Local CT

Local places in CT when we’re in Deep River for the summer

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The Rule of Three

Why is it that we look for things to happen in threes?  Or stop counting after three, as in “testing, one, two, three”? Throughout the ages three is held in high regard in religious, spiritual, mathematical and daily life. Braids have three sections, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the Holy Trinity; you get the idea. Three is also the largest number written with as many lines as the number represents.

Our dock neighbors, Todo Bien have completed their set for the summer. Was kinda weird how each successive event was more worrisome than the previous.  First event was a mystery visitor who opened the canvas and set himself down at the cockpit table for lunch, leaving lettuce scraps and faint scratches on the table. Like most people, they keep their boat, a Four Winns, tied stern-to at the dock for ease of entry and socializing. After that, I noticed the cockpit table top got stored below when they left the boat.

A few weekends later they headed out further than they typically go, to New London. They joked when leaving that if they didn’t come back, to come look for them. The trip out was uneventful; however the trip back became “event #2”.  The Thames was busy that day, the day after the huge fireworks display and Todo Bien somehow lost the use of one engine. Limping back toward Old Saybrook and the mouth of the CT River, they kept closer to shore to shorten their traveling distance.  Bad idea. Somehow they managed to confirm the location of a charted rock and that took out the second engine. Didn’t hole the boat though. SeaTow brought them back home safe and more than a bit shook up.  On Monday the marina work boat came to bring Todo Biento to the travel-lift well and a week later brought her back all shipshape.

Back home- finally.

The big question was, would they be able to get back up on that horse again?  Of course. Boat ownership is costly enough without letting yours languish in the slip.

The following weekend we see owners and guests preparing to head out, most likely to Hamburg Cove. Roughly two hours later the VHF comes alive with some frantic sounding words, the local Fire & Rescue crew comes hurrying down the dock and we see a power boat zooming into the marina, clearly not obeying the no-wake signs. But hey, isn’t that the Essex police boat behind them? Uh oh, sure enough Todo Bien is heading for the fuel dock, which has become crowded with marina and rescue crew, pump out boat crew and curious boat folk.

All hands help bring her in.

Russ goes to talk with Benj- POB waits to off-load

Turns out that the owner’s wife was not fully recovered from pneumonia and, well you know what can happen when you over-do it too soon. I’m sure that outing will remain memorable for all passengers for quite some time. As though to prove the “rule of three” stops after three, Todo Bien went out for a week to Mystic and Greenport (places we love), returning with no tales of woe; even the weather cooperated. Amazing.

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Yay for the CT River.. Boo for land germs!

The 410-mile-long Connecticut River has been a part of our lives, as a couple, for 25 years and part of Russ’s life for- well, let’s just say, many more. Those who live along its banks and especially those with boats of all shapes and sizes who enjoy it all summer long can count their blessings that the river’s mouth is shallow; too shallow to have allowed for commercial development and traffic. The river offers recreational boating at its best- well, at least the southern part which is the area we know.

The other day I happened upon an exciting piece of news about the river.  Here is an excerpt from the e-article:

In riverfront ceremonies in Hartford Thursday, U. S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar designated the 410-mile-long Connecticut River as America’s first National Blueway, saying restoration and preservation efforts on the river were a model for other American rivers.

“Most people didn’t awake to the possibilities of the restoration of rivers and what they meant to the environment and to the economy and young people and health until very recently,” he told reporters at the conclusions of the ceremonies. “The people who live along the Connecticut watershed started waking up to this possibility half a century ago.”

The term blueway emerged in recent years in many states including Connecticut to describe canoe and kayak routes along rivers and other waterways, akin to greenways for hiking and bicycling.

The Connecticut is the first of what is to be a National Blueways System that is part of an Obama administration effort to promote a community-driven conservation and recreation agenda for coming years.

The 410-mile-long Connecticut already was a highly decorated waterway.

It is one of 14 federally designated American Heritage Rivers. The estuary at its mouth near Long Island Sound was named one of the Nature Conservancy’s Last Great Places as well as a globally significant wetland under the international Ramsar convention. The Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge, created in 1991 to encompass the river and all the land it drains, was the first of its kind in the U.S.

We enjoyed watching the young swans grow up

Kayaking – fun for you and your best friends!

Boaters make good use of the wide sandbar

You may have guessed that these are “file” photos.

I’ve had a lot of time to kill so catching up on news and emails, reading – anything quiet- has been the name of the game since May 10.   I was the first to get sick. A few days after we’d made the rounds to get our mail, stock the fridge, stop at two storage places and enjoy a delicious dinner at Aspen, I came down with doozy of a cold.  My first in several years.  Do I thank the mild winter or the fact we haven’t had much exposure to bad germs lately?  Who knows.  Not to be left out of the fun, Russ starts his cold-like symptoms the day after Mother’s Day- phew that was close- I got the “you don’t have to cook today” treatment just in time. After days of wondering if Russ had a cold, the flu or something else and bouncing back and forth between feeling lousy and starting to feel better, he finally saw the Doc on May 23, who proclaimed, “strep and now bronchitis.”  Wow- whoda thunk?   He’s on day 4 of a 5 day antibiotic treatment and the cough just won’t go away. Needless to say, we’ve accomplished very little in the past two weeks. Our son returns from his study abroad semester Thursday night and I think I see his name on the boat project list to help us catch up. 🙂