Cutting the cord, if only for a week.

It's 6:30 am on Sunday and we are anchored in Mattituck which is a small harbor on the North Shore of Long Island about half way between Port Jefferson and Greenport. I didn't know exactly what to expect when we got here last night around dusk as I had not been here in many years. Brenda and I were talking about it but couldn't decide if I had been here just twice or three times. The harbor is over 40 miles from Norwalk, where we left from yesterday at 1:30 which was the limit of our range given the fact that we had left so late on Saturday.

Try as I might, I just couldn't get done before noon with finalizing the solar panels. This was the big project over the winter and is designed to be the first step in getting Pandora ready for more serious cruising. I had to wait until after the rigger had finished working on the boat as they had to access the backstay which was all tangled up with the bimini which hold the panels. The installation is made up of four Kyocera 130 panels http://www.kyocerasolar.com/products/ksimodule.html should put out about 50-60kwh per day in this lattitude and over 100kwh in places that we could say are "a lot sunnier". They are located on top of the bimini and look quite serious if I can say so myself.

Anyway, back to Mattituck. The harbor is about two miles down a narrow curving chanel (the depth alarm went off time and again as the depth came in under six feet) that leads to a small dredged pond with room for about 6-8 boats. While anchoring was a bit tough since the bottom was gooey and I wasn't putting out enough scope, we finally got anchored and settled in for dinner.

I recall the first time that Brenda and I visited this harbor. It was over 25 years ago and we were on our first boat TAO, a 20' Cape Cod Catboat. We came all the way here from Bridgeport where we kept the boat. That's nearly as far as we came yesterday and that was on a boat that had a cruising speed of 4-5 knots under the best of conditions with a tiny 5hp one cylindar diesel. That's in dramatic contrast to Pandora's 7-8 knot speed under power or sail. On that trip so many years ago we were with our now long time friends Chris and Pat Blossom. Let me tell you, it was really cramped on TAO and we didn't even have standing headroom. I know that we came out with the plan of visiting friends and did but can't recall what the details of that were. Well, we came and went but it couldn't have been as carefree as it was yesterday with Pandora.

The wind yesterday coming over from Norwalk was a reasonable 15kts with a few gusts to about 20kts from the northwest which allowed us to keep our speed up in the 7kt range for about half of the distance. However, in order to make the harbor by dusk we ended up motorsailing for the second half.

Today we hope to get ashore and look around a bit and will head around to Sag Harbor for the night. I have a friend John Kenlon from work who's family has place there and we hope to meet up with him. We will see how the day goes.

12:00: We had a nice trip to shore and walked downtown to the village. It was very quaint and we purchased some cheese at a very "Hamptonesque" shop in town. While not nearly as flashy as the Hamptons, Mattatuck is certainly well monied with lots of really nice cars coming and going. Here's a nice shot of Main street. When we came here the first time on TAO we saw what was surely the oddest museum that one could expect to see on the North Fork of Long Island, a tank museum. Not water tank, the Sherman kind. Unfortunately, now all that's there is a garden center. So much for progress.

Well, it's time for lunch and after that we will leave to head over to Sag Harbor.