Newport (Part 2) RI USA

Gary’s Handy Lunch – where everyone comes for breakfast!

The day after we arrived in Newport the weather remained dull, grey and overcast so we decided to cheer ourselves up with breakfast at Gary’s Handy Lunch diner, which had come highly recommended by Ray at the Marina Centre the day before.  And it was excellent!  The 1950s style decor was just right, all in black, red and white, and there was a limitless supply of coffee and great breakfast omelettes too.  I could eat breakfast at a place like that every day - I wonder why Nicky won’t let me?

Some of the Newport Mansions

As we ate breakfast several coachloads of passengers from the 2 cruise ships that had arrived overnight drove past, presumably on a tour of the famous Newport mansions or similar.  So, to walk off breakfast, we set off in pursuit, though we didn’t do full interior tours of the buildings.

Tennis Hall of Fame

We stopped off at the Newport Casino, home of the Tennis Hall of Fame.  Here, in 1881, the US Lawn Tennis Association held its first championship, which remained rooted at the Newport Casino until 1914.  By 1950 the resort was struggling financially and the site was in danger of being purchased for development.  However, Jimmy van Alen, a wealthy Newport summer resident and sportsman, bought the site and, in 1954, established the Tennis Hall of Fame and Museum, saving the buildings from destruction.  We admired the Victorian shingle clad buildings and the damp and lush, out of season, grass tennis courts.  It was so wet that the hard courts outside weren’t in use either but there was a steady stream of people into what we assumed was the indoor training centre.

We also stopped by the St Mary’s Parish Church, one of the other places pointed out on the map to us by Ray the previous evening (a little more highbrow than the diner but not as much fun). JFK married Jackie here in September 1953.  Five years after he was assassinated the church was designated a National  Historic Shrine.  Interesting, we think, that they have used the word ‘shrine’ rather than calling it a National Historic Site.

Take your sailing tour around Newport Harbour here.  Old America’s Cup 12 Metres predominate but you can get out on the water on almost any type of boat you please

On the dinghy ride back to BV, we took a detour to ogle the myriad late 50s to late 70s America’s Cup 12 Metre yachts available for day trips out around the harbour.

BV in the rain again

A brighter view of the cruise ships in port

By the afternoon the weather had cheered up somewhat, so we took a walk around Fort Adams State Park at the entrance to the Naragansett River.

Fort Adams

The Eisenhower House, Newport State Park.  This became
 the summer residence of Dwight D Eisenhower during his
presidency as it was more convenient for the golf course at the
Newport Country Club than the Naval War College where he started
 off spending his summers

This current iteration of Fort Adams was designed by  Brigadier General Simon Bernard, a Frenchman who had served as a military engineer for Napoleon.  He designed the new fort in the classic style and it became the most complex fortification in the Western Hemisphere.  Looking at the model of the fort outside its main entrance, the similarities to the European forts of the Napoleonic Wars are clear.  Apparently, Fort Adams is the third largest fort in the US; only Fort Monroe in Hampton, VA and Fort Jefferson on the Dry Tortugas, FL are larger.  It certainly looks jolly impressive and, if the number of canon emplacements are anything to go by, it was well armed too.

Breton Bay

We walked for a very pleasant couple of miles around the fort and the State Park, ending up back at Breton Bay where there was a most attractive yawl on a mooring.

OCC gathering at Harry’s Burger Bar. Left to right:  Murray (Coolchange), Linda (Ile Jeudi), Nicky, Bob (Ile Jeudi), Cate (Coolchange), me

America’s Cup 12 Metre Yacht, Columbia

And we got back in time for a very convivial dinner out at Harry’s Burger Bar with Murray and Cate (Coolchange) and Bob and Linda (Ile Jeudi).  We had met Bob and Linda on the OCC’s Chesapeake Rally but there had been so many people on that rally that we had hardly spoken to them.  We rectified that on this evening and…..

