Cruising by the Hour in Narragansett Bay

The blow-by-blow recap of our land-based pizza party may be boring to you, but celebrating the end of summer with good friends and eating warm, gooey pizza during the lone night of our 24-hour cruise was dag gum spectacular for us. Sadly, our cruising time was almost up. We were back on the boat and in our bunks by 2300.

0700-1000
The kettle was squealing by 0705, and the clock was ticking. We had 15 miles to go, and I wanted to get the boat back on time, but so far, we’d successfully packed weeks’ worth of relaxation time into the hours of the previous day, and neither of us could bear to start rushing again just yet. Besides, as his friends know, John makes coffee that’ll take the chrome off a bumper, and I can think of nothing more satisfying than enjoying an early morning cup of rocket fuel from the cockpit of a boat in a misty, glassy anchorage. We fired up the engine and dropped the mooring pendant over the side only after we’d finished that first, fantastic cup of coffee, and we congratulated ourselves on a cruise well done as we started to retrace our steps back out of the Kickamuit. The fortuitous southerly that hummed up the bay the day before had blown itself out. Light winds from the north that were forecast for our trip back to Newport greeted us. It would’ve been nice to have been able to wing out the jib and haul the mail down the bay as we had on the trip north, but we were content to rev the engine, set the autopilot, and tick off the miles toward home.

Rested and rejuvenated, we nosed the boat onto the trailer exactly 24 hours after backing out of that tricky slip in Newport the day before.

Then the phone rang.
The office was calling.