Friends!

Apparently the Long Island Sound was the place to get visitors! Who knew?

Port Washington was a really cool place to spend a week. Plus they had launch service and free pump out boat to the Anchorage so bonus! Matt, who ran the launch service told us lots of cool stuff about the area, including that it was where East Egg and West Egg from the Great Gatsby were based on. Once you know, you can definitely see it, with the beautiful mansions looking across the bay at each other!

A weird goal I had while in NY was to have coffee in one of the Greek coffee cups that I always see on TV shows and movies that are set there. Kevin and Higgy had no idea what I was talking about but when I asked a local about it they laughed and told us exactly where to go, so poor Higgy and Kevin were immediately dragged along on my mission. The cup is known as the “Anthora” and was designed in the 1960’s to appeal to Greek coffee shops in New York. It has since had quite the acting career, making an appearance in TV shows and movies such as Friends (of course), How I met your Mother, Mad Men (one of Kevin’s favourites), Law and Order, Wolf of Wall St to name a few. one might say it’s the most famous coffee cup in history. You’re welcome for the cup history lesson!

Kevin’s big goal, while in the area, was to find good Italian food, so after dragging him along to drink out of a silly disposable cup I had to let him achieve his goal. This endeavor happened once our friend Seth arrived all the way from California. Since we had 4 people on board we had decided to use the launch service that runs from 8am til 8pm. Kevin had booked a table at a restaurant called Toscanini and we arrived and were seated by the owner, Freddy, who mentioned that they were quite busy, to which Kevin responded “we are in no rush!”. I thought this was an odd thing to say, since we had to get back to the town dock before 8 pm to be able to catch the water taxi back to our boat. The food and wine was excellent and exactly what we were looking for (highly recommend to anybody going to the are). Add to that some great company and we found ourselves running late and asking for the bill before we had finished our food. When Freddy found out why we were suddenly in a hurry, he told us not to worry because he was going to drive us to the dinghy dock…amazing! Thanks to Freddy’s kindness we made it to the water taxi with 1 minute to spare.

The next day it was time to head to Stamford, CT and fortunately we had great sailing conditions for it. This was not exactly a trip full of good fortune though, as we suffered a casualty part way through. That casualty was Seth’s drone that he had brought with him to try to capture some fun sailing footage. In the return to the boat, the drone initially collided with the mizzen mast and lost a propeller but was still limping along and trying to make it back to the boat. It was the collision with the aft stay that finished him off. Once in the water, the drone sank very fast. Even if I already had a net in hand, there was no chance of a successful rescue mission. Seth was a good sport about it and we held a little candlelight vigil later that night for the lost crewmember!

That night we also gained another crewmember. Our friend Joey arrived! We were getting to be a pretty full house. Thank goodness Avion is fairly roomy and everybody had a bed to sleep on, so it was the more the merrier! Joey brought some delicious wine with him that he had made. His family has a wine making tradition which he has been keeping alive. We felt honoured to get to try some.

The next day we were on our way to Milford. Not enough wind for a pure sailing day so we had to motor sail to get there. This was where we reached the culmination of our reunion of friends with Dan and Dom, who brought New Haven style pizza and Narraganset beer to make it a real New England affair! It was so awesome having such a great group of old friends all coming together on Avion to catch up for an evening and we felt sad to say goodbye. Until next time!