The Long Island Sound is a beautiful sheltered stretch of water and a real sailing mecca. It can have a lot of currents (ebb and flow), and in case of strong winds a good trip planning is necessary. We only have very little wind and then it all makes less of a difference. On the south side is Long Island, which still belongs to the state of New York. An island with some villages and towns and lots of big beautiful houses with large gardens and short cut lawns on the waterfront. It is still clearly low season (the sailing season officially starts here on May 31, Memorial Day), and there are few other boats on the way. The harbours are expensive ($3.00 per foot) and even for mooring buoys they dare to charge $1.50 or $2.00 per foot. We are 40 feet, so just calculate. For the context: 3 times as expensive as expensive ports in the Netherlands! We try to anchor as much as possible between the many mooring buoys. Then we just lie for free, so such a choice is quickly made. But it's not always easy to get to shore in a decent place with your dinghy. On the north side is the state of Connecticut, with a shallow coastline with many rocks and beaches. That looks Norwegian and it looks a bit friendlier and more inviting than the south side.

Despite the beautiful sailing area, our focus is less on exploring this area extensively, but more on taking a rest and preparing for the crossing to the Azores. We take rest by lying at anchor and staying on the boat, reading books and playing games with each other. Toine reads the books of Harry Potter in english and that gives nice discussions with the girls (who already read 1 to 7 in dutch). Especially HP 5 is very different in English, with a lot more adolescent things and that's what the girls really want to hear. I'm still working on the book 'Chesapeake' by James Michener, a pull-out of 1000 pages in a novel about the history of the Chesapeake (between 1500 and now) in which three different families are followed. The nice thing about this book is that it describes history much broader than just that of the Chesapeake. All other places we have visited this year are also included (such as England, France, Portugal, Africa, Caribbean, Cuba) and transport is only by sailing boat (both in the Chesapeake, and by sea). Themes such as the expulsion of Indians, the colonial era with England as ruler, piracy from the Caribbean, war of independence between new U.S. states and England, slave trade, flourishing plantations and the abolition of slavery are all discussed. And because it is described from the eyes of these three families it is very easy to empathize and it is not a dry enumeration of history. Sometimes difficult english, but very nice to read.

The preparation for the crossing consists of doing a lot of schoolwork, cleaning up the boat (especially in all cabinets and hatches) and putting things we don't need for the time being well and far away. When Toine, during an underwater inspection of the boat, discovers that the anode of the propeller has 'run out', we decide that we want the Brandaan to go for another day to replace that anode and paint the underwater hull. It takes Toine a lot of phone calls to marinas (fortunately we have a good book with all marinas in this area) to find a harbour that has time and place. Eventually we find a harbour in Mystic, Connecticut. And that is also our last stop before the 'Atlantic crossing'.

Back to the beginning of the week ... the departure from NY is a beautiful trip on the East River all the way around the island of Manhattan. With a beautiful view over all the tall buildings and the eight big bridges we pass underneath. And we sail almost all by ourselves ... a bit unreal! The departure is well timed, so we have almost the whole way flow along. Hells Gate looks friendly, but it flows quite well and you shouldn't have that current against you. Unfortunately it is a bit cloudy and a bit rainy; that is a pity for the pictures ;-). And then suddenly we are in the Long Island Sound .... in the middle of nature and away from the hustle and bustle of the big city. What a peace and quiet all of a sudden around us. Also delicious again!

We stop in Oyster Bay on Long Island on the south side of the Sound and stay there for two nights. A beautiful large sheltered anchor bay where a lot of oyster and 'clams' (a kind of large shells) are caught. The fishing boats sail around us and scrape these creatures from the bottom with a kind of cage. The oysters taste fine, as we experienced during a nice lunch on the shore.

Wednesday the 26th of May we continue to Port Jefferson, about 25 miles further on, also on the south side, where we stay for two nights. It is a nice sailing trip in clover mode with a small sigh of wind. We don't go fast, but we do get there and it is nice to sail again. We had to motor a lot along the whole east coast of America due to a lack of wind. Well, fortunately the diesel is not expensive and that sailing will come back at the crossing. Port Jefferson is a beautiful spacious bay, with on one side beautiful castles of houses on the water and ... on the other side a beautiful electricity factory. We want to go to the side to do some shopping and up to three times we're received very unfriendly because we're not allowed to lay down our dinghy anywhere if we're not moored at a mooring buoy. But of course we don't let ourselves be stopped and we just leave our dinky and go to the bakery (which fortunately does have delicious French baguette). If you compare this with the cordiality in all (!) previous states of the USA you really see two different cultures here. But anyway, we also know that in the Netherlands.

Friday we'll continue to Connecticut across the Sound. We anchor near Timble Island in an area with rocks all around us. A beautiful sight, but a somewhat exposed anchorage. The weather is calm, only then you have some tide effects; when the wind blows against the outgoing tide you get some waves and that sloshes against the hull. Luckily we have a heavy boat, so it is still possible to keep it inside. It is a bit more restless and we turn on the depth alarm just to be sure. This alarm warns if the boat ends up in shallower water, in other words, your anchor is not properly secured. And yes, the alarm wakes us up early in the morning! We are startled and Toine jumps out of his bed so fast that he stumbles and falls and severely hurts the muscle of his right thigh. Once (limping) at the top of the steering wheel it turns out that we are (luckily) still on the same spot and the meter jumps from 1.7 to 2.0 meters to 3.0 meters. Probably something 'big' swam under the depth gauge... Like Marinthe said, we should have put out a fishing line!
While we're awake we'll pick up the anchor and head for Mystic. We dive into a marina there for two days to prepare ourselves well for painting the boat and we are going to explore Connecticut and Newport R.I. by car! We still need the car to buy antifouling (verg) and an anode. What a beautiful environment it is here. Very hilly with many forests and a beautiful coastline with beautiful sheltered bays. Because it is a long weekend because of Memorial Day, many Americans are out and about, both on the water with all kinds of different boats and by car on land. Newport R.I. is beautiful, but very busy. So we are happy to be in the less crowded Mystic. In the marina there is a lively activity of people preparing their boats for the season. Very nice to spend the last days here on this side of the ocean.

Tomorrow we finish the laundry and do the last shopping. Tuesday we go early (7.30 am) in the direction and then we hope to be back in the water in the evening after a hard day's work. So we can leave on Wednesday June 2nd for the crossing. We have been following the weather for a while now to discover the patterns in it. And it looks good for the coming week. The Barbarossa (Bahamas) and the Valentine (BVI's) have also left in the direction of the Azores and Bermuda. Nice to see each other again in about 2-3 weeks after all the different adventures we had! Also the World Cup soccer information has been downloaded so during the crossing we can read in to be ready for the Azores!