Rainy Memorial Day means slow start to summer beach season
Westerly — On the northern side of the Napatree Point beach Monday, a lone kite surfer zigged and zagged along miles of empty water.
On the other side, the beach was empty except for two fishermen on their way to the end of the peninsula to catch stripers.
And inside the St. Clair Annex ice cream and sandwich shop on Watch Hill Road, Joe Bordeur was ready to scoop ice cream, but there were no customers in line.
“It’s supposed to be the ‘boom’ of the season, when it first starts,” Bordeur said. “It’s really slow.”
Rain and clouds on Monday meant the unofficial first weekend of the summer came to a soggy end, though local businesses and parks said they’d make up for the slow beginning later in the summer.
And the two Watch Hill fishermen, who said they live in Westerly and gave their names only as Steve and Dave, weren’t complaining.
“You don’t ever see it this empty this time of year,” Dave said. “It keeps everyone away.”
Along Watch Hill Road, "back in five minutes" signs were stuck to doors, and some hadn’t opened Monday at all.
Lauren Lucia, working at The Sunglass Shop, said the weekend had been “insane,” and she had even sold a few pairs on Monday despite the rain.
“We weren’t even going to open, but I feel like it’s been fairly busy,” she said.
Tammy Ann Heller, who owns the clothes boutique Tami-Anns, said all of May has been “hellacious” for business, but because her store relies more on destination shoppers than beach tourist walk-ins, the weather on Monday hadn’t necessarily made matters worse.
“A nice day … doesn’t necessarily make or break me,” she said.
Heller said she made more money Monday than she did during last year’s Memorial Day weekend, promoting sales and special deals extra hard on Friday, Saturday and Sunday when she saw the forecast for Monday.
“It’s pre-planning,” she said. “When the going gets tough the tough need to get tougher.”
At New London’s Ocean Beach, a volleyball tournament kept the beach crowded over the weekend, but the rain kept people away on Monday.
“Today was a huge washout,” Ocean Beach park manager Dave Sugrue said Monday afternoon.
Though Saturday was the official opening day of the 2017 season, Sugrue said, Memorial Day weekend is not usually the busiest weekend of the summer.
“We’re not complaining," Sugrue said. “We’ve had better ones, we’ve had worse ones."
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