Newport, Rhode island

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Thu 19 Sep 2013 02:14

41:28.8N 71:19.6W

 

Wednesday 18th September

 

We woke up to a beautiful day in Cuttyhunk with a light westerly breeze and a completely clear blue sky. Tom Young from the beautiful ketch ‘Christmas’ that was anchored ahead of us rowed over to say hello. We both know Iain & Fiona from ‘Ruffian’ and Tom had brought with him something that Fiona had left behind the other day.  Christmas was now setting off back north to her home port of Rockland, Maine whilst we are heading south and should be meeting up with Ruffian in Hampton in due course. We had an all too brief chat before I had to rush off to sign in to the 0900 hours Magellan SSB net. This radio net is a great way to start the day and the yachts signing in each morning range from two in Canada at present and one that is in the Gulf of Mexico, although most of us are scattered at present along the east coast of the USA between Boston and Virginia. Balvenie (NZ) have chewed all their fingernails and are just sweating out one more victorious race in the current America’s Cup Race series. NZ need just one more win to clinch the series.

 

We lifted our anchor at 0935 and made our way across flat seas in very little wind (bang on the nose all the way) to Newport, Rhode island. Here we found a good spot in the small anchorage that is surrounded by huge mooring fields. We are overlooked by the very impressive and imposing mansion and grounds that serves as the New York Yacht Club clubhouse and needless to say there are a good many beautiful yachts on the moorings flying the NYYC club burgee or pennant.

 

Having sorted Serafina out after the trip here, we launched the dinghy and pottered into the town by way of the brand new dinghy dock and visitors facilities at Anne Street Pier. Here they have converted the ground floor level of an old building to provide smart showers, lounge, wifi and a very well equipped laundry room.

 

We had a good wander around the town, which is in the process of going into winter hibernation. Loads of shops have signs up showing winter opening times which are usually only a few days per week and quite restricted hours. The holiday season starts on Memorial Day (late May) and finished on Labour Day (early Sept) and we have been witness these past two weeks how dramatically things tail off.  But the Ben & Jerry’s Ice cream parlour was open and so Sarah (and I) each had a Coffee Coffee Buzz Buzz Buzz, her absolute all time favourite.

 

We went into a bar to watch highlights of today’s America’s Cup racing as we have not actually seen these unbelievable machines in action before (though God knows Mark from Balvenie has tried hard to tell us all about them) and settled down in front of a big screen that was showing a race. It turned out to be a repeat of an earlier race in the series as racing today had been cancelled, but this nugget of information came from the man at the bar I was stupid enough to ask as he turned out to be the town bore and it was with some difficulty that I finally managed to extricate myself from his subsequent opinionated monologue.

 

So what is it about Newport, RI that everyone visiting needs to buy a sweatshirt bearing the name?  Well we have to assume that it is the number one best seller since almost every single shop sells them in various shapes, styles and colours.

 

Sarah has reminded me that I failed to mention the two feathered visitors that we had yesterday during our sleigh ride across the very unruly Cape Cod Bay. The first was some type of warbler and it was tiny and kept trying unsuccessfully to land on Serafina, but the wind always seemed to gust at the wrong moments and of course Serafina was bucking and rolling like a crazed rodeo horse. The second visitor was more adept at this and so this small sparrow made himself vaguely comfortable in our staysail Furlex until our bow plunged into a wave and the resulting rush of green water dislodged it.  But unperturbed it returned and wandered around the deck further aft and behind the mast where it got much better protection from the wind and waves. Eventually it tired of its less than restful base and headed off in search of land and something altogether more stable.