17 Sep 16

We slept in a bit this morning, recovering from our day-trip to the Big Apple. After a leisurely morning chatting with John and helping him pack up, we put him in an airport limo at 12:45 (we sent him off with flag signal hoist WHISKY ALPHA YANKEE “I wish you a pleasant voyage”; he responded with a verbal ROMEO BRAVO ALPHA “Adieu”) and immediately pulled out of the marina headed for Zeigler’s Cove, just to the west of Norwalk, CT. The flux-gate compass went haywire again, so the boat heading on the chart-plotter was again about 30 - 60 degrees different from the actual heading, although the GPS position was still accurate. It is highly coincidental that the last time this happened was the day after John arrived, and now it recurs the day after he leaves. I sent him a text advising him to get luggage de-gaussed. Unfortunately, it was too windy and there was too much current to recalibrate the compass, so we just had to cope with the strange apparent heading. Ziegler Cove was chock-a-block full of motor-boaters when we arrived there just after 16:00, so we turned around and started for Stamford, thinking we would anchor behind the breakwater, but shortly decided to just head across the Sound to Cold Spring Harbor. It was only 9 miles, so we were still anchored before 18:00. This place was on our list last year, but we bypassed it in our rush to make it to Port Washington. The anchorage is huge and on the lee of Long Island, so nice and quiet. Dinner aboard - chicken, potatoes and asparagus. It is quiet aboard without John’s excellent company, but we look forward to his (and hopefully Laurie’s) next visit. Lots of strange explosions were heard off to the west after sunset, but we could not see any sign of what was causing it; probably fireworks over in Manhasset Bay.

40-52.543’N, 073-29.155’W