40:54.78N 73:22.01W

Tues & Wed – 28^th & 29^th August

We spent Tuesday catching up with the never ending list of ‘jobs to do’ and preparing Serafina for the sail down to New York.

The difficulty with the sail down Long Island Sound is the usual thorny issue of tides, tidal currents and the Long Island Race at the eastern end.

Sarah’s solution was that we needed to leave the anchorage in Dutch Harbor at 2300 hours and use the favourable wind and tide for as long as we could. Craig & Karene in Il Sogno (who are coming down to NY as well, just to show us around for a few days) had reached the same conclusion, but in the event they headed off about an hour ahead of us and so we made our way to the Race travelling about 5 miles apart. The wind picked up nicely and there was a near full moon so we all enjoyed a most wonderful night sail, passing through the Race at exactly the right time, with 3 k of tide under us and continued to sail all the way to Northport Harbor which we reached in the mid-afternoon.

The only thing to spoil this perfect day, was the increasing number of flies that started to arrive on board as we sailed down the Sound and with some of them of the very positive biting kind, it became very unpleasant for a while, but happily they seemed to disappear in the  late afternoon and evening.

In the early evening Craig took us ashore in their dinghy and we had a stroll up and down the main street and paused to enjoy some local ice cream and watch the locals at play. This was followed by an early night as tomorrow we are off again around 0700 hours to catch the tidal flow down to Port Washington which is where are hoping to moor whilst we visit New York itself.