New England – Week: 16 (Newport & Boat Show)

September 14th to 20th, 2026

Day 104 – Monday, September 14th, 2026 – To: Newport, RI
Newport Marina

We had planned to get fuel and a pump-out when we got into Sandwich yesterday, but with the heavy rain, we decided to wait until this morning. At 7:30, I went out and pulled the boat back a few feet to be closer to the fuel dock so that the hoses would reach. I started by pumping out our black water tank. While testing my filter fix, we did a couple of extra full flushes. We’ll be in the marina in Newport for 6 days, so I wanted to start with an empty tank to avoid any problems while we’re there. Then, the fuel dock attendant stretched the fuel hose to the boat, and we took on 245 gallons of fuel. $6.49 a gallon!!! Oh My! Time to start running slower again!

By 8:30, we had finished fueling and were ready to go. We cast off and headed out into the Cape Cod Canal. We were going against the tide this time. We set our engines at around 2000 rpm, which normally gives us about 12 mph, but we were only making about 5.5 mph as we were fighting the current. We called Canal Control and asked if the railroad bridge at the west end had any scheduled closures. They said we were fine and to keep coming. Aside from being slow, the transit through the canal was uneventful. We met a few boats going east, but they were all small fishing or pleasure boats.

As we got to the west end of the canal, we met an oil barge with its tugboat escort just at the end of the breakwater. There was plenty of room here, so we were able to move out of the channel and give it as much room as it needed. Once we cleared the breakwater and entered the open water of Buzzards Bay, we lost the protection of the shoreline, and the wind picked up from about 6 mph to 20 mph. It was coming directly off the shore, so while it was strong, it didn’t have much time to push up waves. Still, we had 1- to 2-foot waves right on the side of the boat, which made it a bit rolly. We had planned to stick to 10 mph for the 50 miles to Newport, but with the waves, we decided to pick it up, smooth out the ride, and get it over with. I also changed our route a bit, hugging the shoreline so that a lot of the wind was blocked.

Aside from a few lighthouses (most of which we’d seen on our way north), the trip was uneventful, and just before 1:00, we pulled into Newport Harbor. We called the marina, and they gave us our docking instructions, which were for a long, empty face dock. Easy! By 1:00, we were tied up and rinsing down the boat. Between yesterday’s and today’s wavy, windy conditions, the boat was caked with salt, so it took about an hour to rinse it down completely.

A quick note to our boating friends. I usually use either West Marine Salt-Away or the Salt-Away brand liquid when I rinse down the boat. I bought a “budget” (Durabasics Salt Remover Concentrate) from Amazon, and it’s horrible. It leaves a residue that smears the glass and leaves spots on the stainless steel.

Once we got the boat cleaned up, we walked into town to O’Brien’s Pub for our docking beer and a snack. Then back to the boat to relax and do some blog work. At 5:30, we went to Mountain Moose Noodles, a Thai restaurant up the street from the marina. We were looking for something different, and it’s been a while since we had anything asian. Dinner was very good, and we brought half of our meals back to the boat. In the evening, I sat out on the back deck and listened to my audiobook while Brenda caught up on her videos about sheep, cows, and goats.

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Day 105 – Tuesday, September 15th, 2026 – In: Newport, RI

Today was a boat project day. Brenda made a batch of cookie dough and baked some cookies. I started by replacing the front mast camera. One of the lenses or cameras was darker than the other. I’ve tried adjusting it, and ReoLink, the manufacturer, gave me some things to try, but nothing fixed it, so we replaced it.

At 10:30, Andrew, the designer of our boat, who has his Outback 50 here in Newport, swung by in his tender and picked me up to go to his boat out on the mooring ball. One of his ceiling panels on the back deck had fallen off. The panels are held up by plastic pins that, over time, crack and come loose, especially if you take the panel down to work on the wiring. I’ve already had to replace some of the pins on our boat due to the work installing our electronics. Andrew is a great salesman, but not very handy with tools. We all have our strengths! I had sent him a list of parts he needed to fix it, and he asked me to come to the boat and show him how to do it. On his boat, the factory had used epoxy to attach the pins to the panel, so it wasn’t as easy a swap as on our boat. It involved drilling out the old pins, which was beyond Andrew’s comfort level, so I took care of drilling them out and gluing in the new ones.

