This Saturday, my wife and I left the three little ones and stayed on SPARTINA for two nights at Brewer Stirling Harbor marina in Greenport, NY for a quick getaway. We had never been to Greenport or Shelter Island and had heard good things. The trip over was absolutely flat conditions, and we cruised at 25 knots for the two hour effortless ride to the Plum Gut near Greenport with the music playing.
The very quiet and manicured marina was better than expected with an excellent Italian restaurant on-site and a nice pool which was perfect after Saturday's 98 F high. I also had two nights free dockage at any Brewers and no dinghy so that's really why we ended up there. We were docked amongst generic 48-50' Sea Rays, Cruisers, Luhrs, and Silvertons with really bad names like "Big Time" and "Done Deal" and which pump huge amounts of water out all night long to run their air conditioners (It sounds like someone left the dock hoses running all night) but the owners were friendly and full of local sightseeing knowledge.
Greenport is touristy, but it had a great NY city style hip restaurant, the Frisky Oyster, which started off our gourmet delights with prawns, oysters, and lobster risotto. New Yorkers know how to eat, and we ate incredibly well at every turn with no effort.
The next day we checked out Sag Harbor for lunch and all of the harbors on Shelter Island starting with Dering Harbor for coffee. This is the home of the very old (1886) Shelter Island YC http://www.siyc.com/ which has an Etchells fleet and a very cool Herresshoff 12.5 fleet and many beautiful yachts gracefully moored off the club. We drank our coffees and puttered around the harbor admiring the many Hinckleys and a huge Little Harbor that was absolutely flawless. This is the kind of harbor you pull into and say "wow" every boat is so sweet.
One standout is the 38' Shelter Island Runabout of Billy Joel fame (below) which really is stunning when seen up close. Their Nomad 30 is also beautiful. See
http://www.chmarineyachts.com/boat2.cfm
My wife announced she wants a Sabre 40 Express in 5 years, so maybe she is catching the downeast style bug too from our harbor tours. I better keep working.
Next, we anchored in West Harbor and swam and walked on the sand spit.
We stopped to help a small disabled bowrider near Sag Harbor (as many other boats just passed by) and when we were talking to the people it hit us that we were really in the Hamptons now because they all seemed like fashion designers up from NYC and had no clew about boating.
Sag Harbor had more Hinckley picnic boats and Talarias in one marina than I had ever seen; they were lined up like bicycles on a rack. We ate another fantastic meal looking out at the marina. A row of mega yachts even had one with a Mini Cooper car on top. I am also a car guy, and the array of cars just milling around was pretty impressive. Where else do you see Aston Martins and Lamborginis just laying around like Volkswagens.
Next, we headed up the east side of Shelter Island to Cocles harbor and the Cocles marina there where I finally remembered to take some pictures which are above of the beautiful boats.
Our night was much cooler for sleeping aboard, and our ride home was a bit choppy in 4' following seas at about 19-20 knots and few waves completely launched over the bimini and my windshield wiper in use and hause pipe sealed up. The Arundel felt nice and solid. What a wonderful boat, I really love it. Cheers!
