Welcome to PROTECTOR’s Owners’ Dialog

We invite you to share with us your stories, adventures, tips and ideal PROTECTOR destinations. Please contact us with what you would like to share with other owners. You may attach photos to appear next to your story. Stories will be posted every other week and will appear on the site for 90 days.

Please include your name and contact information with all submissions.

Howard,

We had a terrific “PROTECTOR Weekend” over the Fourth. In pouring rain and dense fog, Marilyn and I ventured out of Narragansett Bay, across open water and into the notoriously choppy Buzzard’s Bay. Although the swell and chop was initially a little scary for our three-year-old, John, he soon got used to the ride, while below in the cabin Ella snoozed the whole way across like only an infant can.

As we pulled into Cuttyhunk and phoned our hosts to let them know we had arrived they immediately assumed we were calling to say we had decided to wait out the weather at home. They were shocked that Marilyn and I would bring the family out in such unfriendly weather and, moreover, that we were there already. In fact, with the boat’s ride and the chart plotter to guide the us, it had been an entirely uneventful trip through pea-soup-fog and swells left over from a recently passed tropical depression.

Over the course of the weekend we made record time across to Menemsha on Martha’s Vineyard twice. Friday the guys headed over to explore and on Saturday we all went: four adults, two three-year-olds and two infants. The new bench seat aft made all the difference.

Sunday, in heavy haze and smooth water, we loaded the kids up to head home leaving Cuttyhunk a little before 10:30. We passed Castle Hill at the mouth of Narragansett Bay 35 minutes later having cruised at about two-thirds throttle the whole way so as not to wake the kids who slept from dock to dock.

Just for fun, after getting through the weekend bay traffic south of the Newport Bridge, I opened her up on the final run to Portsmouth hitting nearly 45 MPH. I looked back toward the rear seat where John still had his head on his mother’s lap and she, as you know, suspicious of almost any boat, was grinning from ear to ear.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. For a guy trying to sell his wife on a life of boating and trying to introduce his kids to being on the water, there couldn’t have been a better weekend.

These boats rock,

Anson Stookey
Middletown, RI