Ferries from Oak Bluffs, Martha's Vineyard, MA

Of the harbours on Martha's Vineyard, this is the one with a direct Rhode Island link. Seven sailings a day run to Quonset Point, 08:30 to 17:30, at 105 minutes for 39.3 nautical miles with Vineyard Fast Ferry — a longer crossing than the island's usual mainland connections, aimed at a different set of drivers.

Oak Bluffs began as a Methodist camp meeting in 1835, and the tents pitched in its central grove were replaced house by house with the tightly packed cottages — scroll-sawn trim, painted in colours no committee would approve — that the island now calls the Gingerbread Houses. Several hundred still stand around the open-air Tabernacle.

Its other survivor is the Flying Horses carousel on Circuit Avenue, brought from Coney Island in 1884 and still running with the original horses. A summer-only ferry serving a summer town is a fair match: the timetable and the place both empty out in October.