While I was there, I also got to meet his daughter, Rachel, who was visiting him from Colorado. Once we got the new pins in, Andrew gave me a ride back to our boat. He and Rachel would install the panel once the epoxy dried.

When I got back, we walked up the hill to the local Stop & Shop supermarket for a supply run. We didn’t need much, mostly water, soda water, eggs, and a few veggies. When we finished shopping, we took an Uber back because the soda and water were fairly heavy.

Next, I worked on fixing the controller for our davit. When I was dropping the bikes in Rockland, the connector broke. I had the parts I needed shipped here and spent most of the afternoon building a new wiring harness and preparing the davit wiring for the new connector. I ran out of time to finish it, as we had a dinner date with Andrew and Rachel.

For dinner, we went to one of Andrew’s favorite local eateries, Zelda’s, which is just a short walk from the marina. We ate there with him on our last visit, and the food was great. Today was no different. We had a nice time chatting with Andrew and Rachel before walking back to the boat for the evening.

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Day 106 – Wednesday, September 16th, 2026 – In: Newport, RI

Wednesday morning was beautiful. Clear, Calm, and 64°. The forecast is for another beautiful day. The first order of business after breakfast was to finish the new wiring harness for the davit. When I went to install the wiring harness, I found that two of the connectors were male spade connectors, not female like the rest, so I had to make a few adjustments. Before going through the effort of drilling and screwing in the new connector, I took a moment to temporarily hook it up and test it. To my amazement, it worked the first time! So, I installed the connector, drilled and tapped the mounting holes, installed the mounting screws, and then put it all back together again. After giving it one more test, I cleaned up my tools and called that boat project done.

While I was working on the davit controller, Brenda was busy too. She baked another batch of cookies and spent the morning washing the windows in the boat. The latest bottle of salt remover left a film on them, and there was still some glue from the wrapping when the boat was delivered, so she had to scrub them down, come inside, check if she got all the spots, rinse, and repeat!

By 12:00, we had finished all of our boat chores for the day, and we took a walk back to O’Brien’s Pub for a snack, then to Thames Glass, Brenda’s favorite glass-blowing studio. They had a class going, so we watched for a few minutes, and Brenda picked up a glass conch shell for home.

When we got back to the boat, we relaxed. We had company coming around 6:00. Carol, her daughter Kathleen, and her grandson George stopped by to visit. Carol is a neighbor at home in Palm Coast. Carol was in the area visiting her daughter, who lives just north of Newport. They were coming into town for dinner and stopped by to say hello. We gave Kathleen and her son George a tour of the boat. George was fascinated by all the screens, the doors, and the walkways!

After they were gone, we walked up the street to Wally’s Wieners for dinner. Wally’s is a Newport staple. They have 20 different hot dogs, plus salads, burgers, chicken sandwiches, and fries! We each had a hot dog. Brenda had the “Elote” (house-made street corn relish, smoked paprika, and lime aioli), and I had the “Chicago Dog” (Tomato, relish, onions, yellow mustard, pickles, sport pepper, celery salt). And we shared a basket of onion rings. I think it’s the first meal in Newport that’s been under $50!

When we got back to the boat, we sat on the back deck to watch the sunset and chat with some of the other boaters on the dock. I listened to my audiobook, and Brenda caught up on her farmers on YouTube. After the sun went down, we noticed a bunch of small fish swimming around in our underwater lights. I guess they were attracted by the blue color. I caught a larger movement out of the corner of my eye and saw that a larger fish, 2-3 feet long, was swimming around, feeding on the smaller fish. After a while, it was joined by a few others! I think they were Bluefish, as they were slapping the water with their tails to herd the baitfish.

