A short trip up Narragansett Bay took us to Bristol, a historic yachting center and home to the Herreshoff Marine Museum. We took a mooring at the Museum and toured the facility that afternoon. What an amazing pair of brothers John and Nat Herreshoff were. John or J.B. became totally blind at 15 and his younger brother, Nat became his eyes. Nat was an inventive lad and the two of them soon became the forerunners in yacht design. It is a truly amazing story and to see and walk through their designs is indescribable. We learned right off that we have been pronouncing their name wrong. The second “h” is silent. It is “Hares-off”.

The Americas Cup Hall of Fame is here as well and it was quite interesting to look at all the pictures and see the history of the oldest trophy in the world.

Bristol is a beautiful town, everything that you might expect in a New England small town. If it quits raining today (Monday) we’ll get to see more.

Photos of the museums and Bristol are in the gallery.

The storms never materialized and we woke with excitement as we planned a day ashore in Havre de Grace. Somewhere along the way we got water in the dinghy fuel so our land excursion was delayed as I filtered out the water and got the motor restarted. I should have never bothered.

We ventured towards the spot where Skipper Bob had said there was a dinghy dock. Fences and railings made it very apparent that we were not welcome. We motored down to Tidewater Marina to ask if there was any other place to go ashore. A nice gentleman offered their dock, but before we could get ashore someone else with more “authority” told us in no uncertain terms that we were not welcome and needed to leave immediately. Needless to say we are very depressed over the whole ordeal. It is very hard getting used to the feeling that we are second class citizens, homeless people that no one wants.

If you follow the link to Wikipedia for Havre de Grace you will see under “Local Color” that the towns people don’t think much of their out of town visitors. I guess that means us as well.

We will leave in the morning (without spending a cent), hopefully not only leaving this place behind, but also the feelings we now have.