Thimble Islands, Branford, CT

It was fortuitous that we decided to leave Easthampton for the Thimble Islands on Saturday, August 24 instead of Sunday because the waters were very calm unlike the following day when the wind really picked up.  It took us about four hours to make the crossing and we didn’t arrive in the Thimbles until 6:45 in fading light.  What a beautiful setting!  We were surrounded by small rocky island outcroppings, some with only one home, a few with multiple dwellings and some with none.

We were just a short dinghy ride from the little ferry dock in the hamlet of Stony Creek which is part of the town of Branford.  

That evening we settled into our peaceful mooring where we would remain the the next few days and ate leftover chicken and corn that Ernie and Sophie had generously packed for us along with a lovely zucchini!  The sunsets each night were beyond stunning!

On Sunday, after a leisurely morning, we took the dinghy into the ferry dock.   The Stony Creek section of the town of Branford  is a quintessential New England coastal village. The aforementioned ferry is a tiny vessel that takes people back and forth to the islands.  

Lynn’s cousin, Sally, who lives in nearby Woodbridge picked us up in a “vintage” 1988 Mercedes!  We went to lunch at the Chowder Pot where Lynn and Jonny feasted on two more of their New England favorite foods, Rhode Island clam chowder and baked scrod. We had a very nice visit with Sally who dropped us off after a few hours.

We had a quiet night aboard Zendo (after another gorgeous sunset) watching an old John Wayne western on one of the very few channels we could get on TV.

We had rented a car from Enterprise for Monday so they came to pick us up and we got an early start driving up to Waterbury to visit Lynn’s Aunt Lillian who is 99 and her husband Bob who is 101!!  It was a real treat getting to see them again. Uncle Bob was sharp as a tack, even carving the roast chicken that their daughter Janice brought to make chicken salad for lunch.  Aunt Lil was doing OK but she seemed a little less herself than on previous visits.  It’s always a special treat to be with them. They have been married for over 75 years and though they have had their share of difficulties and heartache over the years, they have always been, to Lynn, a model of an especially happy and strong marriage.  We always make time for a visit with them when we are in Connecticut.

Afterwards we stopped at the cemetery where Lynn’s parents are buried to pay our respects.

From there we drove down to Milford to meet one of Lynn’s childhood friends, Bill Rappoport.  Billy was working but he took time out to meet us for a coffee at a nearby diner, where the waitress clearly loves him having served him apparently for years!  It was great catching up with him. We see Billy and his wife, Lisa periodically when we are in Connecticut and we even saw them a few years back when we were all in the Bahamas at the same time. Billy is one of the few of Lynn’s core group of friends from high school who hasn’t retired yet.  

Since we had a car for the day, we took advantage of it to stop at a local grocery store to reprovision and then decided to go into New Haven to treat ourselves to one of their world famous pizzas.  Big decision, between the two rivals for the top spot - Sally’s or Pepe’s, but it became easy when we discovered that Sally’s was closed on Mondays.  That gave us a chance to try (amazingly for the first time for both of us) Pepe’s white clam pizza, rated the #1 pizza in America.  Boy, was it ever delicious!  With the addition of bacon on top it was like eating clams casino on a luscious crackly crust.  We ordered a bottle of Chiani to go with it -  more on  that later.

When we arrived back at Zendo with our bags of groceries, we realized we didn’t have the half full bottle of wine that we had taken with us from Pepe’s. Oh well! It was too late to dinghy back. Maybe if we were very lucky it will still be on the dockside bench where Jonny forgot it when he goes back the next morning to return the car. 

On Tuesday morning Jonny dinghied back to the dock to return the rental car and lucky for us the brown bag with bottle of wine was still there!  After he returned we took Zendo over to the Branford Yacht Club to fill our tanks with water.  This is the yacht club that the owner of our mooring ball now belongs to. Jonny spent some time helping him with some boat repairs while Lynn made a zucchini casserole from the beautiful local squash and tomatoes we had from Ernie and a local farm stand.  We eventually returned Zendo to our mooring ball.

Later that afternoon, another set of old friends came to visit.  Peter and Paula Zimmer live in Longmeadow MA, but they were in nearby Clinton visiting Paula’s mom.  Lynn has known Peter since grammar school and all four of us were at UConn together. We hadn’t seen them in too many years.  So they came over with their sweet rescue dog, Jake, and we had a really great visit catching up on each other’s families and lives. They brought local corn on the cob and beautiful heirloom tomatoes from their garden so along with the zucchini casserole, we had a good dinner sitting on the aft deck watching the sunset. It’s such an incredible treat to spend time with old friends with whom we can reconnect as if it was yesterday!

This was to be our last night in the lovely Thimble Islands and we would be very happy to return to this tranquil spot in the future!