In the Wheelhouse

Seeing as school had already started before the Labor Day Weekend this year, it was slightly less busy on the water than usual. However, the weather was fantastic... sunny, warm and calm. Following is a picture from each day of my weekend.

I had the Point Judith duty on Saturday. This long-time member was 27 nautical miles southeast of the Point needing a jumpstart after fishing for most of the day. Jobs like this are when I *really* appreciate the extra-calm weather. Twenty-four miles out, twenty-four miles back, and about 3 minutes to get him going. I ended up with 4 jobs around the Point that day.

Sunday found me zipping around upper Narragansett Bay, doing mostly high-speed work. Bullock's Cove was the destination of choice this day, as I was in and out of there at least 3 times. Another beautiful calm day, ideal for getting stuff done in a hurry.

I finished the weekend as the morning boat again, and again found myself in the upper Bay doing mostly short jobs. There were a couple early on, and then a nice family in a sailboat going back to (where else?) Bullock's Cove. It's amazing how jobs clump together sometimes. I hadn't spent a whole lot of time going there this season, but then get at least 5 jobs ending there in one weekend. Anyway, these folks were very friendly, and had a great weekend in Dutch Harbor.

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The last couple of weekends have been very quiet (not this past one, Labor Day Weekend, but I'll get to that in a later post) due to the tropical storm scares and the whole back-to-school thing. However, I didn't lack for night work on week days.

There seemed to be plenty of folks taking advantage of spectacular weather after work to get in some boating. Unfortunately night work doesn't lend itself to my rather limited photography skills. That being said, following are a couple of shots I took over the last week on my way out of Wickford Harbor to retrieve customers.

Sunset over Wickford Harbor, August 31...

Moonrise between the breakwaters, September 4...

Next Post: Labor Day Weekend

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Tuesday, August 11 presented me with an opportunity to combine work with some family fun. My son Will is a 1st year Opti racer in the Wickford Yacht Club sailing program, and was going to sail in his very first regatta that day (along with 5 teammates) at the Bristol Yacht Club.

As all my Rhode Island readers know, getting six optis from Wickford to Bristol by land is a royal pain in the you-know-where. As it turns out, Tuesday is usually the least busy day of the week for us at Safe/Sea, and I'm not technically on duty until noon, so I figured it would be fun to load up one of our 35 footers with the optis and arrive at the regatta by sea.

As you can see in the photo below, six optis was the perfect deck load for the Safe/Sea Newport, 3 on the foredeck and 3 on the aft deck.

It was a flat calm morning, and we saved at least 30 minutes of driving time and battling traffic. Once we arrived and offloaded, it was my plan to hang around and watch Will sail as much as possible, but be ready to depart whenever needed to do jobs. Here's some photos of the action (or lack thereof, since there was no more than 3 knots of wind all day.)

Will heading out to the Green Fleet course.

Will leads a pack of boats to the leeward mark, battling for 8th place.

Luck was with me that day, as I was able to stay for the entire regatta (until about 1600), reload the boats as soon as it was over, and return everything to Wickford without having to do a job. Below is Will on the Safe/Sea Newport's foredeck as we approach Wickford Yacht Club.

Of course, once the regatta was over and everyone headed home, I was still on duty the rest of the night. Shortly after dropping Will off at my folks' house, I was off to Point Judith to get a boater that had run out of fuel 13 nautical miles southeast of the point. I was up kinda late that night, but I did get this nice offshore sunset out of the deal.

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Wow, it's been a busy August so far here at Safe/Sea! June and July featured horrific weather, as both months posted all-time record rainfall, and our caseload showed it. August has been a different story, as we have pulled even with last year's job count as of yesterday. Since August 1, we've completed 165 cases through the 17th, just short of a 10 per day average. Following is one I did last week...

I picked up this 42' Silverton just south of the Point Judith Harbor of Refuge. He was headed to Mystic, Ct., so it was my job to tow him from Point Judith to Watch Hill, where I would turn him over to TowBoatUS Mystic for the rest of the job. It's about 15 nautical miles or so from Point Judith to Watch Hill, but the current was against us.

It was a lovely day, and friendly Capt. Steve from TowboatUS Mystic met us promptly at Watch Hill, ready to finish the job.

By this time, the wind had almost completely died, and it was a mill pond for our transfer of the tow. It's not always as easy as this.

Later this week: all work and no play make Capt. Pete a dull boy. (Well, okay, I *am* pretty dull by nature, but I do have some fun every now and then.)

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I've been in this business for 25 seasons now, but handling big, expensive yachts in close quarters still gives me the willies. Last week, we got a call to move a 76' Lazzara motor yacht from West Wind Marina in Newport to the Hinckley yard in Portsmouth for repairs. One of the Lazzara's wheels had broken free from her shaft while she was docking at West Wind, so she needed to get to Hinckley for haul-out and a shaft replacement.

We set up the job for last monday morning and sent myself and Capt. Andy in our two 35', 740hp twin waterjet towboats the Safe/Sea Newport and Safe/Sea Salvor. My initial thought when I saw the scene below was, "Well, this oughta be interesting."

