Tropical Storms – Cruising September 2023

Everyone in New England knows just how crappy the weekend boating weather has been this year. This morning, Danielle Noyes on NECN reported what we mostly knew.

The Labor Day Weekend Saturday was the last Saturday that wasn’t rainy in New England. August 19 and 20 was the last nice weekend, and you’d have to go back to February to find sunny back-to-back weekends.

To make matters worse, these haven’t just been rainy weekends; they’ve featured the dirty edge of endless tropical storms.

The first was Hurricane Lee, which ruined the weekend of September 14-17. Then came Ophelia, that trashed the weekend of the 21-24th and lingered until the following Wednesday. And as I write this, we’re sitting in Edgartown riding out TS Philippe and 30+ knot winds.

But this story is about how we cobbled together three decent days in Newport between Ophelia and Philippe.

Welcoming Jake and Peggy

Our dear friends Jake and Peggy were scheduled for a trip south to Greenport in early July, but Amazing Grace was laid up for work, and we rescheduled them to September 24-29.

When they took off from Austin, TX, Sunday morning, the forecast was for Small Craft Warnings to end at 8:00 AM Monday morning.

By the time they got to Mattapoisett, the Small Craft Warnings were extended until Tuesday night, but the rain was supposed to stop Tuesday morning.

I suggested we forget about leaving on Monday. We discovered this great new movie theatre in Fall River (The Picture Show), and The Equalizer 3 had just debuted (I’m a huge Denzel fan.)

After the movie, we went to the Black Whale in New Bedford to salvage the first day of weather delay.

Day Three – Should We Stay or Should We Go?

My original plan was to spend the week on Nantucket, but when I got up Tuesday morning and checked the NOAA REAL-TIME Buoy data, I scratched that idea.

Being in the middle of two tropical storms in late September, I knew we could get a slip anywhere we wanted.

Based on the wind direction, I devised a plan to get from Onset to Falmouth using Cape Cod to shield us from the Gale Winds.

By hugging the west side of the Cape, I could make most of the trip in 15-20 knot winds.

I told the crew my plan, but Mrs. Horne wanted nothing to do with it. She came up with a Plan C involving driving to Falmouth and salvaging Day Three with lunch at Anejo, shopping, and then binging on Equalizer 1 and 2 back at the house.

Turned out it was a great idea…

As we watched Denzel take down the Russian mob, the sun finally came out!

Day Four – Newport Bound

Despite the continued brisk wind, we woke up Wednesday morning to bright sunshine. The wind was still blowing out of the Northeast, so a 50-mile run downwind to Newport made sense. Plus, I had bought two nights at the Newport Shipyard at the MBY Strong Fundraiser, so the dockage was free!

The trip out of the canal was smooth, but as we left Buzzards Bay, we ran into some pretty snotty seas.

As I often do, I posted our destination on My Story, and Sheryl Northrop of Maritimo saw it and texted me. She and Dave (Maritimo America President) were on vacation in Newport, and they were cruising Narragansett Bay with friends.

Sheryl shot the video clip above and took a couple of nice shots underway.

We docked at Safe Harbor Newport Shipyard for the first time.

This is quite different from other marinas on the South Coast. It’s a real shipyard, but more for ship-sized yachts than commercial vessels,

Wharf Southern Kitchen and Whiskey Bar

I spotted the sign for what I thought was a new restaurant near the entrance to the old Fluke and walked up the stairs into a very dark bar. There were just a couple of workers talking, so I asked, “Are you open.”

They said, “Yes, but don’t you want to sit outside?”

As we headed into the light, I realized we were walking into the old Wharf Restaurant.

Years ago, we ate at the old Wharf restaurant on Bowens Wharf. It was a cool place, but the food wasn’t anything special, and I never planned to return. But it was getting late, and everyone was getting “Hangry,” so we took a nice table looking out at Bannisters Wharf.

The farm porch setting is delightful, and we really lucked out with Bliss as our server – she was terrific.

I recall they were famous for their Tater Tots, so we ordered the Classic.

Simple and perfect!

The Beet Pickled Egg was very interesting!

This is a total flavor bomb. The burnt ends were thinly sliced and smothered in Pickled Green Tomatoes, Slaw, Cheddar, and two sauces – Bourbon BBQ and Alabama White!

I never touched the roll; I just ate everything inside with a knife and fork.

Then without any discussion, Miss Peggy ordered the Banana Pudding with Nilla Cookies, whipped cream, and four spoons!

I may have gotten a taste, but I think Peggy had the most ❤️

After lunch, we toured Bannisters, and it looked like a summer day crowd. Mrs. Horne’s maiden name is Vaillancourt, and she was very excited to see her name on a truck!

The Northrops Onboard

We worked with Dave and Sheryl Northrop of Maritimo for years, commissioning the construction of Amazing Grace, yet they had never actually seen her. I invited them and their guests to tour her on Wednesday afternoon.

Despite being on vacation, they were busy with work, so it was a quick visit squeezed between Zoom calls.

Although there was a chill in the air, the Sky Deck was still calling!

22 Bowens

We try to eat at 22 Bowens at least once a year, and since it was to be our only visit for the season, it was a natural choice for dinner.

I’ve had some great meals at 22 Bowens and some that weren’t so great. I’d love to tell you this was one of the better ones, but it was just so-so.

Jake did like the French Onion Soup…

And I liked the Giant Shrimps…

And the girls loved the Caesar they split…

But my Steak Au Poivre was overdone and the Beaujolais Sauce wasn’t good at all.

