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Day 111 – Monday, September 21st, 2026 – In: Mystic, CT
Last evening, another boat came in late. They said that the conditions out on Block Island Sound were deteriorating quickly. They were seeing 4-5-foot waves. It rained until about midnight, and then the wind came up.
This morning, we had 14 mph winds in the marina, and offshore winds were reported at 23 mph. When I checked the wave buoys this morning, the Long Island buoy just west of Mystic was showing 4 feet with a period of 4 seconds. The Block Island Buoy was showing 3.6 feet at 3 seconds. We are glad that we made the call to go to Mystic rather than Block Island.
After breakfast, we went out and did our boat rinse-down. The rain did a pretty good job yesterday, but it didn’t get the salt off the windows. Also, we needed to fill our water tanks. I like to fill the tanks after we wash down the boat so that the water that has been sitting in the marina water lines along the docks gets flushed out so that it’s fresh(er) water going into the tanks. We filter the water going in, and have another filter just before the water pump as it comes out of the tanks, and a third three-stage filter for drinking water. We also use a chlorine-based water treatment in the tanks to keep stuff from growing in them. That system worked pretty well on our last boat, and with new stainless steel tanks in our new boat, we want to keep them clean.
Around noon, we took a walk to the Olde Mystic Village. The village is a shopping complex with many boutique shops, a cinema, and several restaurants. When we were here on our way north, we had seen it, but it was about 2 miles from the marina, and it didn’t look that large. From the Mystic Seaport Marina, it’s only about a 15-minute walk, so we decided to go check it out.
It was a lot larger than we thought! It’s designed like a little New England village, with old-fashioned-looking buildings, winding paths, gardens, and lots of shops and restaurants. There are more than 40 shops and boutiques, including Mystic Knot Works, Franklin’s General Store, and Kitch, a kitchen store. We spent a couple of hours walking around checking out the shops, then stopped at Mango’s Wood-Fired Pizza for a snack before looping back around and picking up a few treasures we’d seen.
It was close to 3:00 when we had had enough. Brenda did very well walking to and around the village, but her knee was starting to act up, so rather than walking the mile back, we got a Lyft.
When we got back to the boat, our boat neighbors were all out, so we spent the rest of the afternoon chatting with them and comparing plans for the storm. The Seaport Marina let us know that they might need all of us to leave by Friday noon so that they can bring their own boats to the north dock for safety. We were not taking any chances and made a reservation from Thursday through Monday at the Mystic Downtown Marina, where we stayed on our last visit.
One of the boats on the dock with us is Andiamo, from Palmetto, Florida. It’s a 1999 Offshore, 48-foot Yachtfish. Offshore Yachts is the sister company of our Outback! We also chatted with a couple who were visiting the museum and who live in Marathon, Florida. They saw the boat and were asking questions. They have friends who live in Palm Coast, not far from us. What a small world!
Around 4:00, a sailboat that had been anchored out in the harbor came in. They had been waiting for high tide. Their sailboat needs 7 feet of water because of its keel, and when the tide went out, they got stuck on the bottom. The water at the dock is 10 feet at low tide, so they moved here.
At 5:00, we walked next door to the Delamar Mystic Hotel for dinner. The hotel is on the Seaport Museum grounds, and there is a path from the end of our dock to the hotel. Dinner was good. We sat at the bar and chatted with the bartender and some other diners who were interested in the boat and our trip.
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Day 112 – Tuesday, September 22nd, 2026 – In: Mystic, CT
On Tuesday, we spent most of the day on the boat. I worked a bit on the blog and my article for Lakeland Boating and did some paperwork. Brenda wrote some postcards and did a bit of cleaning. Around 2:00, we decided to go and walk around the Mystic Seaport Museum. As we were leaving, Brenda mentioned that the freezer was showing 19°. I took a quick look and tried a few things to reset it. I checked the evaporators to see if they were dirty; they weren’t. I checked the manufacturer’s online support page for any hints and tried a few of the troubleshooting steps. Nothing seemed to be wrong.
I grabbed a flashlight and checked the inside. The problem became obvious. The freezer is supposed to defrost automatically. However, the coils visible behind a small vent were covered in solid ice. Bingo! We emptied the freezer, I got our space heater, put it in, and melted the ice. There was a LOT of ice! The rear panel was held on by only a few screws, so I removed them to let the heat reach the ice more easily. It took about 40 minutes to melt all of the ice.
