Newport

Two days ago we pulled into Newport Harbor after a comfortable but a little slow 40nm day from Onset to Newport. Our friend Justin got a good chunk of The Martian read on the bow
beneath the spinnaker as we glided at 4-5kts westward into Rhode Island and
past the enormous mansions. The wind for the passage was out of the north east but it was fairly light, peaking at around 14kts mid-morning but then diminishing to 8-12kts for most of the day before dying in the evening. Since we were going west the wind was coming from behind us and was too light for our normal sails to fill properly and propel the boat. These are spinnaker conditions!

Gaia has an old asymmetrical spinnaker from a prior owner – I have no idea of it’s history, but it’s at least 10 years old. But it hasn’t been used much, and aside from some color bleeding & rust stains, it works pretty well. It has a sock which is a big fabric tube that slides down over top of the sail when it’s not in use, this lets us easily hoist the sail to the top of the mast before it fills with air. Once the sail is deployed, the sock gets bunched up at the top of the mast. When we’re ready to collapse the sail, we can pull the sock down to collapse the sail and make it easy to recover. I love flying the spinnaker – it means it’s a peaceful calm day and spinnaker runs are some of the most enjoyable sailing in my opinion. I haven’t used the spinnaker much on Gaia in all the years I’ve owned her, but now that we have a new feathering propeller, the boat is vastly more capable of making meaningful progress in light wind (more on this topic in a later post).

Yesterday we spent the day in Newport Harbor, then took a RIPTA (Rhode Island’s bus system) bus to Providence (for $2 each way!) to see a favorite band, Lord Huron. It was an excellent show and we didn’t get back to the boat until around 2am.Read more