Newport and The Boat Show

Although we planned a week on Block Island, after a few days of peace and quiet, we decided to bring Boys Week to Newport and all the action around the Boat Show.

We left BI just after 10:00 and enjoyed a smooth 25-mile ride to Newport.

The Newport Boat Show is in the water and all of our regular marinas are tied up hosting boats. The West Wind Marina had space, as did the very expensive marinas beginning with 41° North.

Goat Island and The Newport Harbor Resort were a little closer and priced right, so we ended up on Goat Island.

The Newport Harbor Resort

You can tell by the building profile that this was once a Hyatt.

The marina isn’t that big – perhaps 15-20 boats, but it’s very high quality with all concrete floating docks. The slips are all doubles, but wide enough to comfortably hold two fifty-footers.

The hotel is in the midst of a $50 million renovation and offers a lot of amenities you don’t often find. Beyond the pool, bars, and restaurants, they have both land water shuttles to Bowens Wharf.

It leaves the resort at the top of the hour and returns at the bottom of the hour. The dock at Bowens is just north of the entrance to the Lobster Pot.

The rides are free, but the drivers appreciate a tip.

Speaking of drivers, our driver Scott turned out to be a great guy.

He’s retired, but still an avid skier and sailor. He has a 43 Beneteau and regularly sails out of Newport.

A quick check on OpenTable showed both The Moorings and 22 Bowens had reservations available for lunch, which meant we could eat anywhere we wanted.

22 Bowens Port Side

As we passed 22 Bowens, we spotted a very inviting outside bar and immediately realized it was an extension of the restaurant. As soon as we confirmed we could order from the full 22 Bowens menu, we grabbed three seats at the bar.

The food was excellent, as you’d expect from 22 Bowens.

I decided to go with the Wedge Salad. They offer a number of add-ons:

• grilled chicken (8oz.) – $12
• grilled shrimp (4) – $16
• chinook king salmon* (8oz.) – $27
• Cold Lobster Salad – $21
• lobster tail – $28
• Karen Elizabeth scallops*(3) – $25

These all looked very interesting, but what goes best with Blue Cheese?

Steak of course!

The bartender said he could add a flat iron, so I said “Yes please”.

The flavor was spot-on and the steak was perfectly medium rare. It was delicious, but the ratio of dressing to lettuce was way off. It was a whole head of Iceberg Lettuce.

I ate everything on the plate and left 3/4s of the head of lettuce. A 1/3rd wedge would have been perfect.

The Newport Harbor Resort

After we got back to Goat Island, we toured the resort and shot some photos.

They offer a lot of bar space, including alfresco facing north toward the pool.

Great Guest Option

Now and then we talk about bringing more than one couple on the boat. We do sleep six in three cabins, but we only have two large bathrooms. It’s fine for our daughter and her family, but most adults don’t want to share a bath.

In 2021 we hosted four California guests in Edgartown with one couple staying on Relentless and another in a downtown hotel.

It worked, but most New England Waterfront hotels have onerous cancellation policies (30 days out – no refunds), making it a bit dicey to plan to arrive on the island by boat.

I think the Newport Harbor Resort might be a good solution for larger guest groups.

1. Your guests can always arrive by car if the sea doesn’t cooperate.
2. It’s not hard to spend 3-5 days in Newport, even if the weather isn’t perfect.
3. Thanks to the land and sea shuttles, it’s very easy to get to the heart of town.

Peter was investigating rates and availability yesterday and discovered:

1. They still had availability for Boat Show Weekend.
2. The “Premium Room” was $725/night and they also offer multiple suite options.
3. They have a 14-day cancellation policy, but you only lose the deposit, which is one night’s stay.

The Landing

We spent a lot of time in Newport in our early days of cruising and virtually every trip including some happy hour live music at The Landing.

Having missed out on live music on Block Island, we decided to hit up The Landing before dinner.

