2025-07-20 More friends and Newport, RI

We left New London Sunday and motored the short 7.5 miles to Fisher Island, where we planned on hanging out a couple of days waiting for good winds to sail to Narragansett Bay.

We have found the wind forecasts to be off a bit, often changing overnight, so planning is difficult.   Same thing happened, supposed to have good winds on Tuesday, but Monday morning showed them not, so we decided to leave Monday.

Lovely sunset at Fisher Island

We have friends we met in the Caribbean that have a home base up near East Greenwich, as winds looked good for anchoring near the area, we decided to head there first to meet up with them.  

Had a decent but slow 32 mile sail in light winds up to Dutch Island Harbor. Retrieving the anchor the next morning was a bit more difficult than usual, as we hooked on some debris, but got it off OK.  Had a short motor up to anchor off of Goddard State Park near East Greenwich, RI.    

Looks like a mess, but came loose pretty easily.

Dean was very brave, and got out the hookah, and got in the 80 degree water to clean the bottom.  It was murky water, and he could see a foot, oh well.  Came up covered in shrimp, but at least our bottom is cleaner.  Not much, a few small barnacles he could feel but not see, but mostly slime.

Wednesday, we headed in at noon to meet with Mike and Gloria.  Walked up and had a nice lunch, and even better visit.  Then they were so kind, and drove us to the grocery store, where we stocked up and filled up the back of the car with our bulky groceries.  We try to stock up on bulky or heavy stuff at stores that are very close to a dinghy dock, or when kind people offer us a ride.  So sorry, we completely forgot to take any photos of the day.

Thursday Kris went for a nice long walk in Goddard State Park, and we spent the afternoon relaxing, watched a sailboat race, and kids out in small boats doing class.

Trail inside Goddard State Park

Trail along beach in Goddard State Park

Charm at anchor - we always look further away in photos than in real life

Amazing, this tree is still standing

Friday we had a very nice sail south, finally got the spinnaker out, almost 2 years since we have used it.  It is still looking great, no mold or issues after being stored for so long.    

Pulling nicely in light winds

Unfortunately, Kris noticed some issues to the jib as she was working the foredeck, and noticed our bolt rope for the jib is broken, along with some other wear items.   Looks like we need a new jib.

Kris checking out the jib

On the sail, we passed a sailboat race.  We wondered how that many people get a Friday off to go racing.  It was a good race, a one design fleet, every sail carbon fiber black.

There were at least 24 sailboats in this Melges IC37 one design fleet out racing.

We also saw our old friend the windmill boat anchored out.

It is just fascinating engineering on this ship

We pulled into Newport, and found a great anchor spot.  While dropping anchor we were slowly backing, paying out the 100’ of anchor chain, a monohull came motoring toward us, going behind us.  Dean put the engines in neutral to stop backwards movement, and we gave each other the WTF look as the boat passed no more than 10’ off our stern, completely oblivious to the fact we were backing up.   Oh Well.   We completed anchoring with no more issues.   Always fun here just to sit and watch boats.  At any time, there are probably no less than a dozen boats on the move in and out of harbor.  Mostly sailboats.

Newport Harbor - lots of boats

Saturday on our way in with the dink, we stopped to talk with our anchor neighbors off of Off-Piste, who we had see several times in the Caribbean, but never met before.

After a brief visit we headed into the dinghy dock, got rid of some garbage and books at the Marine Center and then headed through a very busy downtown and walked a couple miles up to a marine store and Walmart.  We had noticed one of our tack control lines was getting frayed, so got some new line at the Newport Nautical, and then headed over to Walmart for a few odds and ends.  Newport has two free bus routes in the summer, so we caught a free bus back, after picking up some sandwiches at Subway.

Newport bus depot - empty but very nice

Downtown Newport very busy with people everywhere on a sunny Saturday.

Cars and people everywhere - you can see Kris in her sunhat in lower right

We will most likely be here all week, as winds not favorable for heading back west, and we have things to do here.   There is lots to see, and lovely boats to look at.

Lovely yacht 175'+ heading out on a cloudy Sunday morning, on the bow there is a person standing between the head sails