Thanks for the tour! This is great - I keep meaning to do this with our boat, but lately we're dealing with the clutter issue. We just need to invite some people over and that forces us to clean it up.
It started with the dissolution of an engagement. It ends today, more or less, with the final scheduled charter on Weatherly for the season. We sailed into Narragansett Bay last night after an 8 day trip to New York and Connecticut. There were 25-30 knot headwinds going there, and about the same on our stern coming home. Newport has cleared out; the kids are in school, beaches are vacant on the weekends and the tour boat numbers are dwindling. What a ride though, from arriving in Newport freshly single again back in early May, getting a quick job on Madeline , then onto an ill-fated stint with Sumurun , getting Soveraine , driving from Florida to New England, sailing Soveraine to Newport, and spending the last two and a half months on Weatherly, lots of different boats for a single season. As I said before, I'm ready for a break. Not that I'll be idle, starting this week I'm looking for a steady, and preferably indoors, job for the winter. I don't much mind ...
When I got to Newport, I had gainful employment within an hour of clearing customs on schooner Madeline with Green. This was a great gig, one I had done before and knew well. However, some bizarre new policy was implemented that only allowed 30 hours, spread over 6 days, of work per week. Something about us not getting "burned out". I had worked 12 hour days previous seasons and didn't know why this was any different. I was keeping my options open for something else to come along and by sheer luck the captain of Amerigo put me in touch with a friend of his who then forwarded my info and experience on to her captain on Whitehawk who then got me in touch with the captain of Sumurun , who was looking for deckhands as well as a mate. I met him the very next morning and he immediately asked if I would come for a sail on Friday and Saturday. I accepted graciously. Sumurun is an amazing yacht. I remembered it from two summers previous since we would...
The day started so very, very well. Maria was coming in from Boston just before noon, and Jeff, running late as usual, was due to arrive just after 2. The plan was to take Winchlsea out for a spin, even though there was very little wind. I was fine with this because I had just rebuilt the water pump the week previous, and was anxious to see if that really did solve my engine issue of shutting down after less than an hour at work. By 2:30 we were off of my buoyed anchor (and we did it right this time) and motoring down Narragansett Bay. After over an hour, the engine was still running smoothly, with no changes in RPMs or sounds of her struggling. We had been motoring up wind, so we could have a nice down wind run coming home. It was a picturesque Friday afternoon in August sailing in Rhode Island sound. On the way back the wind died, but we didn't care; we had no place special to be. I flipped the engine back on as we approached Fort Adams and rounded the point back...
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