Old Saybrook, CT

On Friday, July 18, after rowing to our friend’s dock, Jonny and Archie walked all the way over to the repair shop that was working on our outboard.  Unfortunately, he discovered that they couldn’t commit to fixing it within our timeline for leaving.  They had it for a week but didn’t start working on it until the day before which was very frustrating.  So he returned to Zendo and pulled up anchor and we began our trip to New Haven at 10:30.  Jonny was putting away the fenders and lines and I was steering the boat which is not unusual for us. What was unusual for me is that I neglected to turn on the tracks feature on our chart plotter. This feature allows you to follow the same track that you came in on and avoid any shallow spots or hazards. I was navigating carefully keeping between the red and green buoys (or so I thought) when we ran aground! I was looking at a distant pair of buoys and missed seeing the ones that were a sharp dogleg to my left.  Niantic Bay is very shallow and to traverse it one must follow a very circuitous route winding  back and forth almost like a switchback.  It is fairly well marked but it turns out that people run aground here all the time.  The bad thing for us was that it was dead low tide. Jonny tried for about 30 minutes to get us out, to no avail. We finally called SeaTow and they came in another 30 minutes and tried to pull us out, also to no avail. They advised us to wait a bit longer for the tide to turn and fortunately they waited with us. So after another 15 minutes they successfully pulled us out.

I was very frustrated with myself for not navigating properly and for not turning on the tracks feature. And I was so grateful that Jonny didn't get upset with me (or if he did he kept it well hidden)! We proceeded to the far end of the bay where we had to stop to pick up the outboard. This presented another small adventure.  Jonny had indicated that I should stay on Zendo in a rather tight area near lots of docked boats and just hover there while he rowed our dinghy to the dock and picked up the outboard from the repair shop and rowed back to Zendo.  This proved to be very intimidating for me because I was going to have to keep turning Zendo in circles in a very confined space to avoid hitting any of the boats that were docked and I needed to do this in the narrow channel with other boats going in and out of the channel. As he rowed away he must have sensed my anxiety as I tried to avoid getting too close to the docked boats (unfortunately there are no brakes on boats)! He phoned me and suggested what I had been thinking which was it would be much safer if I just turned the boat around and slowly retraced our passage back to where we had anchored and by the time I returned he would be back with the outboard. So that is exactly what I did and needless to say, I was extremely careful to follow the channel!

Just as I returned to where I left Jonny he returned, and as I hovered with Zendo he tied the dinghy to the back of the boat and climbed aboard. We cruised out to an open bay area where he was able to hoist the dinghy on the davits and we could proceed on our voyage for the day. Thank goodness, we executed those maneuvers successfully!  And even though the repair shop couldn’t get to the bottom of the problem, they made a few adjustments and didn’t charge us.  It appears that the outboard is working OK but still leaking a little oil.  We’ll get it overhauled when we’re back at our home port in Delaware City.

By now it was 1:30 and we didn’t have time to make it to New Haven so we decided to go as far as Old Saybrook where we could get fuel and hopefully a free town mooring.  We had smooth sailing after all the excitement and arrived in Old Saybrook at 4:30 after stopping to buy fuel.  

We caught a mooring very close to the town dock which is good since Jonny could easily row to it. But we stayed on board to relax and have a drink after our rather stressful day. Jonny eventually took Archie in to pee while I made dinner (meatloaf, mashed sweet potatoes and summer squash). We had a relaxing evening onboard and made an early night of it.  It was a stressful day but fortunately everything worked out in the end.