TripSailor.com® Sailing Blogs

We spent Tuesday (Oct 14^th) night back at Vineyard Haven but just anchored outside the breakwater and did not go ashore. Instead we set off early on Wednesday and with a good breeze assisting us, crossed Vineyard Sound, wove through the Elizabeth Islands at Quicks Hole, crossed Buzzards Bay, and then swung around Gooseberry Neck and Sakonnet Point to enter Narragansett Bay. The skies had started clouding over on Monday and by Wednesday the wind had come around from the north so that temperatures had dropped to more autumnal conditions. We didn’t have to deal with any of the rain showers that had been forecast but the weather was definitely less settled than our mini-summer on Martha’s Vineyard.

Calling ahead to book a marina slip in Newport, RI, considered by many to be the yachting capital of the Northeast, we discovered that several marinas were already closed for the season or had reduced staffing levels. On the other hand, there was plenty of room, off-season rates, and no waiting for the laundry at the very nice Newport Yachting Center where we ended up. With just a few more weeks before the floating docks were to be pulled out for the winter, a few tourist spots around town were closed but mostly we discovered the advantages of being the late-comers to the popular yachting town.

Newport has a very interesting mixture of historical features. Rounding into Narragansett Bay, one immediately notices the many, huge mansions that line the coast. Some of these "summer cottages" are open to the public and many can be viewed from the elegant Bellevue Avenue that runs southward along the ridge passing through town. Randall and I biked/jogged along there one morning, stopping to read many of the informative interpretive signs but failed to carry a camera to capture the opulence of these late 19^th – early 20^th century "cottages". The richest families in the US (e.g., Astors and Vanderbilts) competed to have the most impressive summer homes including the Vanderbilts’ Marble House which cost $11 million to build around 1890 (they divorced a few years later). Although the costs of these mansions became untenable for most owners in the 1930s-40s, some were maintained as schools and the Preservation Society of Newport saved and restored others. Although such flagrant extravagance of conspicuous consumption seems a bit shocking in today’s economic turmoil but there still appears to be much affluence in this region.

Martha is a keen tennis fan, so on Thursday afternoon we visited the International Tennis Hall of Fame which is located in an elegant facility that was built as an elite club for the fashionable summer residents of Newport’s Golden Age. With fastidiously maintained and used grass tennis courts, the center was the 1881 site of the tournament that evolved into the US Open Tennis Championship. I learned a lot about the history of tennis and was reminded of many of the tennis icons of my youth.

Our walks about town not only featured the many reminders of Newport’s glory days but also showed that many older buildings from the late 1700s had been maintained throughout the narrow streets. There are so many interesting historical markers that one could wander for days reading them all and studying the many architectural styles that they describe. And all of this, of course, provides a fascinating backdrop to the current popularity of the town for visitors by land and sea. There was not a continuous waterfront walk as we had enjoyed in Halifax and Boston but there is public access to many of the wharves and the choices for shopping and restaurants are almost overwhelming. We had anticipated being a bit intimidated by the boating congestion and, quite-frankly, snobbishness of the more affluent yachtspeople that we had assumed were associated with this town. But we were very pleasantly surprised and although not anxious to return during the height of the summer season crowds, we felt that this much-heralded yachting Mecca was well worth a visit. Yes, there were many huge power- and sail-boats in the harbor but our marina companions were friendly and modest just like the other yachting folk we have seen everywhere else on our trip.

After waiting for an hour for a car to be returned, we picked up Martha’s rental car late on Friday morning. The staff were in for an uncomfortable afternoon with 15 reservations but no cars as none had been delivered as expected from the airport, so we were lucky to get one. After a quick grocery shopping trip, we waved Martha goodbye as she set off for Boston to catch a flight back to San Jose, CA, early the next day. We stayed another night in the marina to do laundry, get sorted out, and plan our next course as we aimed for New York City. Before our departure, I participated briefly in the Newport marathon on Saturday morning. I was going in the wrong direction and met the race by coincidence just after its start but it was the closest I have been to running in a marathon!