It was a rainy/foggy day a couple of weeks ago and my wife and I were cruising home from a trip out to Block Island. We were in
Long Island sound a few miles south of Fisher's Island headed into Gardiner's Bay.
It was a quiet weekday, but rainy and foggy so I had the
radar set to a 5nm view and I was checking the
screen every 5 minutes or so. I popped up to give it a glance and just 1nm mile away to starboard there was suddenly a big target giving off one heck of a signature.
Startled, I grabbed the binoculars and for a few moments just couldn't figure out what I was looking at... it looked like a black lighthouse base moving parallel to us through the
water. I continued to stare, totally confused for a few moments until I saw the tail fin (?) pop out of the
water... at which point the nerdy 14 year old inside me started giddily yelling "Holy s**t!!!!! It's a f******g nuclear sub!!!"
My wife came running up thinking something terrible had happened. Nope, just me freaking out like a jerk.
I want to say that was at least 300' long, but all I could see was the "tower" part and the "fin".
Within seconds, the Coasties came on and issued a
security perimeter around the "Navy ship"... hardly a colorful enough description in my opinion at that moment.
Looking it up online later, I now think it was an Ohio-class sub. Maybe someone with more knowledge of this stuff than me can tell me what I was looking at. Anyone else ever see one of these subs in LI sound? I must say, it was pretty darn cool.