More Good Folks

 We made it to the Newport Folk Festival again this year with a slightly smaller crowd. Despite arriving mid-afternoon, we managed to get an incredible anchoring location and could hear much better than last year! Everyone seemed to have a blast!

We did have a slight scare when my step-daughters both drifted away from the boat with the outgoing tide current and couldn't swim fast enough against it. I initially swam out the them, but quickly realized I couldn't assist both back at once and they didn't want to separate so I swam back to the boat, quickly attached a spare halyard line swam back towards them only to find the line was still too short to reach. I returned to the boat intending to pull up anchor and go get them with the boat, but as I climbed back aboard, the Tow Boat US boat picked up the girls and brought them back. We thanked them profusely! The girls were a little shaken up, but unhurt. They both were wearing PFDs so it was just a matter of getting to them, but the other boat certainly got them a lot quicker than we could.

In hindsight, if the other boat hadn't picked them up, I probably should have attached a float to our anchor line and just cast off. That would have been quicker than actually hauling up anchor and we could have gotten right back to our spot too. In the future, I will make sure we have a line off the transom with a float on it for them to hang onto in order to avoid similar in the future. I've done it before when there was current, I just didn't think of it this time.





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