Yesterday, New Bedford.
Today, Newport.
Tomorrow, New London.
Sunday, New York.
Lots of News in New England.
We wanted to leave yesterday, but Buzzards Bay still was rolling five-footers so we didn’t. Because today was our kind of nice, however, we left one busy harbor and headed for another. Mostly it was just easy cruising under a clear blue sky.
About halfway we passed a yellow marker unlike any we’ve seen before.
That’s because we’ve never plowed through a sailboat race before, at least as far as we know. A bit later we saw the pack off in the distance, however, so it’s not like we caused problems or anything.
We’ve now been cruising basically nonstop for 19 months. One might expect us to have learned—after all this time—to anticipate things we need to photograph. Nope. We tend to wish long after the fact that we’d been more prepared. Like today. As we were admiring the mansions along the coast approaching Newport, we remembered that the one where Robert Redford (but not Leo DiCaprio) wooed Daisy and then got shot in his own swimming pool—even though Daisy was driving the car that fateful night—was along there somewhere (and not in West Egg). The place is called Rosecliff, and it’s visible from the water. As Google Maps sadly shows, however, Rosecliff was out of sight before we thought to take a picture.
Fortunately, just as we rounded the corner we managed to catch one side of The Breakers, which is the famous Vanderbilt home where no classic movies were filmed. It’s obviously not as cool as Gatsby’s house, but it’s something.
On the outskirts of town we passed one of those old replica sailing ships. A lot of the towns along the New England coast seem to have one of them hanging around for tours and such. Generally they’re pretty cool. As for this one, we suspect the rigid inflatable dinghy hanging off the stern probably isn’t historically justifiable.
Because of the mansions and the America’s Cup and the golf and the tennis and the shops and stuff, Newport is quite the tourist attraction. Which means cruise ships like the Sapphire Princess stop here to clog up the works. Which means Doug’s gotta bust out the drone.
But hey, we learned something new about cruise ships today. We of course were aware that they anchor pretty far from shore, and that they use tenders to ferry passengers back and forth. What we didn’t know is that piloting the tenders requires no boating expertise or boating etiquette. The only employment criterion is that the applicant must be a complete jackass. One guy cut us off at a blind corner. One guy stopped in front of us when we were thirty feet from docking. The no-wake zone doesn’t apply to them. And on and on.
Yeah you, dipshit sticking out of number 18, we’re talking to you and the rest of your ilk.
Okay, that’s out of our system now. We don’t let things like annoying cruise ship employees ruin the rest of our day, particularly when it’s one of the last warm days we’ll see up here. Dana patronized the shops. Doug flew the drone around the harbor.
Then Dana and Oscar napped on the bow. We’ve been here before by car so didn’t see a reason to get overly adventurous. Good dinner. Good Sunset.
Not too many of these days left before we put Misty Pearl up for the winter. We’d better enjoy them while we can.