Bob's Story Continues...
Day 4 of cruising (day 10 of the trip):
Course: Pocasset Harbor, Cape Cod to Newport, RI
Distance Travelled: 50 miles
Time Underway: 6h50m
Weather: mix of sun and clouds
Wind: SSW, 10-15 knts
Seas: 2-4 feet on port quarter, building in the PM especially on turning into Newport Harbor at Breton Reef
We have been moving again after 6 days at Pocasset harbor getting the hydraulic steering leak on the flybridge fixed. They had a great staff at Kingman Marina and if we had gotten the right parts in the first order (not their fault) we would have been out of there in 2 days, and so it goes.
After both of us were feeling anxious again about going to sea, we realized it was the delay that got us out of the momentum we had been gaining. It is not our goal to travel every day but two or three days sitting and we get harbor bound. We also realized moorings are a fine place to hang out. Anchoring out does not appeal to us yet as we would miss interactions and getting into the little towns like Newport to walk around. Our dinghy is deflated on the bow and will probably stay there until we get to Lake Champlain in August.
I have to mention the entrance to Newport. As we were coming in to the harbor, we were twisted and slammed into a wave with a fairly violent jerk of the boat. The autopilot shut down at that point. I imagined some loose wire or perhaps a failure of the entire system due to a broken critical linkage or a control bar bent out of alignment. PM went down to the salon to see if she could rest the system by turning off the breaker- nothing. I was hand steering in 4 foot seas, not fun with this boat but doable. The steering was reacting with much less play than it had when the seals were bad, so that was good news. After she returned to the flybridge holding on to several places at a time to keep her feet, she told me she had done as I asked but to no avail. So we continued for a mile or so in heavy following seas, than PM jumped up to say she may not have hit the correct breaker after all. She pulled herself along the handholds again to return to the breaker panel and in a moment the auto pilot was working again. That was fun!
Newport was pricy. We took a slip at the Newport Yachting Center, where the Boat Show is located each September. VELOMER held her own with the superyachts she nestled with for the night. The 72 foot behemoth on the adjoining dock had her name in blue florescent light flashing on the bow. Maybe this winter, we will have one of those nameplates installed.
As soon as we were secured to the floating dock, I asked if we were close to Salas's, a restaurant I had frequented often with Bill Walsh while we were stationed here in 1970-1971. The dock boy sadly explained it had finally closed Spring a year ago. He was amazed it had been here in the early 70's and said it was the only place left in Newport to get a good pasta meal reasonably priced, which for this town is any entrée under $25. The town has changed a bit since I was last here, like a large dose of Viagra had spiked the city planning office.
One afternoon was consumed in Newport with a visit from PM's college buddy, Tony Stapleton, his lovely wife Jan and her son Nicky. The next morning it was a treat to find a local Starbucks and breakfast at the Franklin Spa, on the corner of Franklin and Spring Streets. Newport is not a small sleepy town any more. Next visit, we will make for Jamestown or Wickford. One can no longer take a bike across the Newport Bridge, and perhaps that's a good thing as I have not had great success doing that in the past.
Day 5 of cruising (day 11 of the trip):
Course: Newport to Stonington
Distance Travelled: 42 miles
Time underway: 5h30m
Weather: fog early then clearing
Wind: SSW 10-15
Seas: 2-4 until we entered the shadow of Block Island then 1-2
Leaving Newport after 10 AM allowed the fog to clear somewhat and we had a great passage down the Rhode Island and Providence Plantations coast to Stonington, passing Fisher's Island where my mother spent a year at Ethel Walkers School in the 1930's. That was the year the original campus in Simsbury, CT burned down and the school moved to this isolated offshore Island. And I thought Kent was isolated. The young ladies of that generation were protected by shark infested and cold Atlantic waters. It made getting on and off the island a boat trip only and preferably a large boat. No pregnancies that year I am certain.
So we have been here a day to catch up on housekeeping chores, laundry and maintenance. I changed both Racor filters and purchased new spares. Next time I will shut off the fuel before I open the filter; lesson learned today. VELOMER's 135 HP Perkins Diesel has run flawlessly. She has not skipped a single beat in the rough seas we have encountered.
And tomorrow our travels continue. We are 2 or 3 days, depending on course along the north shore or crossing to south shore of Long Island Sound, from New York and the passage through Hell's Gate. Looking at the current and tide information in Eldridge, a passage catching the southwest ebb of 4.8 knts on Friday June 28 would be best at 2:32 AM or 3:00 PM. We will more probably try the mid afternoon time slot and make for Liberty landing that evening, but we are on a boat and plans change daily. Rain is forecast for 3 days starting Friday; recall lesson # 3 : don't trust the weather forecast.
PM's Input -- More Back Story
When we purchased our boat, her name was Freedom. Suitable enough but overused. We wanted to have a boat name that was unique and reflected our particular situation. We decided to document the boat which is a process to federally register boats flown under the US flag. You can access the registry via the Internet and look up vessels by name. When we accessed the registry, 17 vessels were named Freedom, so that name didn't work for us. Seaborne was a name we considered but than again, that was already registered. Every time we thought we came up with something original or clever, someone else had already been as original and clever. "We're going to have to coin a new word if we are going to be unique about this," Bob observed.
PM loves Paris and things French, so we wanted the name to remind us of that. We both thoroughly enjoy bicycling and spend a great deal of our time and energy engaging in that activity. Bob loves the water as does PM but more reluctantly so. Bob was the one who came up with the name VELOMER which is a combination of the French velo meaning bicycle and mer meaning sea, or bicycle of the sea. Perfect! Better yet, no vessel was registered under that name. We found a boat lettering artist, Joe Tufts, who developed a wonderful graphic of a bicycle with an ocean wave as the front wheel. Even better! We had a boat, now we had a fitting name.
An observation on boat names -- a great many boats have female names many of which are the names of the wife of the boat owner. One wise mariner told Bob that if you name your boat after a female, make it your daughter because she'll always be in your life.
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