We got three great seats at the bar and spent about 90 minutes enjoying great music from Mark Flynn.

Viesté

Rudy loves Italian food and I wanted to take the boys to Lucia, but they were closed. A little research revealed a highly rated Italian restaurant in the south end of town called Viesté.

It’s quite a ways down Thames – past where you go right to Fort Adams. Fortunately, the Uber service in Newport is ridiculously good. The fare from Goat Island to Viesté is $12.00 for X, but I selected Comfort for $18. I think the word “comfort” is inappropriate – it should be “nice”.

One was a Toyota Rav 4 and the other was a Mercedes GLS. The Rav wasn’t uncomfortable, but it wasn’t a GLS. However, in both cases, the SUVs were as clean as limousines; well worth an extra six bucks.

Viesté looks hip on the outside, but once you walk through the door, it’s 100% Old School.

Our server – Daria was a real treat, very conscientious and full of Romania charm.

By now you know that my first test for a new restaurant is the bread service and Viesté hit a lead-off homerun.

Warm, soft, homemade focaccia served with seasoned high-quality EVOO. I confess to consuming one and a half pieces. It’s very possible that Rudy ate the entire second helping.

By the way, this wonderful bread service was free but easily worth $5-10.

The bartender screwed up our martinis. He served Peter Gray Goose Vodka instead of Bombay Saffire Gin and Daria took it away to fix it.

The bartender then came to our table and insisted the vodka was gin. Eventually, he said “I poured you a Bombay martini, but if you insist. I pour you another.”

A few minutes later Daria arrived with a Martini that was clearly Bombay Sapphire Gin!

The Food

The food was authentic and perfectly prepared. But I think the martini incident may have gotten us on the bartender’s bad side. We were done eating before our wine came out so we cancelled the wine.

Peter offered that perhaps we should have ordered it sooner and Daria: “No, you ordered it at the right time, it just didn’t come out on time.” Oh well…

Boat Show Day

We arrived at 10:30 on Thursday and noticed the two Maritimos right off the Bannister entrance

Although Amazing Grace is a 2024 with just over 200 hours, she certainly doesn’t look like the M55 out of Wickford all prettied up for the Boat Show; particularly the teak.

I spoke to several guys in the Maritimo booth about teak maintenance and I think we’ll be making that a priority

We’re fortunate to have added a maintenance mate to our crew this year – Tommy, and I think we’ll be turning his attention to teak in the coming weeks.

I also stopped by the Boston Yacht Sales booth and met up with Mike Myers and Andrew Savage. I toured the new 43 and as I’ve mentioned before, it’s the perfect boat for a couple that seldom has guests.

I also shot a photo of the layout for the new 51 for Vernon and Lynn.

I like the layout a lot, although I’m not sure what the headroom is in the third cabin.

That said, if I was building one I’d make a couple of custom modifications.

I’d eliminate the sink at the aft end of the salon on the port side, extend the lounge, and put a square end on it that one could lean against.

I’d also modify the pilot lounge. The standard one simply doesn’t work – the backs are too low. I’d make them 6-9” taller and allow the aft one to fold forward for a clear line of sight to the TV.

I know Ben and Becky love their Cantius 42, so I shot a few of the 50 on display.

A few minutes later I heard “Hey Dave” and met up with Larry Russo of MarineMax.

Larry’s father sold my father the Thunderbird in 1965 and Larry sold me our first boat – the 26’ Whaler.

As I watched people ogoling over boats that knew looked in a boat show but would probably disappoint a New Boater, it reminded me of a story I did a few years ago – Boat Shows and The Quest for The Perfect Day! New boats detailed for a boat show are truly seductive, so buyers beware!

The last boat show I attended was five years ago and a few things jumped out. The show is bigger, there were fewer sailboats and tons of outboards.

We took a break at noon and went to Benjamins for the Raw Bar Specials!

