Port Jefferson - Long Island

We are slowly moving towards New York and currently (Thursday 4th Oct) sitting in a place called Port Jefferson about 50 miles from Manhattan.  Its a foggy morning but flat calm and quite warm outside.  There is not much moving around us apart from the odd ferry which runs in and out of the harbour across the sound.  We hear its fog horn before it passes and feel the wake once it has passed us but then all is still again.

We crossed over the sound from Connecticut to Long Island a couple of days ago.  Almost flat calm conditions so had to motor just about the whole way.  We tried to put up the sails a few times but in the end gave up and motored.  Port Jefferson is a well protected harbour with a power station situated on one shore so not the most picturesque of places.  Its main claim to fame seems to be that one of its residents in the early years was PT Barnum - the circus man. 

The PT Barnum ferry

We anchored off the North shore the first night and then during the next day were about to go into town when a tug moored a couple of large barges laden with gravel very near to us on a permanent mooring We decided discretion being the better part of valour to shift over the harbour to a quieter spot which is actually a bit closer to the town. 

We all had a trip into town and a walk around to look at the shops and get the all important coffee.  There was a kids interactive maritime museum here but unfortunately it was shut.  Guess this will happen more and more until we get further south as the tourist season here is now well and truly over and people are starting to hunker down and get ready for winter.  The town has more of a city feel to it - bit rougher around the edges, more beat up cars on the roads and the buildings more brick buildings than just the wooden weatherboard we have been used to.  The trees are starting to show their autumn colours and some are completely yellow now.  I think we will miss the full on fall vista of the trees changing colour en masse as we seem to be travelling just in front of the change.  We do see pockets of trees which are changing colour and can imagine how spectacular it would be with a whole forest of different hues.  With us living in the tropics for so long its a real treat to experience a fall season again.

Kids feeding visiting swans

Schooling is probably our biggest issue at the moment.  The actual teaching side of it I think we have a handle on now and Sam is getting better at getting into his homework.  Calley finds most of her work pretty easy so for her its about keeping her interested.  The main issue is time - between sailing between locations, visiting the spots we stop at and the other chores of daily life its difficult to find the time to get the lessons done.  We have hit the first milestone which is a test at lesson 20 and that will be carried out tomorrow.  These get sent into the school for evaluation so I guess we will know how we are doing next week.  Once we get the results back, either way, the dilema will be - is it the teaching or the students?  When we get down to the lesson though it is actually quite good fun spending the time and teaching the kids and, as I mentioned before, for Sam the subject matter, especially history and geography, is interesting.

Sam and Calley playing in the park

First flight of Sam's model plane

Boat is going well since the last works carried out but badly needs a good clean which will probably happen in New York.  One of the jobs we did in Newport was to replace some worn bearings in a connecting rod near the rudder.  With them being worn, every time we were at anchor and there was any movement in the water the connections vibrated and emitted a loud clunking sound.  Not such a big deal apart from the fact that they are located directly behind the headboard of the main cabin.  In a rolly anchorage or in the wake of passing boats the noise it made was more than annoying.  On more than one occasion we thought of moving cabin.  What with our top mattress sliding off in any angle heel and the noisy rudder it seemed that we had drawn the short straw as far as cabin allocation was concerned.  However with the new rod ends installed we now have a beautifully quiet aft cabin.  We now just need to either get rid of the top mattress or get some velcro on our pyjamas.