Newport - At a mooring

Ann took this picture of the bridge to Newport - nice clouds

The last of the work was completed at Hinckley on Wednesday morning and after we did three loads of wash and I paid the bill (!), we set out for Newport. There was no wind at all, just 5 kts for awhile so we motored the 7 miles to the mooring field. There were lots of empty moorings (at $45/day!) so we had no trouble finding one. I wonder if any of these guys have ever taken a course in economics supply and demand? Let's see, we charged $30/day several years ago but needed more profit as demanded by the city council. So we needed 1/3 more revenue so we raised the fee to $40/day. However, the revenue actually fell! So we needed even more revenue so we'll raise the fee another $5 to $45/day. I'll bet the total revenue goes down again - they'll never understand why. So it goes, they all read out of the same book (higher fees = more revenue...) Somewhere reality rears its ugly head. Reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon where Calvin charged $100 for a glass of lemonade. "That's way too much", says Hobbes - but Calvin replies, "But if I sell just one glass, I'll make my profit for the entire summer!"

Storm coming!

At the moment, a series of storms are rolling through ahead of the front due later tonight. The air has turned decidedly cooler, a welcomed relief from the heat. The new dinghy motor performed well, a 6 hp Mercury 4 cycle. Hinckley found a loose pin in the governor assembly on the genset. They made adjustments and so far the genset is performing great. The real test will be the next five days when we'll use the genset twice a day. Hinckley wanted me to take measurements of the voltage and cycle readings so we can track whether it's really fixed or not.

Newport looks full of people, there's just plenty of moorings available. We're hoping for better weather tomorrow so we can break in the dinghy motor with some sustained run times. The weather forecast looks good for a run to Cuttyhunk on Friday, hopefully.