How can anyone fail to be charmed by Newport? All right, it's a tourist town, but it's an authentic one, with more local businesses than chain stores, and enough historic buildings that the de rigeur horse-drawn tour buggies don't look hokey. Every single waitress and store clerk is an Irish college girl on a summer work program. They must ship them in by the planeload. Flowers are everywhere, in windowboxes, in baskets hanging from streetlights, and along the walls of shops and houses. And the harbor is filled with sailboats.
It's hard to believe that anywhere could be more yachty than Annapolis, but Newport takes the cake. More masts than we've seen in one place since George Town, more supermegayachts than we've seen since Fort Lauderdale, more moorings than we've seen anywhere period. We anchored Windom north of the Goat Island bridge, as our cruising guide suggested, but got chased out by the harbormaster; it turns out there's only one small designated anchorage, between two huge mooring fields. Not that we object to moorings, but $30/night for essentially no services just seems like a rip-off. I suppose that compared to $2.50/foot/night for a slip it's a great deal, but at those rates we'd go broke fast, so we squeezed into the crowded anchorage.
The first time we dinghied through the harbor we nearly wore out our eyeballs gawking. Three huge sailboats were at the American Shipyard docks, each well over a hundred feet on deck with towering masts. One had a fire-engine red hull, another was sleek black, and the third was blue; all reflected the water brilliantly from countless perfect coats of wax. Nearby, work was being done on the extreme racing catamaran Club Med, one of the entries in the upcoming round-the-world competition called "The Race". An amazing variety of tour boats were sailing through the harbor, everything from schooners to old America's Cup12-meter racers. We saw Ithaka, the boat belonging to the former editorial director of Cruising World magazine (former, because she just quit to go cruising!), heading out of their homeport harbor. The people aboard smiled and waved when they saw us; although I'd like to think they're big fans of this website and recognized the "t/t Windom" on the dinghy, I suspect they were just happy to be part of the great fraternity of cruisers, finally on their way to distant shores.
As usual, we tried to take advantage of everything the city had to offer. In other words, we spent a lot of money. There's a movie theater right downtown, so we saw The Patriot; we bought groceries, liquor, CDs, and some nice fuzzy fleece pullovers. I got new lenses for my (prescription) sunglasses, which had gotten so scratched over the past year I could barely see out of them. And of course we bought a few boat parts, the most important being a new lifeline gate. On the passage from Baltimore to Block Island, one of the pins worked its way out, and when we opened the gate the whole piece fell overboard. This ended up costing $100 to replace, a surprisingly large amount of money, so the next time a bit of rigging falls overboard, one of us is diving in after it!
We further depleted our funds by eating a lot of meals out. There are an enormous number of restaurants in Newport, all fiercely competing for the tourist dollar, so the prices aren't too unreasonable. One night we went out to dinner with a high school buddy of mine and his wife, who live in the area; it was nice to catch up with an old friend over a good meal. Another morning we dressed up for "Newport's most elegant Sunday Brunch" at the Oceancliff Resort, a fabulous old hotel overlooking the Narragansett Bay. We spent two hours eating, and another hour sitting on their lawn chairs digesting, watching sailboats and listening to jazz. When our usual dinnertime rolled around, we were not even the least bit hungry.
The
big tourist attractions in Newport are the mind-blowingly opulent
mansions of the extremely rich. During the 19th and early 20th
centuries, wealthy families built summer "cottages" in Newport, where
the summer breezes kept them cool and comfortable for the eight weeks
or so they'd spend there each year. As you might expect, these
buildings resemble cottages like a mink coat resembles a denim
jacket. About a dozen mansions were bought and renovated by The
Preservation Society of Newport, and are open to the public as
museums.
We toured three of the Preservation Society mansions. Chateau-sur-Mer, completed in 1852, is a Victorian castle, forboding in grey granite, with dark wood and sumtuous drapery inside. Marble House, built for William K. Vanderbilt in the late 1800s, is built of 500,000 cubic feet of marble (although in places the walls are plaster painted to look like marble, because they couldn't get enough marble to do the whole thing). I guess Cornelius Vanderbilt II was inspired by sibling rivalry, because his mansion (er, summer cottage), The Breakers, is even more over-the-top sumptuous. The houses are chock-a-block with ornately decorated panels, patterned leather wall coverings, gilded plaster figures of cherubs and animals, elaborate friezes and tapestries and paintings depicting classical themes (the muses, the seasons, the hunt). The tour guides pointed out the architectural and design features of each room, and told stories about the inhabitants.
The
"mansion district" is a mile or so from the waterfront, but we
enjoyed walking around Newport. We peered through fences and over
walls, admiring the huge estates from the outside. Many of the
mansions are still private residences; it surprised us to see so many
enormous yards in what's basically an urban area. Equally surprising
-- and delightful -- was the Cliff Walk. On one side of the trail
were the perfect green lawns at the seaside edges of the estates; on
the other side, the breaking waves. At the Newport City Museum we
learned that the Cliff Walk predates the mansions, so the properties
don't extend all the way to the ocean and the common right-of-way
remains for everyone to enjoy.
We've had mostly pleasant weather since we've been in Rhode Island. The breezes have kept our wind generator turning and the humidity down, and in contrast to the stifling temperatures of the Chesapeake, it's been pleasantly cool. But Saturday was cloudy and damp all day, and shortly after we went to bed the skies opened up in a terrific rainstorm. Great, we thought, the boat could use a good washing -- and then the first drops of water hit...our faces.
This wasn't just a drip, it was a waterfall. There's nothing like a stream of icy water to get you out of bed in a hurry. When we had first moved aboard, we'd had a few small leaks that were easily fixed. But now, water was pouring through just forward of the mast, which pierces the boat right next to the head of our berth (and next to my head while we're in it). It looked as if someone had stuck a hose through the deck. Side streams split off under the headliner to drip through other random spots as well. We quickly moved our pillows and mattress and laid down towels on top of garbage bags to soak up the deluge. I ended up spending the night in the aft cabin, next to the bicycles, while Britt squeezed up close to the hull to stay dry.
It wasn't too hard to figure out what had happened. During our three-week frenzy of boat work, we'd taken off the mast boot and replaced the wedge system with a pour of Spartite, then replaced the boot. We had caulked around the boot, but evidently not well enough. The day after the rainstorm, we took the boot off and caulked under it, then replaced the boot and caulked around the top, plastering Life Seal around the mast like we were frosting a birthday cake. We'll see how well it works the next time we get rain.