Last Friday night Morgan and I hopped on a bus and made our way down to Branford, CT and met up with Kyle on Sibelius at a quiet little marina called Dutch Wharf tucked up in a lazy, meandering river. We spent the night at the marina and the next morning after some delicious breakfast at Crostini we untied from the dock and motored down the river towards Long Island Sound. We popped out after a short time, hoisted the sails and headed East towards open ocean. Not before long swarms of black flies took refuge on our boat and an onslaught of ankle biting ensued. Countless flies lost their lives in the battle for our ankles but they just kept coming in waves. As soon as we thinned the numbers, using our flip flops and a rolled up magazine as weapons, more would arrive in force. They then began to invade the cabin. There was no safe place on the boat. We were losing our minds and prayed for them to make a retreat. Eventually when the heat of the day began to subside I donned my foul weather bibs and put on socks and slippers to protect my poor ankles from the voracious flies. The majority of the flies ended up leaving us that evening but a number remained for the rest of our journey.
Meanwhile we enjoyed a favored current and flew the spinnaker for almost the entire day. Sometime in the late afternoon we were spit out of “The Sluiceway” and recorded the passage’s max speed over ground at 9.2kts. We then gybed North East, still with spinnaker flying. Around dusk we doused the spinnaker due to a freshening wind and unfurled the jib. Sadly the heightened wind speed was only temporary and slowly began to die through the night. We really had no plan as to our destination. We thought maybe Block Island or Point Judith could be a cool place to drop the hook for the night. In the end we decide to just sail through the night and make for our final destination, Newport. This would end up being Morgan’s first overnight passage! The sun melted below the horizon and the stars emerged all the while the wind lessening and our boat speed slowing to a chill 2.5kts or so. This is how it continued through the night, the stars bright as ever, the Milky Way made an appearance and shooting stars lit up the night sky. Numerous fire works displays could be seen bursting above the coastline as we ghosted along quietly in the dark.
We took turns standing watch two at a time, Morgan learning the ropes on her first night watch. She adjusted well and did a great job and even handled a bit of a tricky tug encounter. After dark we spotted some lights a ways away on the horizon off our bow and deemed it to be a ship of some sort but it was not visible on AIS. We made a note to keep our eye on it. After a few we were startled by a garbled hail over the VHF calling for Sibelius. Morgan attempted to return their hail a number times but each time unsuccessful in achieving a response. We looked ahead and the ship we saw earlier was now quite a bit closer and we assumed that they were attempting to inquire as to our heading and intentions. We could see their red running light indicating that their port side was visible to us. They finally showed up on AIS and we noted their CPA and heading just before the AIS signal was lost. They were verging on entering our personal bubble with a CPA of about 3,000 feet. Morgan radioed the unknown vessel again and advised we would turn 20° to starboard and again received no response. We turned to starboard and watched as a large tug with a huge barge in tow passed to port. We were a safe distance away but were made uneasy by the tug’s odd radio silence during this encounter. The tug’s AIS data included no vessel information whatsoever. After the tug incident we had a relatively uneventful night until a small power boat rocketed across our bow about two boat lengths away headed from Point Judith on their way to Block Island. We were wondering if they even saw us at all…
Off of Narragansett Beach we hit a major header and a drop in the wind speed which forced us to tack towards the beach. Now with a current against us and almost dead calm winds we were verging on sailing backwards. The wind clocked around again and we tacked back heading almost parallel to our previous course but a huge lift and an increase in wind speed brought us back on course and moving at around 4.5-5kts. We were happy to ride this for a bit until it died again and the wind became shifty, causing us to tack back and forth up past Newport Neck and onto our mooring near The Dumplings. We cleated the mooring pendants around 6am. We decided to stop here and grab a couple of hours of sleep.
A few hours of sleep later we dropped the mooring and motored across the shipping channel towards Fort Adams and finally to our final mooring in Newport Harbor. While going by Fort Adams we got a view of Jazz Fest and enjoyed the music from afar. A call on the VHF to Oldport Marine secured our final mooring just off the pier at the South end of America's Cup Ave. We motored through the mooring field ogling at all of the stunning yachts, including the 11th Hour Racing IMOCA 60 which participates in the Volvo Ocean Race around the world. What an incredible sight to see. Racers were on board, divers were in the water presumably cleaning the hull, the foils could be seen jutting out on either side just below the surface. These boats are a feat of engineering. Another vessel of note was the schooner Columbia. We recognized this boat from when was tied up in our first home port of Salem, MA where we began our adventure with Switchback. She was built in the year 1923 in Essex, MA as a 141 foot long fishing schooner. Now she is an elegant and breathtaking super yacht.
11th Hour Racing IMOCA 60 and the schooner Columbia in all their glory
Once we picked up our mooring we prepared for an afternoon out on the town. We hitched a ride on the Oldport launch and hopped on land in search of food and drink. After perusing a few shops we decided on The Black Pearl for lunch, where we put back some burgers and sandwiches along with rum punch. Then we found a neat little shop called Scrimshanders where we spent quite a while looking at their collection of authentic pre-ban scrimshaw antiques. I highly recommend you check out their incredible inventory of scrimshaw here! We then found ourselves at a whiskey bar and had our fill of tasty libations, followed by some ice cream procured from Sprinkles.
After we had our fun on land it was time to head back to Sibelius to get packed up and head home. Another couple of trips on the launch and some goodbyes and we returned to land and awaited our Uber to take us to the Amtrak station. We could barely contain our excitement after such a great trip and it took everything to leave Newport and make the trip home, knowing we must return to work the next day. Thanks again to Captain Kyle for inviting us out on another spectacular sail! Cheers!
For the nerds:
Sounds like a great time, and congrats to Morgan on her first overnighter!