Newport again

Alia Vita
Rob & Frances Lythgoe
Fri 10 Jul 2015 21:23
41:28.80N  71:19.40W

​We returned to Newport from Bristol for a few days as there was more to see and it was my birthday. Thank you to those that sent me a card and a present back with Frances, perhaps I shouldn't have complained about ALL of the luggage we brought back with us.  Birthday excitement was courtesy of a Cormorant that floated past Alia Vita wrapped up in fishing line. Somehow some discarded fishing line had got tangled around this poor birds wings, neck, beak and a leg or two. The trailing line then caught round our rudder as it passed. We didn't notice this until someone in a dinghy passed between us and the Cormorant and the line then wrapped around his propeller. We launched the dinghy, knife and towel in hand, to help free the passing dinghy and the Cormorant, the one with the very sharp beak. We tried wrapping the towel around it to stop it flapping, which helped a bit, but it still tried to peck at each of us. It took a while, but eventually we managed to untangle the bird which was unharmed and ungrateful. The towel was lost to the depths and the passing dinghy carried on its way. We felt quite pleased with our good deed for the day and as it was my birthday we celebrated with duck for dinner. To make sense of that, we were unanimous in our agreement that had the Cormorant been a duck we would still have paid the price of one towel and saved it from its predicament. See, we aren't all bad.

There was a bit of excitement here in the early hours of this morning, we heard a horn sounding near by followed by knocking on our hull. We were both fast asleep as it was about 6am, so I got up, made myself decent and ventured on deck to be met by a French chap in a dinghy telling me that our boat was on the move. I had a look around, still half asleep, and realised that the scenery had indeed changed. Now FULLY awake in no time I shouted Frances and started the engines. The boat had been anchored in the same spot for 4 nights so should have been well 'dug in', but the the wind had changed in the night, swung us through 180 degrees and it must have just popped out. We had apparently gone very close to another yacht but not made contact. The bottom on the East Coast is generally mud instead of the sand that we are used to, we have never had that happen before. Fortunately we carry two different anchors and our spare is deemed to perform better in mud so we swapped them over. 

We also put our heads together to plan a bit further ahead and have now decided to head further north that originally planned. We will leave here for Memensha on Martha's Vineyard which we missed on the Rally, and from there we will go the Nantucket, another very famous American island in the nautical world and I think the most easterly out post of the USA, but I may need to check my facts there. From Nantucket we will sail directly to Nova Scotia, Canada. ​Brrrr!