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Day 107 – Thursday, September 17th, 2026 – In: Newport, RI

Thursday morning, we worked on the blog and did some route planning for the rest of our trip down Long Island Sound. We had tickets to the Newport Boat Show for either today or tomorrow, and since the forecast calls for rain tomorrow, we decided to go today.

At 11:30, we walked down the street to the boat show. The show is on Commercial Wharf at the marina where we stayed during our visit heading north. Thursday was “preview” day, so you needed a vendor invite to get in. We spent enough on our boat and accessories to get a couple of invites!

We walked around the show for about 2 hours. We did a pass along the boat docks. The majority were either smaller outboard boats or sailboats. Newport is the sailing capital of the World, so there were quite a few sailboats. However, the majority were power boats. The big trawler and Down East vendors, Beneteau, Grand Banks, Krogen Express, Saber, MJM, Hinkley, and Riveria, all had larger boats on display; however, not as many as at Palm Beach. There were only two or three large 100-foot-plus boats on display.

We were mostly interested in the accessory vendors in the tents. There were a few of the companies that we had purchased components from for our boat that we had questions for and wanted to see upgrades. Also, it’s fun just to wander and see what’s new. Overall, there were only one or two items that caught our eye. The coolest thing we saw was a new AI system for chart plotters that supposedly detects lobster buoys up to 100 yards ahead of the boat, even when they are partially submerged. We’ll wait until the second version comes out.

It was interesting that as we walked around the show, many of the vendors remembered us from the Palm Beach Show. We were wearing our Kissed Some Frogs shirts, and a few people recalled seeing our boat at marinas during our trip. I’m not sure if that makes us “famous” or “infamous”.

Even with it being the preview day, it was still pretty crowded. The older I get, the less tolerance I have for crowds, especially rude crowds full of small children (who brings their 6 kids to a boat show with open docks; it’s like drowning kittens!), and aggressive salespeople. I can’t imagine what it will be like tomorrow and over the weekend when it’s open to the general public! And we’re glad we are leaving on Sunday before they try to get all of those boats out of there.

We left the show around 2:00 and went to find a place for a snack. All of the food vendors at the show were very expensive, $5.00 cans of Coke, and $14.00 hot dogs (onions were an extra $1). The restaurants near the show were all very crowded. So, we walked back toward the boat, about 1/2 mile from the show, and went to a sandwich shop we had seen near the marina. There was no line here, and the prices were very reasonable. We split an Italian Sub. Then walked next door to the IYRS (International Yacht Restoration School) where they teach boat restoration, repair, and marine electrical trades. They have an observation deck above their main training workshop where you can watch. We stopped on our last visit, but it was summer, and there were only a few summer camp students. Today, classes were in full swing, and we watched as they taught how to repack a propeller stern gland and how to sharpen woodworking tools.

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Day 108 – Friday, September 18th, 2026 – In: Newport, RI

Today was another sightseeing day. On our last visit, we walked past several of the Gilded Age Mansions but didn’t tour any. Today we got tickets for the Rockefeller family “Cottages,” The Breakers, and Marble House. Both were built in the late 1800s.

After a quick breakfast, we took an Uber up to the Breakers Mansion for an 11:00 tour. We arrived an hour early, which gave us time to walk around the grounds. They are doing significant restoration work on the south side and ocean side of the mansion, and the south portico and garden are construction zones. We walked around the North side of the house, then took the path through the arboretum on the south side of the property to the waterside of the house, and across the lawn bordering the Cliff Walk. The views are stunning, and it’s interesting that all the mansions left a right-of-way for the public along the cliffs in front of their homes.

You can see the opulence in the photos. I’ll just make a social commentary that these mansions were built and had their heyday in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Two generations later, the homes were opened to tourists to help pay for upkeep. The Great Depression had a lot to do with it, but the stories were that the generations after Cornelius Vanderbilt didn’t want to run businesses, take risks, and work hard. They pretty much just lived off their inheritances, squandering the family fortune.

