Jefferson Harbor

Tuesday August 7th, 2012
40 57.345N
73 04.981W

We only had a general plan for today when we went to bed last night. There seemed to be a long strech of coast without any interest, so we thought we would run all the way to the Plum Island cut, and anchor in Gardiner Bay near Greenport. We did not do our homework, with the result that after about 1 hour of running this morning we had to abort and cut the day short. There was just no way to go the Plum Cut safely.

This part of the world is just different than where we have been to date. There are a lot of rocks and a lot of currents. Less room for mistakes. Plum Cut had a dangerous rip and lots of submerged (and not submerged rocks) and could only be navigated by a boat like ours ("under-powered") at or close to slack.

So we cut the day short and went into Port Jefferson. It is a busy ferry port and looked safe and fun. We thought of taking a ball but they were expensive - $50! So we found a decent place to anchor and called it quits for the day. I promised Deidre we would put the dinghy in and go into town for dinner. So we set off in the dink at about 4:30 and 100 yards from the boat it conked out and would not start - not even turn over! We quickly grabbed the paddles and made our way back to the boat. I spent 30 minutes on the problem - looking for a lose wire - no dice.

Once back on board we started calling mechanics/marinas in the area looking for a solution. One guy called back and said he made "boat calls" and he could be at our boat in an hour. One complication - $225! But we needed the dink (grand kids in 8 days!) and I relented. "Eric" was good to his word and arrived within  the hour, and diagnosed the issue in about 30 seconds! What is is to KNOW and UNDERSTAND! I am so envious, I just wish I had the time to go to "everything that works school" so I am not so helpless.

Bottom line was that we needed a part, and Eric had one at the shop. So we arranged to take the dink into the marina in the morning and meet Eric who would install the part. he showed me how to get the motor running by shorting out a couple of wires. I handed over the $225.