related sites:

The Stonington Historical Society

The Stonington Intelligencer

The Official Town of Stonington website

About Stonington today

My Fair Stonington

By Patricia L. Borns
reprinted with permission of Yachting Magazine

A stranger hails me at the dock of Dodson Boat Yard. "Morning,"I say, scanning his stern. "Galatea. The name's familiar, but I've forgotten my Greek."

" Pygmalion," says the man. "He was searching for the perfect woman, so he built a statue incorporating his ideals. The gods smiled on the young man and turned his statue into a living embodiment of perfection. That's Galatea."

And that's Stonington, Conn. It does not get better than this. From Stonington, the only Connecticut harbor directly facing the Atlantic Ocean, Block Island beckons to the southeast, Long Island to the southwest and Watch Hill, R.I. east A catboat weaves among a scant hundred yachts moored this weekday in the inner harbor, where Bob Snyder, Sr. presides over the nicest little boatyard you could ask for. I notice Bob in the cockpit of the gleaming Concordia yawl he keeps at the dock. With the Yankee patriarch at her wheel, she could be a cover for a vintage issue of YACHTING. Don't be fooled, though. She's more than a showpiece.

Step out of the marina and you're in Connecticut's oldest borough, settled by homesteaders from the Plymouth Colony. On the knoll known as Pine Point, a Victorian mansion crowned with an octagonal cupola, the Nathaniel Palmer House, attests to the fortunes a 19th century sea captain could aspire to here. History remembers Palmer's discovery of Antarctica, when he left Stonington at age 21 in search of new seal rookeries and found penguins instead. That was the least of his accomplishments, however. When clippers were the fastest things going (they got their name for 'clipping" days off of a cargo's ETA), their captains were as lionized as baseball players, and Palmer was the Mark McGwire of his sport

Dodson Boat Yard (top) is a first-class facility that still feels like family. There are deck hands always ready to help when you want to tie alongside the dock or pick up a mooring.