OCC gathering on BV.  Left to right: Murray (Coolchange), Nicky, Cate (Coolchange), Julie and Richard (Escapade of Rame), Bob and Linda (Ile Jeudi)

…..a couple of days later on board BV, by which time Richard and Julie in Escapade of Rame had caught us all up and joined us too.  It was a fun evening, the conversation flowed and we could easily be there now, still talking!  But after 4 days in Newport, the weather gods were still looking favourably upon those of us heading west and then south (Bob and Linda were planning to haul out in Newport before returning home for the winter), so the party had to break up for final preparations for ‘the off’ the following morning.

Newport, Rhode Island, USA

Herreshoff Museum RI USA

Bristol’s anchorage

When we had arrived in Newport we had thought about taking BV north to Bristol so that we could see the town, site of America’s longest continuously running 4^thof July Parade and, more importantly, the Hereshoff Marine Museum, previous site of the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company, at which many of the famous names in America’s Cup history were designed and even more were built.   But there is a half-hourly bus schedule between Newport and Provident and Bristol is on that route, so it made more sense to pay our $2 per head each way and save 20nm worth of marine diesel and engine hours.  And it would be drier too – it was raining again!

Bristol

By the time we got to Bristol the rain had stopped, so we spent an hour or so wandering around the town and taking in the atmosphere.  There’s more to Bristol than just the summer season but even so it did seem very quiet. The centre of the town is an interesting mix of lapboard houses, 1930s brick buildings and places built of who-knows-what rendered on the outside.  But in general it’s all very attractive and the streets are shaded by large mature trees, giving the place a cool and peaceful air.  Down the centre of Hope Street, the main street, and others, instead of a single white line a triple striped red, white and blue line runs, delineating the famous Independence Day parade route.

International America’s Cup Class yacht Defiant

At the far end of Hope Street, close to the water’s edge as you would expect, is the Herreshoff Marine Museum.  It’s a difficult place to miss with the America’s Cup yacht Defiant parked on a cradle outside.

We arrived at the museum just in time to see a 45min film about the Herreshoff yard; the relationship between brothers John, blind since his teens but a fabulous business manager who could provide accurate quotes for building boats in his head and in only a couple of hours, and Nat (Nathanael) the boat and marine engineering design genius; and the yard’s relationship with the America’s Cup.  Following this, and for most of the rest of our visit, we toured the museum with one of the guides (or ‘docents’ as the Americans term them). Frank proved hugely knowledgeable as well having the ability to speak incredibly quickly, a highly necessary skill given the amount of information he wanted to impart and the length of time we had available.

But that does Frank a disservice. The tour he gave was fascinating and drew out vast amounts of information that we would have missed had we just gone around reading the boards and looking at the displays and artefacts.  For example, he directed our attention to a display of steam engines and emphasised that the yard began as a steam motorboat factory, building sailing yachts and sailing work boats as a sideline.  From steam boats the yard branched out, building racing yachts for friends, yachts which challenged the current design status quo and which were incredibly successful.  As a result, Herreshoff was recommended as the designer of an America’s Cup defender. He designed, and subsequently skippered, Vigilant in the defender trials of 1893 and successfully defended the Cup itself in her against Valkyrie II later that same year.  Vigilant was the first of five yachts that Nathanael Hereshoff designed to defend the America’s Cup, over 6 separate challenges and his yachts were all successful.

(Bottom left) Reliance model. (Right)Reliance (90-footer, blue) against other America’s Cup yachts all to the same scale. Enterprise (J-boat, white), Oracle(AC-72, orange), Alinghi (International America’s Cup Class, black) and Intrepid (12 Metre, red)

The most famous of his America’s Cup yachts was Reliance, the largest gaff-rigged cutter ever built.  She was a staggering size – fractionally under 90ft on the waterline, 144ft on deck, 201ft from the tip of her bowsprit to the end of her boom and 199ft high! She needed the large deck for handling the enormous rig but the huge overhangs at bow and stern also meant that when she heeled her waterline length would increase dramatically and, consequently, so would her speed.

