Was sad to miss this year’s Newport Folk Festival, especially after hearing the report on NPR today.
It sounded like the tribute to Joni Mitchel was very moving, and hearing her sing “Both Sides Now” with a supporting cast organized by Brandi Carlisle, made me tear up.
Newport Folk Festival By Sea
We never got our act together actually to buy tickets for the festival but watched several from the water.
We moored Cadence, our 38′ Sabre, in Brenton Cove. This is the (usually) quiet end of Newport Harbor between New York Yacht Club and Fort Adams State Park. The latter has been the location for Newport Folk Festival for decades. Our mooring was maybe a 1/4-mile from the stage.
In past years, we had seen that there was always a small armada of anchored boats of all shapes and sizes, who put be free Newport Folk Festival spectators. We learned the hard way that if you want to get a spot, you had to get there early.
We would wake up around 6:30 am, drop the mooring, and motor over to join the dozen boats that had already secured a good vantage. The show didn’t start before noon and didn’t get going until the late afternoon.
Between, 7 am and noon, the anchorage on the Northen end of Fort Adams filled up with a flotilla of hundreds of boats. Most were small motor boats, many of them rafted up and very few seem to have a clue about how to anchor well.
This would mean that over the course of the day, boats would drift down on each other to the great consternation of other floating freeloaders. Once a raft-up of 15 little motorboats drifted through the anchorage, scooping up other boats as it blew from East to West. The party-goers aboard were mostly oblivious to the carnage they were creating until the Harbor master intervened and tried to untangle the chaos.
As you can see, people would enjoy the festival on all kinds of crafts, from 50′ catamarans to inflatable pizza slices.
Our Newport Folk Festival Gallery
I think this conveys the fun and chaos that ensues.
Who We Saw
Over several years we had the pleasure to see so many artists from our floating private box. My personal favorites:
- Elvis Costello. He left the festival in a stunning wooden Motoryacht
- Mumford and Sons – We accompanied them by thumping on the inflatable dingy It made a passable bass drum.
- Gary Clark Jr, for the first time.