Newport (Part 1) RI USA

Leaving Cuttyhunk

It was a beautiful morning when we left Cuttyhunk at 0745 on Monday 1 October, just after low water.  The pilot book said that the entrance channel is dredged to 6.5ft so Nicky watched the echosounder like a hawk as we motored through.  But the minimum depth she saw was 2.7m so, even allowing for the small rise in tide, it seems that the channel is a little deeper than the pilot book suggests.

Approaching Newport

With a forecast southwesterly wind we had expected to have to beat up towards Newport but it remained just southerly enough for us to fetch the entrance channel marker.  It was a good sail but the cloud got progressively thicker throughout which made for a rather dull, grey entrance to the Naragansett River.

The entrance is home to some impressive buildings….

Entrance to the Narragansett Bay including (bottom right) Fort Adam

….including Fort Adam and there were plenty of boats out enjoying the wind, some private and some running charter trips.

Anchored off the Ida Lewis Yacht Club and (Inset) New York Yacht Club Harbour Court (the NYYC's clubhouse in Newport).  The NYYC fires a canon to signify ‘colours’ each evening and morning, the times at which national ensigns should be struck for the night and raised again in the morning

We sailed around Fort Adam, got the sails down and found ourselves a comfortable space in the anchorage, close to the Ida Lewis Yacht Club and clear of the underwater cable (which is marked by a line of buoys, though these are in a different place to the cable marking on our chart).

Newport has an excellent Maritime Centre underneath the old Armoury.  Here there’s a public dinghy dock, toilets, showers, a laundry and a seating area with free wifi access.  We left the dinghy on the dock and popped in to chat to the member of staff on duty. He gave us a map, pointed out some things to see and places to eat and told us that the Centre would be closing for the winter on the evening of Columbus Day (Mon 8 Oct this year).  We had arrived just in time – clearly the season is ending.

We strolled into town and along several of the wharfs in the tourist centre, enjoying the boats and peering into the shops – mostly a wealth of t-shirt emporia.

Newport’s historic centre

Away from the seafront, Newport has a small and rather attractive historic centre, so we wandered through that too, though it would have been more attractive still had it not come on to rain!

Newport’s historic centre

We returned to the dinghy via the wharves again.  By this time most of the day tripper boats had returned and shops were closing up for the night.  Whilst summer is really Newport’s season, it seemed to us to be busy enough this late on in the year.  It must get hideously busy in July and August and, in some ways, we think we had a more pleasant stay in October than we would have done had we managed to visit as originally planned as part of the OCC’s Southern New England rally in July (though the company would have made up for the crowds and the over-full anchorages).

Newport, Rhode Island, USA