Prudence Island, Dutch Island Harbor

"How is your vacation going?" Many friends and relatives have asked us this question. Cruising is not a vacation; it's a different way of life and a chance to experience many things on opposite ends of the spectrum: pleasure-misery, good-bad, hot-cold, relaxing-panic. It requires you to pay attention to many details, but sometimes on a more basic level. Like planning your itinerary around when groceries, water, fuel, laundry facilities are needed and are actually available and accessible. The weather plays a big role in what we do and causes us to change our plans sometimes. The great thing about doing this more long-term (vs. a vacation) is that we're usually in no hurry and can be more flexible than in the past and take time to get to know a new place before moving on.

Living on a boat full-time has its many compromises. There's nothing like waking up to a beautiful sunrise or seeing a colorful sunset or sailing on a nice day, but on a wet, soggy day sometimes you just want to be anywhere else. You begin to really appreciate the things that most people take for granted living on land, including a long hot shower, a regular sized refrigerator in a normal sized kitchen, unlimited ice, being able to have ice cream whenever you want, or a dryer to dry your soggy clothes. The downside to not working and getting a paycheck is having to watch our expenses carefully and not do things that we would normally do on sailing vacation, such as staying at marinas or eating meals out frequently. We've heard the saying about cruising and now understand it, "You have to work pretty hard not to spend money." We knew what we were getting our selves into prior to leaving, knowing that we would have good days and bad days, and so far it's been worth it!

Aside from Block Island, Prudence Island is the other common and frequent destination for Narragansett Bay boaters. It's what Wye Island is to Chesapeake Bay boaters; close enough to be easily reached but once there, you know you're in a whole another world. The ends of this 6 mile long by 1 mile wide island are largely undeveloped as part of a bird sanctuary. As such, there's lots of wildlife including a prolific group of white-tailed deer. Most of what is developed centers around the wharf where the ferry from Bristol arrives several times daily. From the favored anchorage in Potters Cove at the north end, it's about 3 miles into the little collection of houses called Homestead. At Homestead, the town center exists at Marcy's Groceries, which contains the island's grocery store, along with the Post Office, payphone, and gas pump. We were fortunate to catch a ride both coming and going after hiking about half the distance each way. Our cruising guide made reference to a historic graveyard where folks say the tops of the headstones were shot off by cannon balls during the war of 1812. When we found the cemetery, sure enough, many of the headstones had broken off in a semicircular pattern about the size of a cannon ball.

I called it an anchorage, but there's really precise little room to drop the hook. Due to its popularity, the anchorage has filled up with many private moorings who apparently bring their boats here only on the weekend; for on Wednesday, there were only a few boats among the hundred or so moorings. How the folks up here get away with this, I do not know. But the cruising guide suggested just picking up any unused mooring leaving to the imagination what was below. Our strategy was to pick up the mooring with the biggest float hoping this had some relation to it's holding power.

Walking back from town, we ran into the eccentric character of the island's conservation officer. Inside, he showed us a 2-1/2 week old mockingbird that he was nursing back to health, and fed him some wild, sour cherries. In front of his house was the most unique collection of bird houses anywhere, most with little messages in front of the houses for any bird clever enough to read.

After a day of rain, the weather finally cleared enough for us to try our hand at quahogging. Catching quahogs would not be the right word to use as they just lie there in the mud. But after 20 minutes of looking, I couldn't find a one. I told Joyce that I couldn't catch them because they were too fast for me. But perseverance eventually does pay off. (That and knowing where to look.) I started sifting through the mud and finally came up with enough quahogs to sample with dinner. Now, how to cook them? The recipe books talked about cooking soft-shelled clams, but we weren't sure it was the same procedure as these were hard-shelled. We decided to steam them but after doing so, they really didn't look too appetizing. How about sauteing them a little? Well the upshot is, we realized that we'd probably starve if we really had to eat what we catch.

Under overcast skies and fog we departed Prudence Island for a short sail down to Dutch Island Harbor. But the rain did not start in earnest until we were anchoring. For all the drought conditions, this has been one damp week; we've had rain for the last five days! From Dutch Harbor, it is possible to explore both the small tourist town of Jamestown and the uninhabited Dutch Island. The harbor is large and well protected from all but a northerly blow. Given the normal southwest winds, we anchored along the beach in the south corner away from the large fleet of moored boats along with several anchored trawlers. But as luck would have it, our second day here brought in a low pressure system close enough to turn the winds in a northerly direction for a dreary day of rain and high winds. It turned out to be one of the few days that we were completely boat-bound by the weather; for even after the rain subsided, the seas were too rough to take the dinghy anywhere. But we've decided to hang in here a few days as Jamestown's a good place to do laundry and get some groceries, (no more quahogs). Jamestown also has a nice library and Dutch Island promises some interesting exploring.

It's a small world... Last week during a visit to Newport with Joyce's parents, we ran into Jackie Herring, a cousin from near Philadelphia living in the Boston area that we haven't seen in a long time!