The first cruise of the loop.

May 9, 2025: Our time was up in Cowesett, RI, where we stored our boat over the winter. They are a wonderful marina who gave us 9 days of transient moorage while we worked on all of our upgrades to the boat. There is a group of approximately 125 marinas called Safe Harbor that offer their members 3 days of free transient moorage if they have availability. We are members because we stored our boat with then during the winter. Their normal rates for transient moorage is $5.00 a foot using the length of the boat. The moorage fees can add up to sone pretty serious money. We managed to get two free days at Safe Harbor Sakonnet which is north of Newport, RI for Friday, May 9 and Saturday, May 10.

Rhode Island has had very wet and windy weather since we arrived and our departure day was no different. We wanted to get off the dock at Cowesett around 9 am before the wind truly came up for the day. There was supposed to be gusts of up to 20 knots at times. The wind was running about 9 to 10 knots. We started the engine and tested the side thrusters. The bow thruster worked perfectly. The stern thruster did not. OK, it worked last year. Time to start reviewing documentation. After about 15 minutes we found there was a large circuit breaker button located under the main cabin floor in the bilge that got changed while packing the compartment. Once the breaker was reset, the thruster worked like a champion.

By then, the wind had picked up and made it difficult to get the lines off the boat and the crew (Bev) aboard. Kevin had to put Journey in gear just to keep her from going into the dock behind us. Meanwhile, Bev was having difficulty getting aboard because the off bow wind kept pushing the boat away from the dock. She still had one line to release from inside the boat. The adrenaline was high in both of us. There was a very small lull in the gust and Bev was able to jump aboard, get the line untied and into the boat so Kevin could steer her out of the slip. Thank goodness for the thrusters as that was the only way to maneuver in the marina’s tight corridors and fairways.

We had nice two-and-a-half-hour cruise to our new marina, Sakonnet. Then the wind came up again. On the good side it was not raining. We knew our slip number but did not know what side of our boat would be next to the dock. We had been instructed to call channel 9 on the VHF. Uh, no answer. We decide to head in. The entrance had narrow fairways with 8 feet depth below the boat or less. On the East Coast, folks are used to that kind of skinny water. We are not. Bev spotted the slip and saw that the dock would be on our starboard (right) side. She started fendering that side and setting up the lines, but didn’t get them all set up before we had to enter the slip. Kevin managed to get the boat close enough to the dock that Bev was able to get off and tie off the lines. As the last one was secured, the sky opened up and rain came down with a vengeance. It just kept raining hard into the night with a forecast of more for the next day.