have a guidebook (Waterway Guide) with lots of information about the LIS.  Since neither of us has been here before we rely on the guidebook to give us information about places/things to see.  The next place that looked cute was Old Saybrook.  It is one of the oldest villages in the US, originally settled around 1630. We were hoping for a free mooring ball in the North Cove.

We entered the Connecticut River past the breakwaters guarding the entrance.  It turns out that all of LIS is basically a sailing mecca and most of the marinas and mooring fields are filled with graceful sailboats.  So, when we motored into the mooring field we felt like a bull in a china shop.  We grabbed an empty mooring ball - having been directed by the local yacht club to a free ball - and settled in among the sailboats.   It just feels wrong to be a big, wide, diesel powered trawler in a field full of long, slender, graceful sailboats - it's like being an elephant in a heard of gazelles.  

Not only is our boat a big galoot - but she is always facing the wrong way.  Like the kid at the ballet recital that just can't keep the beat.

 

Once tied up we had a quick lunch and then called the launch from the yacht club to come pick us up.  Funny thing was, we were not actually club members.  The launch captain picked us up and then said  “who are you?”  We said, “when we called on the radio we were told to call the launch, so we did!”   Since we were already aboard, he didn’t have much choice but to take us to the dock, so he grudgingly agreed.  On shore we started walking into town where, on a Sunday afternoon, we found almost everything closed. Oh well!  Melanie had found an online walking self-guided tour of historic homes so we followed that and had a very nice walk along the shore of the cove and around back into town.   

Once again we convinced the launch driver to take us back to the boat and we were back on board by 6:30.   Melanie made a lovely dinner and we did our best to keep our eyes open until 9 pm when we fell blissfully into bed....

The only thing that makes a sunset even more lovely!