NYC 2025 – Stamford, Connecticut

Wednesday marked Day 13 of our NYC cruise as we set course north from New Jersey and began our return voyage home.

The trip up the East River was easy to follow thanks to the tracks I created on our Chartplotter coming into the city.

It was more chaotic thanks to the multitude of commuter shuttles zig-zagging across the river.

Unlike the trip down on Monday, I was fighting a 5-knot head current and burning a lot of diesel in the process. On the trip down, I was getting 0.4 MPG, and heading home it was as low as .28 MPG.

Around 10:45 we entered the southern end of Long Island Sound and the current weakened considerably.

Despite forecasts for light wind and waves, we ran into three-foot chop for the last hour up to Stamford.

Safe Harbor Yacht Haven

I was happy to discover a Safe Harbor 40 miles north of the city. I missed it originally because it’s not on Dockwa. To book Safe Harbor Yacht Haven, you need to use another app called DockSpot.

Despite that minor confusion, I was very impressed when Dockmaster Nicole texted me a few days to make herself available to assist on our arrival.

Stamford Connecticut

I picked Stamford because I didn’t know how long it would take to navigate the East River back to Long Island Sound. In retrospect, we easily could have set Port Jefferson as a northern port from New Jersey.

Stamford does not remotely resemble any of the seaside villages we visited on Long Island. Peter and I agreed that reminded us of Natick, Massachusetts – a city where we both worked decades ago.

After almost an hour searching for any kind of seaside eatery, we decided to go with the flow and we took an Uber to the Town Center Mall for lunch.

As you may have noticed, we’ve been eating out twice a day and we are getting a little “menu fatigue”. With that in mind, we chose a Chinese Restaurant for lunch.

Peter Chang

At first, I thought this was just an imitation of P.F. Chang’s. It turns out Peter Chang is a great chef who was nominated for a James Beard award in 2016. Today he operates restaurants up and down the Atlantic Seaboard.

This is all well and good, but we picked Peter Chang because they had a four-star rating on Yelp.

Although it’s technically in the Mall, the only way in and out is through an exterior door – there is no Mall Access.

It was pretty empty, but considering it was a Wednesday in a mall, it wasn’t surprising.

Peter and I ordered Lunch Specials which included a tasty and complex Miso soup.

The food was all excellent and provided some much-needed variety to our recent cuisine.

After lunch, we ventured into the mall just to look around.

We agreed to meet back in 45 minutes and immediately went into the bookstore at the top of the escalator.

Barnes and Noble

It’s sad that book stores are a vanishing breed. I’ve always loved them going back to my college days at The University of Massachusetts.

Perhaps even sadder is my weak lament, since I’m probably as guilty as anyone for causing their demise.

These days I read everything on Kindle or listen on Audible (while riding my bike). I never read paper books anymore.

That said, I still love wandering through a bookstore, picking up a title, and reading the synopsis on the back cover.

In 2022 met an author named Charles Thayer at the Boothbay Harbor Marina. He writes murder mystery novels set in Boothbay, Maine, Florida, and the Bahamas. He gave me one of his books and since then I’ve read all nine.

I love the genre and since then, I’ve read a similar series set on Nantucket by Francine Mathews and a few other authors.

So when I find myself with 45 free minutes in a B&N, I wander the shelves looking for new authors who specialize in murder mysteries set in seaside towns.

If you’re interested, here are eight I found yesterday…

Ocean Prey (A Prey Novel)

Gull Island: A Novel

Some of Us Are Looking (A County Kerry Novel)

The Only One Left: A Novel

Nightshade

The Hamptons Lawyer: A Jane Smith Thriller (A Jane Smith Thriller)

The Unwedding: Reese’s Book Club Pick (A Novel)

These Summer Storms: A Novel

Other than B&N and Starbucks, there wasn’t much to see at the mall, or in Stamford for that matter!

Tony’s at the J House

Peter found a well-rated Italian restaurant in Greenwich and we Ubered over for dinner.

It’s a very large place with multiple rooms, bars, and dining areas.

As soon as we sat down, this dapper-looking fellow came up to the table and introduced himself – he was Tony!

Without missing a beat, he started firing obscure trivia questions at us:

“Name the eight animals that begin with the letter O?”

He continued for five minutes and then moved on to the next table.

Well, that was certainly interesting – and then we ordered dinner!

The bread service looked good, but it was served with a dip that tasted like watery spaghetti sauce.

I asked for butter and on the third attempt they brought two lovely shaped balls.

Unfortunately, they were cold as a rock and so was the bread, so the bread service was a bit of a fail.

Oh well, the martini was excellent!

Especially the hand-stuffed blue cheese olives.

Mrs. Horne ordered Sushi.

Peter ordered the Ravilolo…

It was interesting in that it was one huge ravioli.

I was torn between three pasta dishes and conferred with our server who told me the ones I was considering were his favorites, but ultimately he steered me the sausage and cavatelli.

Before I begin my critique, let me say Mrs. Horne and Peter loved their dishes, but mine was a major disappointment.

There was no real sauce, just pasta water. There really wasn’t much flavor either. There were garlic cloves, but they didn’t really do much for the pasta water. The sausage was okay, but it was cooked to the point of being crunchy, so it didn’t bring anything to the party.

I had the server cover it in parmesean, but that didn’t help. I picked at the sausage and pasta. The texture of the pasta was nice, but without a sauce, it was flavorless.

As I picked it over Mrs. Horne asked me “How’s your dinner?”

I started to tell her and she said “Don’t say anything to Tony.”

I said, “Okay, I won’t unless he asks, and I’ll bet he doesn’t ask!”

Sure enough, Tony came back to the table and started the Trivia Game again.

If it were me, and I owned the restaurant, and I spent ten minutes at a customer’s table, I’d probably ask “How was dinner?

But that’s just me!

It was calm when we left Stamford on Thursday morning…

But as soon as we headed north for the 60-mile run to Westbrook, we hit closely spaced three-foot chop and I slowed to 25 MPH.

Next Up: Pilots Point, Westbrook Connecticut