Preservation Society of Newport County, which now owns and preserves many of the Gilded Age Mansions in the Newport Area. They have 11 properties:

• The Breakers
• Marble House
• The Elms
• Rosecliff
• Chateau-sur-Mer
• Kingscote
• Chepstow
• Isaac Bell House
• Hunter House
• Green Animals Topiary Garden
• The Breakers Stable & Carriage House

Many of these are open for tours. A few, like Rosecliff, are currently closed for major restoration. Rather than having tour guides, the Preservation Society has developed audio tours you can listen to on your phone with earbuds. This lets you tour the properties at your own pace. If there is a topic you are specifically interested in, you can choose to listen to more information, such as recorded remembrances from former staff or members of the families who lived and grew up at the homes.

After touring The Breakers, we walked to Marble House for its tour. Marble House was a 39th Birthday gift from William K. Vanderbilt to his wife, Alva, in 1892, costing $11 million (about $405 million today). She divorced him three years later and married a neighbor, Oliver Belmont, using the house as “a large walk-in closet for her gowns,” as the narration told us!

We were told that The Breakers was built to entertain and as a family summer home. Marble House, in contrast, was built primarily as a summer home for the family, not for entertaining. Both were used for about six weeks a year.

After our tour of the houses, we got an Uber back to the marina and stopped for some lunch, then spent the rest of the afternoon, which got hot, 81°, just hanging out on the boat. The area around the boat show was mobbed. We talked to a few people at the marina who either went to or worked at the boat show, and they said it was very busy, making it hard to move around. We’re glad we went yesterday!

For dinner, we went back to Zelda’s, which is just a short walk from the marina and far enough from the boat show that it doesn’t get mobbed when the show closes at 6:00. On our way back to the boat after dinner we ran into Andrew and Chris (the architect who designed our boat) on their way TO Zelda’s. It’s a popular place!

When we got back to the boat, we sat on the back deck again and watched the sunset. Fall is coming to New England. Once the sun goes down, it gets cool quickly. By 8:00 pm, it was down to 58°!

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Day 109 – Saturday, September 19th, 2026 – In: Newport, RI

Saturday was our last day in Newport. In the morning, we met with Andrew for breakfast at his favorite breakfast place, Annie’s on Bellevue Ave. After breakfast, we said our goodbyes, then went to the Audrain Auto Museum. This is a collection of very famous award-winning restorations of classic cars. The Audrian collection comprises over 400 cars and trucks, along with 110 motorcycles. The museum in Newport switches out the display every three months, showing between 10 and 20 cars at a time. The current showing just opened today. These are all cars in the collection that have won Best Shown at antique car shows.

There are some amazing cars, including William Vanderbilt’s first race car used in the 1900 Newport Automobile Races. These cars are the best of the best. They had some amazing vehicles on display. If you want to learn more about the cars, check out this link: https://www.audrainautomuseum.org/current-exhibition

After the car museum, we went next door to Stop & Shop to get some grapes and muffins for our next few breakfasts. We had planned to go to Block Island for 4 days tomorrow. However, the weather for
next Thursday, when we were scheduled to leave through the following Sunday, is for 30-60 mph winds and 8-14-foot waves in Block Island Sound. The marina we were going to stay at has only limited protection from northeast winds and waves, which is where the storm is coming from. We didn’t want to get stuck in Block Island for a week, especially if it’s going to be uncomfortable at the marina! So, we canceled our reservation and booked a stay at Mystic Seaport for a few days. The Seaport is very protected, and there is plenty to do in town. I spent the first part of the afternoon altering our navigation routes and adjusting bookings.

