DAY 8: Mystic to Bristol, R.I.

Eleanor Settles In With the Writer Ladies

This whole adventure was conceived, at least in part, by my intentions of attending the International Women’s Writing Guild annual conference, at Roger Williams University here in Rhode Island. It’s been a lovely commute, but now I have to actually go to school, so — a brief blog today.

On our way up the Narraganset Bay we popped into the Newport Harbor for a quick looky - see. Eleanor was dwarfed by many a beasty yacht, including some America’s Cup winners. Still, she held her own.

We learned where lobster rolls come from.

For the next three days we are staying at the City Pier, (Thanks for the dockside welcome from my fellow student, Colleen!!) which is just as it sounds. Fine, but no frills. One must plunk quarters into the shower to get it to work. So far I’m in for 4.5 minutes for $1.50. And I was clean for the best part of the day: meeting up with our friends Joanne and Mark who came over from Boston for a visit.

A peaceful goodnight from Bristol…

AND NOW, MORE FROM YOUR CAPTAIN…

We timed our departure from Mystic Seaport with the drawbridge schedule. Eleanor was docked at the northern end of the river in our little slice of nautical mid-nineteenth century Connecticut. To get underway we had to start engines and warm them up for a few minutes. Then disconnect shore power and get the cable back on board. Terese took in all the lines and using a forward fender to twist off, I backed Eleanor out of the basin, leaving us the exact amount of time to get downriver the half-mile to the first of two draw bridges, the Mystic River Highway Bridge.

Opening once per hour, at forty minutes after the hour, or twenty minutes before the hour, depending on which guidebook you read, we were instructed to call the bridge tender on channel 13 on our VHF radio to request an opening. We stopped in the channel 300 yards north, behind a trawler, and drifted waiting for the allotted time.

  Normally bridge tenders are amiable and chatty but both the highway bridge, and his counterpart another quarter-mile downriver on the Mystic River Railroad Bridge made barely intelligible grunts on the radio to acknowledge our requests for an opening. They could look out the window and see us and were apparently bored with the repetition of the obvious to every pleasure boat passing through. The bridges opened on schedule, and we headed out for the Long Island Sound and points east.

  It was a calm morning with just a light breeze, barely strong enough to fill the sails of boats we passed. We exited Long Island Sound into the Atlantic Ocean and Eleanor sashayed through the ocean swells with her characteristic gentle rocking motion. Unlike most planing power boats, the Midnight Lace doesn’t have hard chines. That sharp angle, or chine, between the hull bottom and sides help planing boats generate lift to get up on top of the water and go fast. The chine has the added feature of stopping roll, but with the resultant downside that that sharp crease in the hull shape can cause the boat to pound through waves once they reach a certain size. With her rounded chines, Eleanor just doesn’t pound. She also doesn’t climb up out of the water to plane on top like other yachts. She just slides through the water smoothly and efficiently instead of bashing her way through the waves. The sashaying is her response to waves from the side and once you get used to the motion, we find we really like it. The only downside is sometimes her head wanders as waves knock her off course. But that is easily corrected by either the helms(man/woman) or the autopilot.

  Here in the Atlantic, the farther we went east, the bigger the swells. Out in the ocean you have two kinds of waves to deal with. The first are wind waves. Those are local and generated right here, right now, based on the current strength of the wind. The winds were light so we had almost no wind waves.

  The second kind are ocean swells. These were generated by wind waves from some time in the recent past. A storm 200 miles away, a day ago, can have you frolicking through swells today. We were riding side-saddle to swells from the southeast but soon turned north around Point Judith and entered Rhode Island Sound, heading for the Narragansett Bay, riding down the swells in an easy sleigh ride. The Atlantic was benign for our brief foray before heading inland.

 Our destination was still 13-miles ahead as we passed Newport Harbor and decided to duck in and make a lap around the anchored fleet. It’s Annapolis Harbor super-sized. Like EGO-alley times a thousand! Newport was the home of the America’s Cup for 143 years or so. There are numerous twelve-meter yachts tied up or at moorings with famous pedigrees. Intrepid, the winner in 1967 and again in 1970, was tied up alongside American Eagle, her unsuccessful challenger for the right to defend. I won’t bore you with more America’s Cup lore and instead get back to boring you with my connection to Newport.

Intrepid won the America’s Cup twice - an impossible feat in today’s competition

In 1982 I came to Newport just before Thanksgiving to report in for Officer Candidate School. I spent four months living in King Hall on the shores of Narragansett Bay, ending with my commission as an Ensign, USN. It was fun to go past the site where I did so much growing up in a short amount of time.

King Hall, home to 550 officer candidates

            In 1986 I was back in Newport for a three-month engineering program on my way to Key West to be the chief engineer on a hydrofoil patrol boat. By then, as a salty Lieutenant I had figured out a few things that my fellow Ensigns taking the same course didn’t know. Arriving in Newport on a Sunday night I called the Batchelor Officer Quarters to enquire if they had room. They did have room – in the college dorm equivalent BOQ. I hung up. A few hours later, after a bunch of the Ensigns had checked in I called back and found out they were full. No room at the inn. I drove right over, had my orders stamped “berthing not available” and headed back to town to a real estate office. The agent knew what my Navy per-diem allowance was and since it was late October, she had a beautiful luxury condo on the top floor of a building right on Newport Harbor that I could rent for exactly my $810/month allotment. Three other Lieutenants figured out the same game and the four of us rented identical condos in the building and had an awesome few months together.

            I had just returned from a WESTPAC cruise through Asia and had acquired rock climbing gear in Seoul. One dark evening before heading out to dinner we Lieutenants practiced rappelling down the side of the building from my balcony on the top floor to the balcony directly below on the second where my shipmate was living. In my memories the building was much taller.

Somehow this building shrunk a few floors since I stayed here in 1986. My rock climbing balcony is top right.