When we turned the freezer back on, we could feel it cool down almost immediately, and 15 minutes later, it was back down to 32°. We reloaded the freezer and hung around the boat until it went down to 15°. It seemed that defrosting had fixed it!
By now, it was almost 4:00, so we walked into town and checked out the menus at a few restaurants. As we were walking through the museum grounds, we saw a large tent and a catering company setting up for food. There was also a stage and a band setting up. The museum rents out the facility in the evenings. This was an outing for a convention of point-of-sale systems.
After walking around downtown, we decided on The Engine Room, which wasn’t far from the marina, and had a good dinner. When we got back to the museum grounds, the conventioners were arriving. There were several buses full! We wandered through the crowd and back to the boat. Many of the participants were wandering around the museum grounds, and a few stopped by the boat to ask questions.
As the sun set, we got another amazing sunset. The other boaters on the dock were all out looking at it as well, and we all agreed, the calm before the storm!
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Day 113 – Wednesday, September 23rd, 2026 – In: Mystic, CT
Since we will be in Mystic for a week, we decided to rent a car. Mystic is nice, but on our first visit, we saw pretty much all there is to see, so we want to go a bit farther afield. At 11:00, I walked about a mile to Enterprise to pick up the car. On the way, I passed a glass-blowing studio and sent Brenda the address so we could visit it later. When I got to Enterprise, the car was ready, a brand new Mitsubishi Outlander Sport. After doing the paperwork, I drove back to the marina to pick Brenda up.
Our first stop was back at Studio Jeffrey P’an, the glass-blowing studio. They weren’t blowing glass today, but we met Samuel, who is apprenticing at the studio. He explained that they don’t light the glass furnaces during the hot summer months, but they would be starting them up for a blowing session from October 1st through Christmas. When they are not blowing, they do finishing work. Many of their glass pieces are ground and cut to create texture. It was all very beautiful! He showed us the “cold shop” where they do the finishing work and the specialized diamond grinders they use to etch the glass. Brenda found a vase and a glass fish to add to her collection.
After the glass studio, we went to drop off a few packages at a UPS location and the Post Office. By this time, it was close to 2:00. We want to explore Stonington, Connecticut, which is just south of Mystic, but we will save that for a full day. We decided to go to the Coast Guard Museum in New London, about a 15-minute drive. The Coast Guard is building a new museum on the New London Waterfront, which is scheduled to open in August of 2027. The current museum is at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy Base in its library and admissions building. To get onto the base, we had to go through security and show our driver’s licenses. Security at the facility was highly visible, with frequent patrols. There were also lots of cadets marching around.
The museum was very good. There is a timeline that runs around all the displays, showing events in the history of the Coast Guard, from 1790, when the Revenue Cutter Service was established, to its merger with the Lighthouse Service, Lifesaving Service, and Steamship Inspection Service, culminating in today’s Coast Guard. Originally part of the Treasury Department, the Coast Guard is now part of the Department of Homeland Security. Interestingly, it is placed under the US Navy during wartime and also has ties to the Department of Defense.
There were also lots of displays of uniforms, lighthouse lenses, letters, and other Coast Guard artifacts. One of the displays was letters sent to “The Coast Guard Lady,” who has written 1,000s of letters to Coast Guard members. She just turned 100, and they have a small sample of the cards she received. It was quite interesting.
I knew about a few of the agencies that merged to form the Coast Guard, but it was neat to learn about all the different agencies that made it up and the many services it performs, such as marine research, mapping, and intelligence gathering. While we were there, someone was donating a logbook from a Coast Guard Cutter that was stationed in New York City during the 9/11 attacks.
After the museum, we went back to the boat, then headed to Jealous Monk in the Mystic Village shopping area for dinner.
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Day 114 – Thursday, September 24th, 2026 – In: Mystic, CT
This was the day we were originally scheduled to leave Block Island. The waves this morning were 9.5 feet, and the winds were 25 mph with gusts up to 35 mph! Both Block Island Ferries were canceled. The dockmaster at Mystic had told us we might get kicked out tomorrow if they needed to move their boats. So we made a reservation at Mystic Downtown Marina, where we stayed on our trip north. The marina is less than a mile from the Seaport, but we had to go through the Mystic Highway lift bridge to get there.