For dinner, we went down the street to a little waterfront bar favored by folks who live in the mooring field. It’s not really visible from the street, and you have to walk down an alley that’s a construction site. Our friend Andrew introduced us to it on our last visit. It was pretty busy being a Friday, but we were able to get a table, and I got the hamburger I was hankering for. After dinner, we went back to the boat (ice cream for Brenda may have been involved), and I listened to my audiobook on the back deck while watching the sun go down.

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Day 110 – Sunday, September 19th, 2026 – To: Mystic, CT
Mystic Seaport Museum & Marina

Today was moving day. We were heading to Mystic, Connecticut, instead of Block Island because the weather is expected to worsen over the next few days. We took off at 8:00 to get an early start before the rain came in. As we cleared Newport Harbor, we played chicken with a ferry from the Norwegian cruise ship that was anchored just off Goat Island.

For the first 13 miles, the waves were right on the side of the boat, causing it to rock side to side. Once we lost the shelter of Brenton Point, the waves started to build, and we were consistently seeing 3-foot waves every 4 seconds. We had dishes shift, lamps tip over, cabinet door pop open, and my binoculars hit the floor and broke. That’s about our limit. Once we passed Point Judith, we turned west, and the waves were on our port stern quarter. This made it a bit less rolly, but the wind picked up, and there was lots of open water for the waves to build. We were seeing 3-4-foot waves about every 4 seconds, less rolly and more squirrely as we were surfing down the fronts of the waves. We were running fast at around 20mph for most of the way. Running at a higher speed smooths out the ride and lets us get it over quicker.

At 11:00, we turned toward the entrance to the Mystic River. Once we were in the bay, we had land around us to block the waves and wind, and the water calmed quickly. We had made a reservation at the Mystic Seaport Museum Marina, which is about a mile up the Mystic River from where we stayed on our trip north. We saw the docks when we visited the museum, and they looked really nice. Also, it’s almost 3 miles inland, so well protected from the expected high winds over the next few days. Once we got into the river, we slowed way down. There is a highway lift bridge in downtown Mystic that we needed to go through. It only opens 20 minutes before each hour, so we had about 40 minutes to go 2 miles, most of which are no-wake zones. We went through the mooring fields and the first few marinas. When we reached the Amtrak Railroad Bridge, it was already open, so we could go right through. The highway bridge is only about 1/4 mile from the railroad bridge. When we got there, we still had about 15 minutes to wait for the opening. There was one boat in front of us, so we pulled up behind it and engaged our DockMate DPS system, which keeps the boat in a fixed spot on its own. It worked great! While we were waiting, it started to rain, so Brenda called the marina, got our docking directions, and got our fenders ready before it started raining hard.

Once the bridge was open, we cruised past the museum and around the lighthouse, then tied up at the dock. It was raining a bit harder, so we made quick work of the check-in and let the dock hands get back out of the rain. As we were doing our shutdown routine, the rain got really hard. I guess I won’t have to rinse the boat down today!

It rained pretty steadily for the rest of the afternoon, so we just stayed on the boat. Our dockage fee includes admission to the museum, which is good because the dock is in the middle of the grounds! We are even allowed to roam around when the museum is closed!

As we were coming in, we followed a small center console all the way to the dock. It was named T/T Issimo. When they called in to the marina, they said that the big boat was coming in later. They were coming in from Block Island, I guess the waves slowed the big boat down.

It rained for the rest of the day. We didn’t feel like going out in the rain and cold, so we stayed on the boat and ate our leftovers for dinner.

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Weekly Recap

This week we visited Newport, RI again. We had visits from Carol, one of our neighbors from home, Andrew, who designed our boat, and his daughter, and we went to the Newport Boat Show. We did a little house hunting and car shopping while we were there. We had hoped to end the week in Block Island, but the weather for the upcoming week is going to be very windy. We saw predictions of 10+ foot waves at Block Island, so we opted to go back to Mystic Seaport and sit out the winds there rather than being stuck on a small island.

We are in Mystic for 4 days and plan to go to the tip of Long Island and visit Sag Harbor next. We’ll have to see how the weather does over the next few days before we make up our minds.