All Ashore! New Mooring Field Opens At Waterfront

It’s official. When Tardis, American Tug 34, pulled into New London Harbor on Saturday, it became the first out-of-town boat to use the newly-inaugurated mooring field. “I give you the boater’s thumbs up!” said Tardis captain, British-born Jeremy Bell.

That’s high praise considering he and partner Janet Crane have spent six years aboard the Tardis sailing mostly along the Northeast coast, although they hail from Alameda, Calif., and recently bought a home in Florida.

“It was fabulous to stumble upon this,” said Crane, noting that in this part of the world, moorings can be a bit pricey. To find moorings for $35 overnight, with an option to moor for four hours at no charge if boaters are going to downtown stores or any of the 15 or so restaurants within walking distance of the dock, is “a reasonable price that makes it doable,” Crane said.

“We’re telling all our friends,” said Crane. “These are the best moorings I’ve ever seen.”

Indeed, New London’s mooring field, which consists of 41 Helix moorings located in 15 to 19 feet of water, is state of the art. It can accommodate power or sailboats of up to 50 feet in length and on shorter bridles than traditional moorings. The blue and white numbered buoys are made of nonmarking softlite foam that are designed to keep the ropes out of the water, making them easier to pull in and far less likely to be covered in grime and barnacles when they are retrieved.

Most importantly for New London, it enables recreational boaters on the Thames River to dock in the city, where they can take advantage of the dockside showers, bathrooms, and laundry, and stay for lunch or enjoy an evening of dining, theater, music and dancing. Without the mooring field, none of that would be possible.

“You can’t anchor in this river,” said John Johnson, Chairman of the Thames America’s Cup Committee (TACC). “It’s too deep and there’s too much scope and it’s not safe, because of the prevailing wind.”

The completion of the mooring field was really a team effort, noted New London’s mayor, Martin Olsen. But though the City Council, New London’s Port Authority, and the New London Harbor Master have been working on the project for years, TACC really put the wind in everyone’s sails by bringing in the New York Yacht Club. That gave everyone a firm deadline for the project.  

Although the official ribbon-cutting ceremony for the mooring field was held on Saturday, the moorings have been in place for a few weeks now. Kudos went out to the contractors, who not only completed the job on time but actually finished it early.

“During SailFest, this mooring field was sold out,” said Olsen. It was finally completed with a floating dock in place by July 26, just in time for the ’s regatta.  

The biggest hurdles were regulatory. The mooring field originally belonged to the federal government, so the city had to have the area “defederalized,” as Johnson put it, and that process took about 10 years. Thankfully, it took less time for the state to cede its rights to the city, so when the time came, it was just a matter of dusting off those documents, Johnson added.

A couple of technical hitches surfaced at the last minute when the city realized that there was no dock for the mooring field. That was easily fixed, however, by relocating an existing floating dock from one part of the harbor to the mooring field side of the pier. To be truly functional, though, the mooring field needed a launch service.

Tony Silvestri, a longtime boater and the newest president of , stepped up to provide the latter. “We really wanted to be sure we had a launch so we put a bid in,” Silvestri said. “I wouldn’t say we’re making money but we’re supporting the community.”

As Olsen noted, it was “a good team effort.” However, he added, it will take a continued team effort to complete the renovations the city has planned for New London’s waterfront.

Reconstruction of New London’s City Pier—a $6 million undertaking to replace the original pier which was built as a WPO project following the Great Depression--is already underway. Both the pier and a new permanent floating dock should be completed by next summer in time for OpSail 2012, Olsen said.

“We’re actively trying to entice the boating crowd to make New London one of their ports of call,” Olsen said. “I’ve been to Newport and I’ve been to Annapolis. We have a lot to offer, so why not us?”