We left the dock at 9:20 to make the 9:40 bridge opening. The winds were blowing between 10 and 17 mph, plus we had an outgoing tide. We had to wait a few minutes for the bridge, but our DockMate system made it easy even with the wind and current. Once the bridge opened, we called the marina, and Brian said he would be waiting for us. It’s only about 1,300 feet from the bridge to the marina. Docking was a bit challenging as both the current and wind were pushing us down the channel and away from the dock, but we spun sideways early and let them both carry us to the dock, then gunned it backward to get in. No problem, but I was glad to have nice, strong thrusters!
Settling in was quick, just writing down a few numbers. With under a mile at under 4 mph, we didn’t need to wash the salt off the boat. Once we were done, we walked up the street to SIFT, a bakery we found on our first visit. They have amazing baked goods. We got some ham-and-cheese croissants for breakfast and some other pastries to have on the boat. We ate the croissants there with a latte and a hot chocolate. After we finished breakfast, Brenda brought our baked goods back to the boat, and I walked back to the Mystic Seaport marina to pick up the rental car.
When I got back, Brenda said… “I have some bad news.” That’s always a bad sign. She told me that one of our fenders was missing. It’s normally tied to the side of the boat, but it apparently fell off. She remembered it being there when we docked, but it wasn’t there when she got back to the boat. She looked around the marina but didn’t see it. The wind and current would have most likely pushed it into the marina, not down the channel. I took a look around, walking about 1/4 mile downstream to the railroad bridge, checking under docks and between boats, but didn’t find it. I had a suspicion that it might have floated or been blown under the dock master’s building, which sits up on pilings. I couldn’t see under it. I hoped that when the tide turned, it might float out if it was there.
We decided to take a ride to Stonington, the next town over, and visit the Stonington Lighthouse Museum. As we were walking off the boat to leave, I caught a bit of movement behind a boat on the next dock over. It was the fender! The tide had turned, and it was floating out toward the channel. I ran over and snagged it!
The museum is in the old lighthouse. The lighthouse was built in 1840 and decommissioned in 1889 after a breakwater was built and a new light was installed at the end. The lighthouse served as the breakwater light keeper’s cottage until 1909, when the light was automated. In 1925, the government sold the building to the Stonington Historical Society, which opened the museum in 1927 as the nation’s first lighthouse museum.
The museum was interesting with the usual lighthouse memorabilia. We were able to climb the 29 stairs and the 7-rung ladder up to the top for a great view of the harbor and the channel we cruised through on our way to Mystic.
The Stonington Historical Society was offering two museums for the price of one, and our entry fee also included admission to the Captain Nathaniel B. Palmer House Museum on the other side of town. After we finished with the lighthouse, we drove to the Palmer House Museum. The house is a charming historic home that tells the story of one of America’s great sea captains and explorers. Palmer built the house with his brother, who was also a sea captain. Nathaniel was married but had no children. His brother Alexander was a widower with four children. They shared the home, with Nathaniel’s wife raising the children while the two men were away on their voyages.
Nathaniel was a local shipbuilder and captain who is credited with discovering Antarctica in 1820. Palmer Station in Antarctica still bears his name. Walking through the house gave us a fun glimpse into what life was like for a successful New England mariner in the early 1800s. It’s a small museum, but it’s packed with local history and a fascinating connection to Antarctic exploration.
The descendants of Alexander Palmer who inherited the house were two sisters who never married or had children. When they were in their 90s, they had to auction off the contents of the house and sell it because they could no longer afford the upkeep and were essentially destitute. Unfortunately, most of the house’s furnishings were sold off. However, the Stonington Historical Society purchased the barometer, and it has now been returned to the Captain’s home.
After our tour, we went out into the grounds and found a Geocache. This one, number 567, was unique. It was a wooden bird feeder. The person who hid it printed out photos of birdseed and put them into the feeder’s clear glass to make it look like a real feeder. However, the inside was the cache container! Very clever, and I bet it annoys the birds and squirrels big time!
After finding the geocache, we headed back toward Mystic, stopping for a snack along the way, then going back to the boat.
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Day 115 – Friday, September 25th, 2026 – In: Mystic, CT
Friday was a day of waiting for the storm to hit. The wind had calmed down some overnight, but by early morning, it had picked up again. It was overcast, and the temperature was only around 53°. Since we had the car we went and did a bit of shopping. Brenda needed a warmer sweatshirt, and we needed a few bits and bobs. Also, Brenda was looking for a new diamond art project. We hit Walmart, Hobby Lobby, Michaels, and Kohl’s. After a few months of not driving a car, it feels a bit odd and fast! After a couple of hours driving from store to store, we had had enough. We were going to stop at Jersey Mike’s for a snack, but there was no parking. Good for my Jersey Mike’s stock, bad for getting a snack. We ended up just going back to the boat.
