Cutty Hunk to North Cove, CT River

We left kind of early this morning, a smaller boat name Gratitude that was on a mooring beside us, wished us good luck. They seemed nice folks. We decided to keep going and try to tuck into Long Island Sound for Irene.

Dad took up most of the day calling different harbors in Long Island Sound trying to find a slip in a safe harbor. We were kept busy, memorizing names, crossing off people from the list, looking up numbers, ect. Right now we are trying to aim for Millford, CT.

But I really shouldn't be writing this post because it was not very pleasant for me, it was quite rough and I ended up getting sick. :( I hate that. It was a long day too.

But after I ate some, I felt much better and a bit more lively. And the waves were much smaller by now. I was talking with Dad when he interrupted me to ask Victoria if that was the green marker; pointing off into the distance. Something was wrong. That marker wasn't suppose to be there. "...No I think it's two light houses..." Victoria replied.

Dad put the boat on autopilot and went up to the front of the cockpit to get a better look. "There is a lot of rough water around there splashing up on it. Is there a sandbar there?" Dad asked more to himself than anyone else. He raced back to look at his chart plotter. "It should be 60ft here," Dad confirmed. Dad swiped the binoculars from the cockpit table and peered through them.

"Victoria is that thing moving? ...That things moving." Dad replied to his own question anxiously.

"What is that?" I asked staring at the thing in wonder as Dad raced back and put the boat on standby and veered us off course a bit. Dad leaned out the cockpit to get a better look; as Victoria and I took turns looking through the binoculars.

"Guys, I think its a submarine." Dad said straining his eyes, "I don't think so Dad, it looks like there are two of them." Victoria concluded.

"I think it is." I said peering through the binoculars. I handed them to Dad and he looked through them, "Yeah it is, look ," he said, "it's coming towards us, that second thing is the end of it; see."

We all exclaimed, bewildered, as the two things formed into a long sub. The sub rose to the surface. As we got closer we could see a hatch open and three guys come out and look around. It was so wicked cool. Dad called them on VHS and thanked them for not surfacing underneath us. Of course they didn't reply, but Dad's pretty sure they heard us.

We were all hungry and cold as we entered between two jetties into the CT River. We decided to tuck into North Cove.

We past a sign that said that the orange streamers were free for transients.

We looked around for the "orange streamers" but couldn't see any, the grayness and fog didn't help either. We scanned the mooring field for the steamers.

"I think it just means those orange things," Dad said pointing to what we later found out were orange noodles with the line going through the center of it. Almost all of the moorings had swimming noodles on them, the problem was that non of the moorings had just orange noodles.

Dad steered us over to a small mooring. "Dad, this one was a green noodle, what does the green noodle mean?" I called.

"I didn't see, just try to get it," Dad shouted back to me.

Victoria and I got the line up with the boat hook but the eye of the line was much too small to fit over our cleats.

We moved around the field looking for the "right" mooring. But it was still windy in the cove and Dad was having a hard time getting close to the moorings. We tried a couple more, but they had names on them. None of them seemed right.

We were all getting aggravated and we were hungry... you get my point.

We spotted a lady on a sailboat and asked her what to do. She pointed to two moorings and told us that either of those where free. On each of those moorings were small faded orange strips of ribbon. We thanked her and soon we were secured on a mooring.

Personally I was joyous that we were no longer moving and there were no longer big waves.

Later when I was making dinner a transiet boat came in and asked us which mooring had a orange streamer and Dad and Victoria were able to point out the last one.

We are going to sit tight for tonight and see what the morning brings.

God bless you all greatly and "may you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully," (Ephesians 3:19NLT)

Zani