Saturday, August 8. Day 35

Today dawned sunny with hints of warmth, but not the heat yet as the weather had predicted. After a quick breakfast and taking showers after heating up water on the stove, we were ready for our 2nm dinghy ride into the town of Essex. After getting some instructions at the gas dock, we tied up our dinghy at the Essex Town dock where we found some people crabbing.

How do you catch crab? You tie a piece of chicken on the end of a string, tie it to the dock on one end and toss it out. Then when the line is tight from the crab trying to take the chicken, you gently pull them in and scoop it up with a fishing net. I found that it’s better to have a long handle on the fishing net if you have a choice.

I am very interested in trying to catch my own crabs for dinner but need the fishing net. I’ll have to work on that.

We walked into Essex, which is a small upscale town in Connecticut. This is an old town that has a rich history building boats.

Many of the town’s old houses still exist but are shops now. As I was walking, I admired the many different doors, so decided to photograph them to share with you. Look close at one of them; each of the old houses has an oval plaque that states the name of the person who built the house and they year built.

We had lunch at Black Seal Restaurant. The warm spinach salad and pork quesadilla was excellent. We finished it off with a walk down to Olive Olys Carryout and had delicious ice cream; Fresh peach for Lorraine and Moose Tracks for Phil.

Of course we had to stop at the local Connecticut River Museum.

They had 3 floors of exhibits. As you are going up the steps to the different floors, they have a mural on one wall winding up all three flights of the major towns along the river from Vermont almost to Canada to the mouth of the River on Long Island Sound. They also have some photographs of some of the areas. Here is one of Essex and the Museum.

and an aerial view of Hamburg Cove where we were moored. You can see how narrow the channel is into the deeper water.

Here is information about the steamboat dock as it was called years ago.

During the war of 1812, the British attacked the town and sunk and destroyed 27 boats, which was a big blow to the young United States. Here is a painting in the museum of this event.

There are some hands-on exhibits and the children there seemed to be interested. The Turtle submarine was a big hit. The purpose was to attach bombs on the bottom of British ships to blow them up.

Once we left the town dock, we took a dinghy ride up through the docks at the marinas looking at boats and hoping to buy a fishing net, but no luck. This isn’t the type of town to get those supplies. We got back to the boat about 230pm and what a surprise! The cove was filled with boats, mostly powerboats, rafted off each other as much as 8 boats to a mooring ball. Many people were swimming off the sterns of their boats enjoying the sunshine and warm salt free water the cove provided.

The pump-out boat had preceded us into the cove, so we took advantage of their services. Lorraine asked one of the operators, Ron, where she could get a fishing net. When Ron found out that we didn’t have a car to go buy one, he offered to get one and have the other pump-out boat bring it tomorrow morning. How nice!

We spent the rest of the day relaxing in the cockpit taking in the show, using the binoculars when necessary to see the sights. As it came to be dinner time, many of the boats left. Of the ones left, some cooked on their grills, others had multiple dinghies tie up for sundowners. We had sandwiches for dinner. As the sun was setting, I predicted we would have a beautiful sunset with some clouds in the sky but not down low where the sun was setting and it was. It’s a shame that the colors just don’t show up as much in pictures.

Tomorrow after the fishing net is delivered, we plan to go to Fishers Island as winds are to be between 10-15kts from the SW in the evening before they decrease to 5 kts at night.