(Left and bottom right) Reliance and (top right) Reliance ahead of Shamrock III (1903 America’s Cup series)

From Nat’s first starting her design, and Reliance was designed twice because the owners’ syndicate didn’t like the first one, Reliance was built in 6months and 2 weeks!  But she was a ‘racing freak’, only suitable for use in certain conditions and entirely stripped out down below….except for the below deck winches.  In fact, she was the first racing yacht to be fitted with winches, below deck or otherwise; another  Nat Herreshoff invention!  This was the era of man-powered sailing pulling with blocks and tackles but, even with the more powerful winches, Reliance’s mainsheet was still over a mile long.  The stripped out below design of Reliance does, however, highlight just how difficult it was for the America’s Cup challengers at the time.  In 1881, the Deed of Gift, the rules governing the challenge to and defence of the trophy, was amended to require that challenges be accepted only from yacht clubs on the sea and that challenger yachts must sail to the venue on their own hull. No totally stripped out, super-light, ultra-extreme design racing hulls would work for the challengers, or they might not even make it across the Atlantic to race.  Arguably an unfair advantage for the defender.

1/6^thscale model of the Reliance built to commemorate the 110^thanniversary of the original

Half models designed and built by Nat Herreshoff in a replica of his office

Though the Hereshoffs are most famous for building 8 consecutive successful defenders of the America's Cup from 1893 to 1934 (of which Nat designed 5 of the yachts which defended on 6 of the 8 occasions) they achieved far, far more than that.  The museum houses a replica of Nat’s study in which are a large number of the half models of the yachts he designed, all made by his hand and, from which, using a method he invented himself, the lines could be lifted off, drawn onto paper and given to the yard’s boat builders.  There are over 500 models in the museum’s collection – that’s quite some rate of design!  And the build rate matched that too.  Frank told us of the speed at which Reliance was designed and built.  Whilst the yard was building her they had full order books for their usual clients and, if we recall correctly, built over 100 other boats in that time too.

Models illustrating seminal developments in yacht design

Nat Hereshoff was something of a design genius in many ways.  He had built himself a yacht Clara along standard lines of the day, plumb bow, overhanging stern, long keel. But he didn’t like the way she handled so he stretched the bow out, elongated the stern further and made the keel shorter.  This yacht handled much better and was immeasurably faster than the competition. This was the yacht that got Nat the America’s Cup defender design recommendation.

Amaryllis II, 1930s reproduction of Nat Herreshoff’s 1875 catamaran Amaryll is, the first US patented sailing catamaran

Monohull hull design wasn’t the only area of innovation.  Nat designed the first US patented catamaran, which performed so well in her maiden regatta in 1876, the Centennial Regatta of the New York Yacht Club, that following this catamarans were barred from regular sailing classes, and this remained the case for nearly 100 years.  Nat also redesigned sails, making them cross-cut to reduce stretch.  However, no Rhode Island sailmaker would cut sails according to his design, so the Hereshoffs incorporated a sail loft into the yard and from then on built all their own sails. And he invented sail tracks and sliders, the modern winch (which were fitted on Reliance), the folding propeller, the method of splicing wire to rope……the list goes on; an incredible set of achievements for one man.

The boat hall at the museum.  The museum owns 62 Herreshoff designed boats and a large number of them are on display in the boat hall

Frank left us at the boat hall, by which time we were quite amazed by all the facts and figures with which he had bombarded us.  And the boat hall is another impressive part of the museum in its own right.  I don’t know how many boats they have on display in the hall but, as we understand it, they are all Herreshoff designs, most of them original too.

Torch, fabulously restored but one of the few yachts on display not to have been designed by Nat Herreshoff.  She was designed by A. Sidney DeWolf Herreshoff, one of his sons

Torch has been fabulously restored by museum volunteers and as owners of a 1999 42ft sailing yacht it was fascinating to be able to compare BV to a top of the range 1929 44ft yacht.

Torch, (left) companionway and saloon and (right) galley

Torch is truly beautiful, but we don’t think we’ll be trading in BV for her anytime soon.  If nothing else, the handpump at the galley sink looks far too much like hard work – we both like our foot and electric pumps too much….

Torch

…. and she’d be a nightmare to manoeuvre in reverse too with that long keel and offset propeller.

