Compo Beach

What a draw the beach is on a warm fall day! We went to Compo early in the afternoon and there were hundreds of people there. A sign near the entrance said "Furball," with an arrow pointing toward the beach. and from the number of dogs we encountered, I'd say the Furball is obviously some kind of canine get-together. There were dozens of dogs and dozens of people with dogs, and I was reminded that one of the advantages of not owning a dog is that you never have to walk around carrying a plastic bag of dog shit.

The tide was dropping and Kaare, our 10-year-old son, waited for it to get low enough to skim board. Four or five people were swimming. Three police boats (at least) and a Coast Guard boat were sitting together a thousand feet or so off the beach, responding (I learned today) to a 12:30 p.m. call that a swimmer was in trouble. We could see divers in the water, and for a while a helicopter hovered high above the mouth of the Saugatuck, west of Compo, but there wasn't much other activity.

I used my binoculars to scan the water from Fairfield in the east and south to the Compo jetty -- I did it three times between roughly 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., and counted 45 sailboats, 50 sailboats, and 47 sailboats. By the time we left, the sun was low, the water was almost purple, and the shadows were long.