Sailing Brigadoon

Favorite anchorages are a proprietary subject at best but I do think that it’s well worth the effort, given the far flung Zephyr readership, to raise the topic. The advantage of this is two-fold: 1) if you comment with a favorite anchorage you can feel reasonably safe that you’re not advertising to every sailor in your region, thanks to the geographic diversity of the Zephyr readership and 2) you will hopefully see responses to your post that encourage new ideas and cruising goals, idyllic spots to dream about, etc. Sooooo…I’ll get us started but please comment freely with your favorite summer anchorage – no matter where they may be – for the benefit of people who may never get there but still like to learn about a good sailing Brigadoon.

My adopted home ground is coastal Connecticut which means sailing Long Island Sound. A host of places come to mind – Block Island, the Thimbles, Fisher Island and Shelter Island...you don’t have to look too hard to find a good anchorage on the Sound though in the summertime you’ll have company. But a truly special place is Hamburg Cove up the CT River from Essex. Locally known as a spring fishing hole for perch, Hamburg Cove is fresh water so the swimming is superb, there are plenty of little inlets to explore in your dinghy and the surrounding land is beautiful. A word of warning – during the summer days stinky power boaters anchor to swim so arrive later in the day/early evening. Sunday nights are better than Saturday and any weekday night is choice.