Of the many aquatic creatures Cooper Newton could have woken up to the morning after a storm at sea, the guest aboard his 27-foot sailboat was a bit of a surprise.
“I poked my head up top, and staring back at me (was) a raccoon,” he said.
Newton’s boat Why Worry was on anchor during a three-day storm at St. Simons Island in Georgia when the raccoon apparently was washed away from its home, but the wild animal proved to be a rude houseguest.
“He pooped all over the boat so I kicked him out,” said Newton, whose nearly 5,000-mile solo sailing trip was rich with adventures.
“It was everything I could hope for,” he said upon landing Saturday afternoon at Mattapoisett Town Wharf. There, the 19-year-old was greeted by his parents, Peter and Marley Newton, along with his girlfriend Autumn Horsey and extended family and friends.
“It’s so cool to have the whole (Old Rochester Regional High School) sailing team come and welcome me, that was really fun,” said Newton, whose trip began on September 3, 2021, and lasted 265 days.
Port and starboard sides of Why Worry were packed with sustenance and survival gear, leaving Newton with just enough room to sleep up near the bow. And his appetite for a challenge was tested.
On a 575-mile leg from Nassau, Bahamas, to Charleston, South Carolina, he was pelted the entire way in 14- to 16-foot seas with full gale winds over 40 knots sustained.
“It took me just about five days,” he said. The farthest Newton has sailed in 24 hours was 187 miles. On this leg, he averaged 115. “I wouldn’t do it again,” he admitted.
In a thunderstorm in the Gulf Stream, approximately 100 miles off Jacksonville, Florida, Newton encountered sustained winds of 60 knots. He saw three waterspouts. With a satellite tracker, he was able to transmit text messages and had the use of an emergency beacon. He let his loved ones know what was going on. “It was an hour and a half before I saw the stars again after that,” he said.
Newton said he had one crew, Colin Kulak of Mattapoisett, for approximately 700 miles. “He came down to visit in Charleston (South Carolina) and helped me to Block Island, just because I was alone…”
Before this, Newton’s longest solo sailing trip was 37 miles from Cuttyhunk around the Buzzards Bay tower.
He sailed southeast of the Bahamas as far as the Turks and Caicos Islands, a British territory approximately 100 miles north of Dominican Republic and approximately 140 miles northeast of the southeastern tip of Cuba. Sticking with British colonies made communications easier. “I’m not very good with Spanish,” Newton confessed. Nonetheless, the English dialects on the trip could be challenging, he said.
Newton did not get everywhere he originally wanted to go, but he made some friends along the way.
“I wanted to make it all the way down to Antigua for a race week (April 30 to May 6,) but that’s a hard passage,” he said. Instead, he cycled back to the Bahamas, taking heed to messages encouraging him to soak it all up. “I felt I hadn’t really enjoyed (the islands.)”
The small, inboard motor on the 1967 Bristol 27 he saved up to buy two years ago in Maine and then rehabbed was primarily used to navigate harbors. Newton estimates he burned between 40 and 50 gallons of gas over his 5,000 miles, which translates to 100 miles per gallon.
“I was pretty frugal with the gas,” he said, noting that in the Bahamas it was priced at over $7 per gallon.
The journey was funded in part by the sail of customized apparel and mugs created by Marley Newton, and Cooper wasted no time going back to work at his summer job as a third-year, senior deputy in the Mattapoisett Harbormaster’s office.
In the fall, the 2021 ORR graduate will begin a degree program at the University of Rhode Island in engineering. He is leaning toward mechanical engineering but is undeclared for now.
The attraction to URI: “Primarily the sailing,” he said. “It’s right on the water, they have a really good sailing team and it’s near Newport, Rhode Island.” He also is impressed with the new engineering building that URI opened in 2019.
A career beckons, but Newton did not get all the adventure out of his system.
“Me and some friends have some plans for some cruising around in the North Atlantic after college,” he said.
Newton admits those are just fleeting thoughts at this point, but his mischievous laugh makes any dream sound possible.
By Mick Colageo