Weather windows are becoming few and far between at this point, so we had a windy ride to our next destination – Cuddyhunk. In hind-sight, we probably should have given this spot a miss considering it’s not that well protected. The wind prediction was moderate, but reality turned out to be far worse as we got there. The wind was blowing waves over the top of the breakwater, which required a nice sideways drift into the narrow and shallow channel entrance.

The winds were bad enough that the harbormaster was not comfortable with us docking in the marina where we had made a reservation and suggested we rope a piling in their piling mooring field. Due to my lack of coordination, and current shoulder situation, I got on the bow with the bow line and prepared to sort of bear-hug/throw the rope around the pylon as we approached. The winds were blowing so hard that it was very hard to control the boat and even with our docking radios on we had a slight miscommunication which resulted in the bow railing being pushed quite strongly into the piling (understatement….). We did eventually get the rope around, but due to a combination of extreme wind and a short line, I wasn’t pleased with the situation, and worried about damage to the anchor, or further damage to our now-bent bow railing.

There was a mooring buoy field also in the bay (not owned by the marina harbor master), and I managed to convince David that we’d be safer there. So we carefully cast off the piling and headed to the mooring field. Again, we had a bit of difficulty in the mooring field due to the wind, but were able to run a set of lines. The wind was blowing us so hard that our stern was almost touching the buoys behind us in our swing radius.

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That night, despite the winds, we were visited by the “Raw Bar” boat, so ordered some fresh oysters and clam chowder that was delivered to us a short while later – yum!

We headed out of Cuddyhunk for another rocky ride to Wickford and picked up one of their town mooring buoys just inside the breakwater (at high tide, when the break water was completely under water). This was another place we had visited on our way north, and found a winery with a wine tasting room in town. We knew we needed to stock up on wine, so we headed there as soon as we’d moored to do some more tasting! Since there was also a Walgreens in town, we also managed to get our flu shots.

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At this point, I started arranging to get an MRI in Norwalk, Connecticut, since we already had a couple of days scheduled there to see David’s family again. As it turned out, on one of my many calls to the insurance, I actually had been authorized for that same-day MRI…frustrating! I was able to get scheduled in Norwalk and after about 3 hours on the phone over 3 days, between Norwalk, Boston and Insurance, I was finally able to get a new appointment scheduled and authorized. Phew.

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After Wickford, we headed towards Mystic. This time, rather than going all the way up the river to the seaport museum, we made a reservation with Noank Boatyard near the mouth of the river. We stayed on a mooring buoy for a couple of nights here without even leaving the boat waiting for another weather window to get further west on the Long Island Sound. Both David and I have had extremely busy work weeks, with a lot of working late in the last couple of weeks, so our stay at Noank was relatively uneventful with not that much to write about!!

Another weather window presented itself for the ride to the Thimbles – another spot we’re revisiting. We dropped anchor with no problem (David doing most of the work himself while I was on a work call) and had another uneventful night, mostly filled with work.

Next we are on our way to Rowayton, back to the weird stern/bow mooring situation on Five Mile River – hopefully tying up this time will go much smoother since John is not able to help us out in his dingy this time…wish me luck!!