My trepidation about wiggling the Lazzara out of the hole she was in was quickly assuaged after talking with the casualty's crew and the dock staff at West Wind, whom were all consummate professionals. Here's a view of the exit route from the inside of the basin.

Believe me, no one wants to pay for a scratch put into any of these boats. This is when I'm very happy that my towboats are essentially motorized fenders! To extract the Lazzara, we attached Capt. Andy, in the Safe/Sea Newport to the bow of the casualty, and he held a slack hawser as the dock crew of West Wind hand-over-handed the Lazzara out of her slip and got her pointed out of the narrow entrance of the basin. I was in the Safe/Sea Salvor, standing guard duty on the north side of the exit to prevent the Lazzara from being set down onto a megayacht tied up next door at Casey's Marina.

Once she was pointed out the basin exit, Andy provided a gentle tug of forward momentum, and she slid nicely into the spacious waters of Newport Harbor. Well, they certainly seemed spacious at the time! Below is the Lazzara under tow headed out of the harbor past Goat Island.

While Capt. Andy did the towing toward Hinckley, I shot up there to scout out what we had to deal with when we got there. They want her on their big face dock, which was fine, but to get there we had to go through the narrowest part of the marina, which is about 70' wide between a graite pier and steel pilings. The Lazzara is about 25' wide, and with my towboat on the hip, she'd be about 37' feet wide, leaving us about 15' of clearance on either side. However, about 10' of that space was being taken up by the bowsprit of a huge sailing yacht, as you can see in the picture below. So, my plan became to keep the Safe/Sea Newport towing the casualty astern on a hawser, put myself in the Safe/Sea Salvor on the hip, and take her straight past the narrows into the turning basin, where we would have plenty of room (relatively) to turn her and put her against the dock. The Hinckley crew got theur small outboard yard boat underway to help as well.

The plan went off without a hitch, as we ghosted by the sailing yacht and granite pier at about 1.3 knots of forward speed, Capt. Andy proceeded straight to the dock, secured himself and used his hawser as a bow spring that we could work against the bring the Lazzara broadside to the wind and against the dock. Below is the view on our way out of the Hinckley Yard for home, with the Lazzara clearly in view against the dock.

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The past week was really a routine week, jobs-wise. Nothing really extraordinary or interesting, just your basic meat-n-potatoes, run-of-the-mill engine failures, minor groundings and the like. Below are some photos.

The Trphy below went home quickly from Beavertail.

This Larson went back to the Fort Adams ramp from the south end of Prudence. Seems like the Ft. Adams Ramp is getting more popular, as I've been in there 4 times already this year. It's usually a once or twice per season kinda place.

I volunteered to be the Pt. Judith Captain on Saturday, as both my kids were playing in the Goals 4 Rams 6v6 soccer tournament at URI that day, and I hoped it would be quiet enough that I could take in a couple of their games. Last year, I tried the same thing and didn't see minute 1 of them playing; this year was totally different, and the schedule was in my favor. As it turned out, each kid played 4 games, and I managed to see 6 of the 8. One was missed due to a tow job, and one was missed because both kids were playing simultaneously. Both kids' teams won all their games, everyone had a blast, and dad got to watch most of it, which is a rarity for a towboat driver in high season.

Below is a member lightly in the mud just off his slip at Billington Cove Marina in PJ Pond. I nosed up to his port quarter, attached one of my bow lines, and slowly back him into deeper water.

As soon as I was done with him, I went further up the pond, just above The Narrows, to get this little Stingray and take him and his family back to the PJ Yacht Club.

Sunday morning started grey and a little choppy, but that didn't slow down another (!) tow into the aforementioned Fort Adam Ramp. Go figure.

This Old Town was over by Zeke's Creek, on the Dutch Harbor side of Conanicut. He went back to a private mooring on the Jamestown shore.

There was an interesting job on Monday that will get it's own post by the end of the week. It involves a 76' motoryacht. Stay tuned!

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Here's a captioned photo review of some of my jobs of last week.

These guys were fairly pleased to see me on a sloppy day several miles south of Point Judith. What you don't see are their female companions suffering from seasickness with their heads over the transom. Everyone felt better once we got moving toward Fall River.

This 21' Whaler wrecked a lower unit approaching the beach inside T-wharf at the south end of Prudence. We went back to Barrington.

It was this member's birthday on the day he broke down. Kind of a bummer, but it's always nice to meet a guy who takes pride in his boat. This older Chris Craft is spotless.

More zoom-zoom. A beautiful day to get customers home in a hurry.

All set, back at the dock at Oyster House, right by the Washington Bridge in East Providence.

Let's Party! This deck boat was broken down at the top of Pt. Judith Pond. She went back to a private dock on Harbor Island.

I'll have another post before week's end that will get me completely up to date, job-wise. Then it'll be time to update the jobs map, which is getting more cluttered as the weeks go by.

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