Lunch at Benjamin’s

When we were here with Jake and Peggy last September, I made a mental note to always hit up Benjamin’s for their Raw Bar Happy Hour!

Rudy and I went with chowder and raw bar…

Oysters for $2.00 and Top Necks for $1.25 is reason enough to go to Benjamin’s, but on top of that, we also got to watch Steve (6th Ranked Shucker in America) do his thang!

Peter was very hungry and attacked his Hot Pastrami before I could take a photo.

Surprisingly, the only thing that was disappointing was the oysters. They had shucked them earlier in the day and stored them in a couple of cookie sheets.

This is a really bad idea. The nectar spills out of the oysters and they quickly dry out. Next time I’ll request freshly shucked or just get all Top Necks.

Touring The Tents

The morning on the docks was all about catching up with friends in the industry soaking up the eye candy. After lunch, we visited the tents where we saw things we might actually buy.

The big purchase will probably end up being the Dockmate Positioning System (DPS).

We had the Zeus Skyhook on Relentless and while it did come in handy waiting for a dock to clear, it only operated the pods and thus was rather imprecise; the boat would jump around moving five feet in every direction as the pods changed alignment.

I spoke to Bill at New England Bow Thruster and he said he was shocked by the DPS in Precision Mode with proportional thrusters – the boat simply doesn’t move.

The DPS also has Ocean Mode that protects the thruster batteries by holding the boat’s position into the wind by toggling the port and starboard engines. Obviously, the boat will move more: perhaps even more than pods.

Mrs. Horne wants this feature in case something happens to me and she needs to take over. This would enable her to lock the boat in a position heading into the wind and allow her to focus on calling for help.

We upgraded the thrusters from 150 KG to 210 KG at the factory, but they are still inadequate for the kind of cruising we do that often involves tricky docking in heavy wind.

We are upgrading to brushless motors and taking the stern thruster from 210 KG to 300 KG. We will likely have him add the DPS at the same time. The brushless motors eliminate overheating extending the time until the batteries time out. Bill says the performance will be very similar to hydraulic thrusters.

We also looked at liferafts and cameras for our thus-far ineffective augmented reality system.

Around 2:30 we took a very pleasant cruise back to the marina on the water taxi.

Dinner at Torpedo Lounge

Me and the boys were graced with the company of Sheryl Northrop of Maritimo for dinner. Sheryl was working the show so she didn’t have a set time and I decided to try the restaurant at the Resort – The Torpedo Lounge.

As you know, I seldom elaborate on bad dining experiences and sadly, that’s what we had on Thursday night.

Yesterday, I got one of those “How was experience” emails from the resort and told them all about the debacle.

To their credit, the GM and F&B director contacted me within a few hours, and late afternoon I had a thirty-minute conference call about the incident.

They claim it was a bit of a “Perfect Storm.” The renovations were only completed in late spring and the team is mostly new. On top of that, Torpedos is their casual restaurant, which explains the so-so food quality (they’ve closed their fine-dining restaurant – 1639, for the season).

They offered to pay for dinner, but we don’t do that.

I did request they give the employees involved in the debacle some extra training on dealing with problems.

They would like us to return and that’s possible if Mrs. Horne has recovered enough to make our October trip.

In the meantime, I regretfully cannot recommend Torpedoes.

Breakfast at Belles

The forecast for Friday was perfect all day so there was no need to rush back to Onset. The boys love breakfast and we probably wouldn’t have lunch, so I suggested breakfast at Newport’s #1 breakfast venue – Belles at the Newport Shipyard.

Belles has a full breakfast and lunch menu, but the culinary treasure is often found on the Specials Board.

This was the second Breakfast Panini I’ve had at Belle’s this summer and both we delicious!

Beyond the great breakfast at Belles, I love looking at the Super Yachts up on blocks at the Shipyard.

I’d love to tell you about our “Next Up”, but with Mrs. Horne’s broken ankle, it may be several weeks.