Jeanne Craig

As captain of Aphrodite, a 74-foot Purdy commuter yacht that ties up every summer in Rhode Island’s Watch Hill Harbor, Kirk Reynolds is responsible for one of the most beautifully restored boats in the Northeast.

On a damp gray morning in September, I left a dry room in a B&B on Bellevue Avenue to walk down to Bannister’s Wharf, smack in the middle of the harbor front, ground zero for the town’s seafaring past.

Alongside her mothership, a Hatteras GT63 convertible crosses the Atlantic to the Azores on her own bottom in pursuit of exotic ports and billfish.