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You are welcome to apply any part of this article to your own personal use. Please do NOT publish any part of the article or apply any part of it to any non-personal use without the express written concent of the author.
We've finally made it to Newport, albeit a month behind our original plan. But that's the way cruising goes, best-laid plans are merely a point of reference.
The 74-hour passage from Norfolk was relatively uneventful. The winds were light, so we mostly motor-sailed. As we got close we figured that we'd be arriving during the night so we wanted to slow down a bit. Killing the iron stays'l and sailing for the last twenty hours did the trick. We arrived Thursday in the mid-morning.
There wasn't a lot of traffic out there along our track, but we did need to keep a close radar watch. There was a pretty thick haze most of the trip, giving us a visibility of only about four miles. Not every boat makes a good radar target. One small fiberglass fishing boat came out of the haze from astern on my watch. She came within about fifty meters of Volant then took off again in the haze, all within about fifteen minutes. I never saw her on the radar, didn't see her until she was almost upon us. This happened in broad daylight while I was in the cockpit doing our standard 360° look-around every ten minutes. People are sometimes surprised when they find we do that look-around every ten minutes while on watch. Somehow they think that we should be able to look around much less frequently and still see any other vessels headed our way. If anything, this experience reaffirmed our practice.
After all our cruises we still haven't settled on a watch-keeping system that works for us. For most of our Caribbean trip we had a fixed watch system. Watches were scheduled for 2, 3, or 4 hours, depending on the time of day or night. Kit would have the 2000-0200 watch every night, I'd have the 0200-0500 every morning, and so on. As with everything else in sailing, there are advantages and disadvantages to that watch schedule. While it enabled our body rhythms to adjust to the same work/rest periods every day, the system seemed to short-change Kit on the rest segments as she just couldn't sleep during the daytime. So for this passage we experimented with another system.
I once crewed in a coastal sailboat race from San Francisco, California, to Catalina Island. The skipper preferred what he called the Swedish watch-keeping system. In that system the day is divided into two 6-hour watches and the night into three 4-hour watches. That means that everyone gets at least one 6-hour period of uninterrupted rest.
We tried that system on this passage with partial success. The night watch schedule worked well for the both of us, as we liked the times the change-of-watch happened and we each got at least one 4-hour period of uninterrupted rest. But we found that 6-hour rest periods during the day were just too long.
For our next passage we'll try the Standard American watch-keeping system (4-hour watches with two 2-hour dogwatches, first dog at 1600 and last dog at 1800) with a minor adjustment. We'll put the dogwatches at 1000 and 1200. Moving the dogwatches will have the effect of shifting the night watches by two hours to give us the change-of-watch times we seem to prefer.
The last time we were in Newport we were crewing on a delivery of a sailboat from Ft. Lauderdale. On that trip we arrived around 0700 in thick fog. We couldn't see the bow of the boat from the cockpit. Radar and electronic charting enabled us go reach the inner harbor. Lack of wind required that we motor practically the entire way. Once we arrived we were busy cleaning up the boat for the owner and then left for the airport without having any time for looking around the harbor or town. This time we were able to sail into the harbor in bright sunshine. It was a totally different experience.
The harbor is filled to overflowing with boats. Most are on moorings, a few are anchored out, and fewer still are in the handful of marinas. There are a number of free dinghy docks along the shoreline. But if you don't want to launch your dinghy you can call on the VHF radio for the motor launch service to take you ashore for $2 per person per trip each way. A honey barge will come out to empty your holding tank for $15 for the first 30 gallons. The mooring we took for the first night, mostly for its really convenient location, cost $35 (we found a spot to anchor free in a less convenient location and moved there for the rest of our visit). Newport is a really cruiser-friendly place, so long as you plan on spending a moderate amount.
This place seems to be made for sailors. There must be about a thousand sailboats in this harbor, only a few dozen power vessels. During the day dozens of daysailers weave in and about the moorings. Former America's Cup contenders in the 12-meter class go out every day and compete against each other, taking paying guests as crew. There's one 3-masted schooner, and a replica of an 18th century 3-masted brig, the Rose. A number of traditional 2-masted schooners take guests out for a sail on the bay, leaving and returning every couple of hours. A small portion of the waterfront is reserved for commercial fishermen. Their wharf is purely a working wharf, with fishermen offloading their catch, repairing their nets, baiting their crab traps, and the attendant smell of rotting fish wafting downwind for quite a distance.
Newport is the home of the Bermuda One Two sailboat race. Organized in odd-numbered years, boats race single-handed from Newport to Bermuda and double-handed on the return trip. This year friends of ours from Ft. Lauderdale, Steve and Karyn on Threshold, were racing and had gotten in just the day before we arrived. We met them on their boat for sunset ceremonies, drinking Dark and Stormies (dark rum and ginger beer, Bermudan style). Dark and Stormies are quite tasty, but can be dangerous. I only had three of them and then left without my shoes.
We had a friend from Boston join us for an overnight visit. Unfortunately she had to go to the emergency room for a few hours with an acute attack of migraine. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Her doctor was a sailor with a mooring in Cuttyhunk Harbor. After releasing our friend he offered us the use of his mooring. Yet again we've changed our plans. We'll now be visiting Cuttyhunk before heading through the Cape Cod Canal sometime next week.
Today was a workday. We burped some more air out of Otto von Steerer, our autopilot. I donned my wetsuit and scrubbed the bottom. And we did a few other minor chores.
A cold front is expected to come through late tonight, bringing with it winds in the 20-30 knot range. Earlier this evening Thor was quite busy throwing his electrical bolts down at us puny humans. Right now he seems to be resting. When the front actually comes through later tonight, it should be very interesting.
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