Being in the USA is a bit of a culture shock after the Caribbean even though New England is very like southern UK. The harbour of Newport is very pretty with old wharfs protruding from the main street and colourful wooden slatted buildings with cafes and bars and outside seating - a great holiday atmosphere.

However, the main shock has been the cold, temperatures down to 16 degrees with the occasional thunder storm. Out has come the warm clothes and a yearn for heating on the Maymio.

We've done the museums and yacht restoration projects and visited Walmart and outlying boat yards. The buses are cheap, easy and close to the dingy dock. The Sailors Church Institute provides showering and laundry facilities as well as a nice cafe, library and lounge which is a great meeting place for sailors.

Top of the list of cultural pursuits was the local baseball match featuring the Newport Gulls and the Northshore Navigators. This is a collegiate league with college players trying to make their way into the professional game. With the Boston Red Sox up the road they wouldn't have far to go. But for ineptitude of the Gulls performance it would have been quite fun. Apparently, it was the worst they've played for 5 seasons. They lost 12-1 and we waited an hour to see a home run. Worse than that it took 45 minuets before any Gull player to reach 2nd base. You can see we are getting into this and Robbie was all ready to put on tight white pants and a big glove and go and join them.

To give them their due the pitchers were hurling the ball quite hard at them, not at all like rounders! How you can get such a small bat onto the ball travelling at 90mph I don't know.

Today we have woken up to sunshine, and 60 degrees (we have gone back from C to F again to keep in line with US) so after refuelling we are going to move on for a couple of days for a change of scene. Wickham looks good as does Barrington so we shall head off that way. If we time it right we can watch the start of the first race between Valsheda and Ranger.

Photos

Big pizza and cell.

The game. 

Reefer the guard dog.