For the rest of the afternoon, we just relaxed on the boat. At 5:00, we walked next door to the Daniel Packer Inne for dinner. While we were there, the first band of rain came through. We were able to get back to the boat in just a light mist. I did one more check of our lines to make sure everything was secure, and we went to bed early, figuring we might get woken up during the night. This was the first day on our trip that neither Brenda nor I took any pictures!
Day 116 – Saturday, September 26th, 2026 – In: Mystic, CT
We slept pretty well until 4:00 am when the tide turned. The wind was blowing at 20 mph with gusts up to 33 mph. When the tide started to come in, the waves built up because the wind and tide were moving in opposite directions. This caused 1-2-foot waves just on the little protected section of the river that we are on. With our bow sticking out into the river, it got really bouncy. It’s amazing how quickly conditions can change!
We got up, and I checked the lines. There was just a bit of rain as we were between bands. Not much rain yet, as of 4:30 am, we only had 0.13 inches. I think the wind is blowing it all away! 😉 When it got light enough to see, I went out to check the lines again. The wind was up to 25mph with higher gusts. This caused quite a ripple on the river around the boat.
High tide this morning was at 9:30. The wind is blowing the water out of the river, so I expected a lower tide, but with the full moon and the wind blowing water into Long Island Sound, it’s actually much higher than normal! At 8:30, an hour before high tide, the marina’s fixed docks and parking lot were flooded. Brenda had an appointment to get her hair done, and we were wondering if we’d have to untie the boat and use it to take her to the salon!
By 11:30, we had to leave for her appointment. The tide had gone down enough that we could get off the dock and to the car. While Brenda had her hair done, I took a quick ride to Walmart and picked up some slippers to wear on the boat. When we left home in June, and the temp was 102°, I didn’t think I’d need slippers. We didn’t know it would get this cool this early! We’re just glad that this Nor’easter isn’t bringing snow!
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Day 117 – Sunday, September 27th, 2026 – In: Mystic, CT
Overnight, the wind started to die down. We still needed earplugs for the slap, but we got a decent nights sleep. In the morning, it was raining pretty steadily, but the winds were down to under 10 mph. We just hung out on the boat. We did some route planning now that we knew we could leave on Tuesday. The high tide was at 10:00. A few of the lower docks flooded, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as yesterday’s.
It rained off and on for most of the morning and into the afternoon. Around 2:00, we took a ride to the local grocery store, “Big Y,” more to get off the boat than anything else. We picked up a few things and went back to the boat.
Brenda noticed some photos of our boat on a local news Facebook page, and we received several messages from friends in the area who saw them as well. The Facebook photos were by Sparrow Drone Aerial Services (sparrowdas.com). They flew over downtown Mystic during the storm and got some great photos. In many, you can see The Frog standing out in her bright blue hull! I’ve included some in the gallery below.
Some Loopers that we met in 2020 at Wacca Wache, Duane and Diana on Bella Donna, saw that we were in town. They saw us on NEBO, the Looper tracker, and on the local Facebook page. They reached out and invited us to have dinner with them to catch up.
We met them at Andiamo’s, a local Italian restaurant, and had a great dinner catching up after 6 years! We are still amazed at the community of boaters! Comparing notes, we learned that we had been near each other several times, including in Newport during both our trip north and our visit last week for the boat show! They are planning to do the Triangle Loop in 2027, about the same time that we will be heading through New York on our Great Loop Trip. We’re going to keep in touch to see if we can get together again next spring.
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Weekly Recap
This week, we traveled 0.9 miles to move the boat from the Mystic Seaport Marina to the Mystic Downtown Marina. We spent most of it hunkered down, watching the weather, and were glad we weren’t stuck out on Block Island! We did a bit of sightseeing at the beginning of the week, but spent most of the last few days on the boat staying dry. We weathered the storm just fine and plan to head back out on Tuesday.
Next week, we go to Stamford, CT, to visit with friends from home, then make a mad dash for the Chesapeake before the next storm hits!
Thanks For Visiting! – Tom & Brenda
