Epoxy

Groton Long Point

New London County, Connecticut, USA

Also known as GLP, Groton, Fishers Island Sound, New London County

On September 21, 1938, a hurricane nobody had forecast came ashore here in the middle of the afternoon.

It is still the worst storm in Connecticut's history. Tides ran 14 to 18 feet above normal along this coast. At Bluff Point, the peninsula just west of here, a summer colony of nearly a hundred cottages was swept off the land and never rebuilt. Three women at Groton Long Point were carried 200 feet in their car and found in the water afterward.

Groton Long Point itself is about a quarter of a square mile with a year-round population near 500. It has run its own affairs since 1921, when the state legislature granted the Groton Long Point Association the power to tax and issue bonds independent of the town of Groton. The association holds the same authority a borough does, and the arrangement is old enough that Connecticut residents can no longer set one up the same way.

Details

Feature: Coastline
Build: Epoxy
Material: Solid Walnut
Colour: Caribbean Blue
Size: 10-1/2" x 16"
Completed: December 2024

Shop this Style $350.00 CAD

Detail of the Groton Long Point map by Keyway

How this one was made

Walnut, and wall to wall on this one. The whole surface floods rather than just the water, so the epoxy runs right out over the engraved coast and off every edge before it comes back off on the sander.

Two colours, the water and the lettering. The coastline here is the reason this took time. Fishers Island Sound comes in as a run of deep narrow inlets with islands scattered off the shore, some of them small enough to be a few square millimetres of wood surrounded on all sides. Every one of those has to survive the flood and the sand back, and the small ones are where a board gets lost.

Walnut is the forgiving wood for this. It is darker and tighter than maple, so it takes staining far less readily, and there is more margin in the sanding if a corner needs another pass.