Finding a decent mooring space can often be a challenge but getting a spot in Newport during the height of America’s Cup fever in 1983 seemed a step too far...
Do you come from a land down under? Where women glow and men plunder…?’
Remember that? It was the unofficial theme song for the crew of Australia II when they lifted the America’s Cup from the New York Yacht Club in 1983 off Newport Rhode Island. As it happened, my crew and I sailed into Newport harbour in the thick of the action. We had just completed an east-west North Atlantic voyage via Norway, Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland. We were bound for Mystic Connecticut where we planned to lay up for a month or two to bang the old boat back together. Our 1911 pilot cutter had taken a hammering in the Greenland Sea and we were running short of jibs. We were now in day-sailing mode and Newport looked like an ideal stopover.
It seems incredible today that we had no idea about the historic events taking place there, but what with all the fun of the fair up north, we had taken our eye off the ball when it came to international yachting events. When we arrived, the 12-Ms were out racing. Huge Australian flags were flying over the marina giving Old Glory a good run for its money. We’d seen the spectator boats and the 12s in the offing and realised what we had stumbled upon, so I decided to spring for a marina berth. We’d be part of the action and, as a spin-off, hard by Thames Street where we knew that ‘The Handy Lunch’ café offered ‘Breakfast All Day’. We were already planning our ‘link Sausage, two eggs easy over and hash browns with pancakes on the side’ when a white-clad youth in an official-looking baseball hat on the outer pontoon waved us away.
‘No room, man. We’ve been booked out all summer. There’s no berths in town.’ Digesting this dismal intelligence, we pottered off towards the anchorage which was so chock-full of boats that finding a hole for a 50-footer extended by 15ft of extra spars was a nonstarter. It’s never easy to give up on a harbour and head back to sea, but that was the state of play when a scruffy motorboat hove alongside with an old shipmate jumping up and down who lived on the waterfront.
“Great to see you. You’ll never get a slot by asking. Follow me!”
Kenny has been around the block more times than most sailors and we were fresh out of options, so follow him we did. He led us back towards the central marina, but instead of approaching the pontoons he puttered round the cor
