Messing About In Sailboats

A perfick' weekend

Just got back from a perfect weekend's sailing on our friends' Phil and Joy's Swan 44. Phil is a very accomplished sailor. He has sailed Newport-Bermuda a bunch of times, 3-times double-handed as well as Sydney-Hobart. Joy is no mean sailor herself having raced a J/24 for several years.

I have never sailed on a Swan before and they  live up to their reputation: a beautiful boat, very solidly built that of course sails perfectly.

We left Sag Harbor on Saturday morning and motor-sailed to Block Island. the winds were light and it was hot and humid but coming into Great Salt Pond was spectacular (above). Over a thousand boats moored or anchored. Although there were a ton of power boats it's mostly a sailor's place. The Pond is huge but buzzing with activity.

The next day we took a taxi round the island. This shot was from the Southeast point looking out into the Atlantic.

On Sunday we sailed and motored a bit to Newport. Sailing into Newport is really special.  The approach from the South gives your views up the Narragansett Bay  either side of Jamestown Island. The entrance to the bay was packed with sailboats, various  racing fleets, pleasure boats, schooners, you name it.

As you sail into Newport,  there are stunning, historic homes like the Inn at Castle Hill and Hammersmith Farm where Jackie Kennedy (nee Bouvier) grew up.

The Newport Folk Festival was on at Fort Adams and we could hear the concert clearly as we bore round Brenton Point. There were hundreds of boats anchored off the Fort listening for free.

I know this sounds corny but the sight of Newport as you come round the corner would take any sailor's breath away. Possible two thousand sailboats, a dozen massive motor yachts with helicopters on the aft-deck, launches buzzing around and Newport itself in the background. This picture doesn't do it justice.

I worked in Newport during my university summer vacation in 1984 and Newport hasn't changed much. If anything it's better. 1984 was the year after the Aussies won the Cup so it had a bit of a down feeling that year. Now it's really bounced back.  Newport has done a good job of developing the town without buggering it up. There are low rise, quite attractive condos on the waterfront and a new dock for the mega-yachts that add to the place. Most of the crappy T-shirts shops have been replaced by more upmarket stores.

We ended the trip with dinner at Clark's Cooke House. The place is an institution. It's sprawls out over four floors, open to the elements like a Caribbean restaurant with great views of the  water.

A nice day on the bay

The missus and I (the one in the middle) had a lovely daysail on Raritan Bay with our friends Terry (the salty chap at the helm) and his wife Claude. 12kts of breeze, clear skies and low humidity. Poifekt!

Terry and Claude sail Mistral, a 20 year old Feeling 38 with carbon fiber sails that sails fast. Beautifully balanced, it hardly needed steering. Terry and Claude keep her at Keyport Yacht Club, a great little family-oriented club.

Raritan Bay separates Staten Island from the North Shore of the Jersey coast, sheltered by Sandy Hook to the East with Perth Amboy at its Western end. You get great views of lower Manhattan in the far distance.

New Jersey gets a bad rap. Most people associate the opening scene of the Sopranos with the Garden State but it's actually a beautiful state (well mostly). The great thing about Raritan Bay is that in addition to being a nice bay for day sailing you can get out into the Atlantic easily. You have the choice of heading south down the Jersey shore, North into New York harbor or East along the south coast of Long Island. Block Island is 100 miles away and you can make it in 24 hours.

High Seas Adventure

OK, a bit of an overstatement. The missus and I just got back from 4 delightful, unchallenging days motor-sailing on the Chesapeake.

Joe: Here is evidence that I was on a boat and it was under my control. As you can also see below, when the old lady is at the helm, the Wind God blows for us.

We chartered a well-equipped "Beneslow" 34 from Annapolis Bay Charters,a very good outfit managed by a funny English American guy (we are a great breed). It had an AC and a microwave!!!!!! but no bloody GPS, not that you really need one on Chesapeake. Thankfully she motored well as we had bugger-all wind. That said given the weather we had the week before we were glad that it didn't rain. In fact, the weather was beautiful all 4 days.

The Bay was empty for most of the time. Other than commercial and recreational fisherman trailing lines, there was hardly a boat in sight. The fishermen were a pain in the neck. They have rights and they know it. We snagged one recreational fishermen's lines and he yelled after us to give him 10 bucks. I asked him where he wanted me to leave it as we were sailing in the opposite direction.

On Sunday, we sailed and motored from Annapolis south down the Bay, hung a louie up the mighty Choptank River to Oxford. Zephyr has blogged about this place and I can see why. It's a wonderful place for sailors (On the right is a shout-out for Zephyr, this is the Tred Avon Yacht Club. A damn fine looking place it is too). It's historic (I actually mean older than 1952) and a lovely place to stroll around. Lots of Victorian and Colonial homes, blabla.

The best bit is the Ted Avon River. This is right of "House and Garden". One spectacular house after another along its banks, including some new monster palaces with their own dock along a winding river with opreys nesting on the daymarkers.

Day two, there was no wind. Well no wind of course until we started to dock and then it blew 15 kts for an hour. We motored to Cambridge, further up the Choptank. I would give this a big miss. It's a weird place. It has a big, new and mostly empty marina that is a long way from the main part of the Bay. Secondly the town is a bit of a dump. It has the feeling of a beautiful Victorian town that become completely run down BUT has a big new marina and a lot of investment is going into the place. Who knows, it may turn around.

On Tuesday, we motored back up the Choptank, out into the Bay and sailed across to Deale on the West side of the bay. Deale is basically a collection of big marinas, mostly full of sailboats not motorboats.  You really have to pay attention to the charts in Chesapeake Bay. Deale is at the north end the large'ish Herring Bay. A shallow-draft vessel can just head straight in at the North end but anything with a keel has to follow the markers for a mile from the south end of the Bay and then follow a tight channel into Deale. There is a long shallow bar in the front of the bay. You have to be bloody careful. We weren't in the dead middle of the channel and we grounded briefly. This was the closest thing to high drama we had all 4 days.

On Wednesday, we had an uneventful motor-sail back to Annapolis.