Rhode Island Hopping

We have fallen seriously behind in blogging!  Or should we say, we hardly got started, then we dropped the ball!  So this is a catch-up entry, which may lack some energy relative to an entry on the current day, but we want to include the missed days, which at this point stretch back to Thursday, Aug 29.  So -- here we go!

Thursday, Aug 29 -- When we left off, dear reader, we had taken a slip at Hunt Yachts in Portsmouth, RI, to get some electronics help for our flaky windlass controller.  We had re-wrapped the wires in the spring en route from FL to RI, but the wrapping was coming undone.

Cay Electronics had been recommended to us; however, Hunt technicians had greater availability, so we went with them.

The repair (wire splicing) went smoothly in the morning, and we (Fred, Dorothy and Sage) then had a nice sail up to Bristol, where we were thrilled to successfully anchor (not realizing that our anchoring woes were in fact not yet over), and met Ian, who had just arrived from Burlington, for a seafood dinner at Quito's.  We split an appetizer of clam cakes -- fried dough with clams inside -- never had those before, and they were good!!  After several very close games of Bananagrams, we turned in.  Ian was our first guest to sleep on the dinette converted to a bed, and he reported that it was very good, except that he could feel the individual cushions, which we can work on.

Friday, Aug 30 -- With Sage and Ian, we had a wonderful sail around the south end of Prudence Island and up to Apponaug Marina, in Warwick, take Sage to the train back to Boston, and additionally provision, using Fred's car, which we had left there.

Then we motored over to East Greenwich so that Fred could return a snubber hook just in time, and anchored there -- a bit close to the thoroughfare into East Greenwich, and we had Friday-night-of-Labor-Day-weekend boat wake waves overnight.  In the evening, we saw the high speed train go by, and an Amtrak double-decker ... they made us think of Sage, who was already back in Somerville.  It was so nice of Sage to come sail with us for a whole week!!!

Saturday, Aug 31 -- In the morning, the anchor windlass was finicky again!  What the heck!!  We got the anchor up, however, and completed our circumnavigation of Prudence Island by going around the north end en route back to Bristol, motoring much of the way due to lack of wind, but sailing into Bristol Harbor.  En route we lost our GPS and true wind!  What the heck again!  And when we got to Bristol, the anchor windlass would not run at all!!  We took a town mooring, beginning to suspect a battery issue, and delivered Ian to his car in time for noon departure back to Burlington.  We hated to say good-bye so soon, but we were thrilled that Ian made the trip down to Rhode Island to help see us off on our big adventure, and we have this great picture to sustain us:

We spent the afternoon exploring Bristol, looking at shops and buildings in this historic village, and sampling Grey's famous ice cream -- tasty!

Sunday, Sept 1 -- It rained overnight and into morning ... we waited for a break in the rain to motor over to a mooring at the Herreshoff Museum, and dinghied in to see the museum, take showers, and get a Sunday NY Times.  Here is Bristol as it appeared that grey morning:

The Herreshoff Museum houses the America's Cup Hall of Fame and many beautiful old wooden boats, including the first catamaran, built before its time in the late 1800's.  It was so interesting to see the boats of that era.  After that nice diversion, we got back to our trouble-shooting.  The batteries were below 11 yesterday at 5 pm in spite of having run the engine for hours earlier in the day and having nothing on, and they were at 10 this morning, in spite of turning everything off overnight, so by now we were pretty sure we had a battery issue, but there was nothing we could do about it over Labor Day weekend but charge them up by running the engine and monitor, so that we did.  Here is Fred at the nav station, in trouble-shooting mode:

Monday, Sept 2 -- Labor Day!  Batteries 10.4, engine barely started.  We motored in heavy fog to Jamestown, RI, on Conanticut Island.  We could barely see the pilings to go under the Jamestown-Newport Bridge!  We took a mooring at Conanticut Marina to meet up with Rachel and John Bernetich for lunch and a tour of Conanticut Island.  It was wonderful to reconnect after not seeing them for 19 years!!!

Tuesday, Sept 3 -- Fog again!  And batteries dropped from 11.7 to 10.7 overnight, with nothing on.  We motored north again, through dense fog, back to Portsmouth, this time to New England Boatworks, for diagnosis and resolution of the battery issue.  To make a long story short, two batteries in the house bank were bad, and we decided to replace all three (4D batteries), re-cable them in a way that would draw from all three more evenly, and install an ACR to isolate the engine start bank from the house bank except during charging.  Here is Fred showing off the batteries:

The trouble-shooting and resolution were a 3-day affair, but in addition we did get laundry done and enjoy the marina's beautifully tiled showers, and we got into a few other diversions:

Dorothy pulls out the sewing machine while on shore power to make progress on Ian's graduation quilt!

You can even iron when on shore power!

These two-way radios were my 10-year gift from GE.  We got them charged up and ready to use.  (Ready to use for what, I'm not sure, but they are sure to come in handy!)

And here is something we cooked in the oven on board -- blueberry pie!

We were back in business on the battery issue (which was causing the windlass and may have been related to the GPS issue) at end of day on Thursday, Sept 5, but it was late in the day to move, so we stayed over one more night.

Friday, Sept 6 -- We sailed to Point Judith Marina (in Snug Harbor, RI) ... it almost felt bizarre that it was NOT foggy!  A couple of things we saw as we were sailing by Newport en route:

Hammersmith Farm, childhood home to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.  You can read more about the house and see a better picture here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/petercamyre/3750352097/

A tugboat pulling a barge.  You can only see the front of the barge here.  The cable between tug and barge can sometimes be a mile long!

Here is the full barge.  It is BIG!  We look out for big ships and stay out of the way!

We rendezvous'ed with Bill and Jean Dunnington at Point Judith Marina, made a provisioning run, and anchored in the Point Judith Pond.

Point Judith Pond -- serene sunset scene

Saturday, Sept 7 -- We had blueberry pancakes for breakfast!

Then in a perfect, WSW wind 15-20 knots, we had a vigorous sail over to Block Island with Bill and Jean:

Bill and Jean enjoying the sail.

Fred enjoys steering from the side -- Aviva's very large wheel makes this possible.

Bill at the helm.

Maybe some weather helm!

We anchored in the Great Salt Pond, dinghied ashore, and walked to Old Harbor, where we toured the gift shops and had a seafood dinner at Surf Motel.

Sunday, Sept 8 -- We sailed on a lively wind, SW 13-16 knots, half way to Stonington, CT, then decided to turn around and go back to Block Island for the night.

Fred, Bill and Jean relaxing in the salon.  Fred is holding the step he made to make it easier to step onto the boat from a dock.

Lovely sunset over the Great Salt Pond, Block Island.

Crisp crescent moon and Venus.

Monday, Sept 9 -- With no wind, we motored back back over to Point Judith to bid farewell to Bill and Jean, who also kindly took us for another provisioning run.  They left to pick up Fred's car to kindly store for the winter at their home.

This concludes the overly-lengthy chapter on Rhode Island Hopping!!  If you made it this far, thank you for your interest and patience!!