From NGH’s motor launch Thania, we got another view of the model of Reliance.  The only part of the model that isn’t complete to scale is the mast as a 30+ft mast just would not fit into the boat hall

From the boat hall we took Frank’s advice and walked the short distance to the workshops where the museum staff and volunteers restore old wooden yachts to their former glory.  The yards around the back are littered with dying, drying boats and we wondered how many would make it into the shed in time for restoration and how many of the yachts in the boat hall had had timbers as old, warped and open as some of those we saw on the trailers.

Inside, we found the shed full of boats undergoing or due for restoration work.  It’s slow work with most of it being done by volunteers.  It’s a lovely place to visit, with the smell of newly sawn wood and craftsmen’s beautiful objects being restored, if not to full life afloat, to a state where they can be admired once more.  Quite what Nat and John Herreshoff would think of it we’re not sure.  They don’t appear to have been sentimental about the boats they built – but then, they built so many.  And to restore old boats, whilst a challenge, is not cutting edge technology in the way that they were building yachts on the extremes of design boundaries.  I imagine that if Nat were here today he’d be looking at the AC72s, the foiling catamarans and, next, the foiling monohulls and wondering what loopholes in the design regulations he could find to come up with the next winner and so bring the Auld Mug back to America.

We spent far longer at the Herreshoff Museum than we had expected to.  It was fascinating and well worth the trip up from Newport.  Like most museums you could spend even longer but we had a bus to catch to return to Newport and Blue Velvet.

Bristol, Rhode Island, USA

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

Day 3 Chesapeake to Nova Scotia - Block Island

These Blog entries are edited versions of the messages we sent back as we completed the passage. They were sent by radio using a laptop that controls a modem and the HF/SSB radio, using the SailMail system. We sent the messages daily to Charlotte and she then forwarded them on to a list of family members.

2000hrs (AST, GMT-4) 24 Jul 2018

Dear All,

Dawn on 24 July

So, the passage from Chesapeake Bay direct to Shelburne in Nova Scotia has taken a detour for all the reasons we explained in the last update.  We are now in the large anchorage in the centre of Block Island, just east of Long Island.  We had great sailing conditions today with blue skies, a steady wind (of indeterminate strength due to our lack of wind instruments but we think about 15kt!) and BV romped along.  So much so, that our midday to midday run was 169 nautical miles, not a bad run in a heavy cruising boat.

Approaching Block Island, going through the narrow entrance channel (bottom)

We dropped anchor in the Great Salt Pond (aka New Harbour) at 1710hrs after 2 days and 8 hours at sea.

Great views over the anchorage from the masthead

As soon as we could Nicky winched me up the mast to see how bad the story was concerning the anemometer.  I got some great views over the anchorage…

… but, of course I also had a job to do up there seeing what was wrong with the anemometer.   Amazingly, it was still there at a cocked angle.  Amazingly, because I pulled on it gently with 2 fingers and it came off!

New (Right) alongside old with the broken collar

The securing collar had broken and it had become unplugged sitting upside down.  When I plugged it back in we had wind indications again.  That was good news because I had expected to have to replace the masthead socket and run new cabling down the inside of the mast - sometimes easy and sometimes a pig of a job.  Instead, Nicky hoisted me back up to the top of the mast so that I could fit the spare anemometer we have on board.  Problem solved!  Even better, because we hadn't lost the other one overboard, with the application of lots of epoxy we now have a spare anemometer again.

We'll stay here tonight and then, in the morning, head up to the entrance to the Cape Cod Canal.  That has to be run with a favourable tide direction and so we expect to have to wait overnight for the right timing to go through the canal.  Once through, we can then head on towards Nova Scotia.  We'll keep you posted on our progress.

Love to all,

Reg and Nicky 

Passage statistics:
Position at midday 24 Jul: N40 52 W71 53
Position at 1710 24 Jul: N41 11 W71 35
Midday to midday distance: 169 nautical miles
Midnight to 1710hrs distance: 114 nautical miles
Total miles covered:  368 nautical miles
Approximate distance to go: 349 nautical miles to Shelburne

End of Day 3  Chesapeake to Nova Scotia,  Block Island