Similarly, the Potatoes Au Gratin were also overdone

They did have an excellent special on Trefethen Cab ($84), which rounded out the less than perfect meal!

Thursday Bike Day

Peter and I set up the bike docking in the lazarette and tested the crane back in Edgartown.

As long as we’re on a floating dock with a port tie-up, it’s about a 10-minute process to get four bikes off and ready to roll.

As I’ve mentioned before, Newport is not my favorite biking port, but biking Ocean Drive may be the most scenic ride in New England.

The ride down Thames isn’t bad because it’s easy to keep up with the bumper-to-bumper traffic, but once you turn onto Wellington, it gets dicey. We opted for the wide sidewalk but caught some verbal abuse from the dog walkers.

Regardless, once you get on Harrison, it’s a pure survival run up to Fort Adams. I think it must be some kind of a commuter road because the cars are all going 30-40 MPH.

There is no bike lane and several signs indicating cars should share the road with bikes, but invariably, some jerk will speed up behind you and honk their horn.

Before heading down to Fort Adams, we took a quick detour to show Jake and Peggy the Newport Country Club.

If you want to snap this shot, you have to be quick. Security will be down the driveway in a minute, chasing you away!

The biking drama ends when you get to Fort Adams. It’s a peaceful and scenic ride through the State Park and around Brenton Point.

The cars on Ocean Drive are all taking in the views, so nobody is going very fast. And the ride back to town is also along slow-moving country roads.

Benjamins Rawbar Happy Hour

We parked our bikes in front of Benjamins and grabbed four seats at the bar for an oyster fix.

In case you didn’t know, Benjamins has a Rawbar Happy Hour every day from 12:00 to 2:00, with oysters selling for a mere $1.50.

As you might suspect, this is a high-volume oyster bar, so the oysters are always fresh. Benjamins is also blessed to have Steve doing the shucking.

Steve competes nationally and finished 5th in the National Oyster Shucking Championship. This means fast service and cleanly shucked oysters.

I also love that Bejamins offers Top Neck Quahogs for $1.25 during the Rawbar Happy Hour.

If you’re not familiar with Top Necks, they’re bigger than Little Necks but smaller than the full-sized quahogs that are used for Stuffies. The amount of meat in a Top Neck is about the same as a plump oyster, like a Wellfleet.

After lunch, the girls went shopping and found some tremendous end-of-the-season sales. Jake and I hung out on the Sky Deck and read.

Lucia – A New Restaurant Find in Newport!

After dozens of visits to Newport, you’d think I’d have discovered all the great restaurants in town. A few years ago, I would too, but lately, I’m finding a lot of new and reinvented restaurants in the post-Covid dining scene.

The truth is that Lucia has been operating in Newport for 30 years, but since it’s on the north side of town, we never ate there.

It sports an impressive entrance, but it’s actually a very intimate (small) restaurant inside.

The namesake founder is still there, working tables and overseeing everything.

We met Lucia when the cork on our 2013 Barolo broke on the way out of the bottle. JJ, our server, ran and got Lucia to ensure the cork was fully eradicated. She did.

The food was excellent, classic Italian. I particularly liked the smaller portions and equally small prices.

Given that we’ll be spending more nights at Newport Shipyard, I suspect that Lucia will soon become one of our regular dining venues.

Windy, Rainy, Friday

We don’t necessarily need a named Tropical Storm to run into severe wind and rain. We woke up to both as I stood in the rain pumping 400 gallons of diesel from Casey’s Oil and Propane tanker truck (401 848-5945) at the shipyard.

Although Newport Shipyard is a Safe Harbor Marina, they do not sell fuel, but they do allow Casey’s to drive their tanker up your boat in the slip. They also can pump up to 55 gallons per minute without holding the pump open! Very nice on a cold rainy morning.

Jake and Peggy were on a 6:00 PM flight back to Boston, so we didn’t have time to waste getting back to Onset.

As I fired up Amazing Grace’s twin Volvo D-13s and the crew started to drop lines, the VHF screeched, “Amazing Grace, Amazing Grace, please remain docked. We have a couple of hundred-footers we need to get inside the basin first.”

About ten minutes later, they called back and cleared us for departure.

It wasn’t bad inside Narragansett Bay, but as we rounded Castle Hill, we ran into monster sea waves.

Big waves frequently pop up leaving Newport because the mouth of Narragansett Bay is 100’ deeper than Rhode Island Sound.

That said, the 8-10 foot waves were pretty tight, and I immediately dropped to just under 20 MPH to ride them out. As I assured the crew that this was both normal and temporary, Mrs. Horne started talking about heading back to Newport while fitting everyone for life jackets😂

Sure enough, by the time we passed Sakonnet, the seas had dropped to 3-4’, and I was able to run at better than 25 MPH.

We returned to Onset around 11:15, hosed off the salt spray, and headed to Turks for lunch before Uncle Vinnie picked Jake and Peggy up for the airport.

Jake had his first taste of NBMA Fried Scallops…

One of the justifications for dropping the big bucks on Amazing Grace was being able to take on weather, wind, and seas that would have grounded Relentless.

I’m proud to report she came through with flying colors. Do I like running in 20 Knot Seas? Hell no, but it’s nice to know we can do it if necessary. It’s also nice to have finally spent the week with Jake and Peggy despite our September of Tropical Storms.

Up Next – Navigating TS Philippe