Barry Kennedy, who flies helicopters over forest fires for work and sails to Antarctica for fun, is looking forward to riding route 60 on the RIPTA.

“I’ve never lived in a place with public transportation before,” he said. While the bloom on that rose shall surely fade before long, he will be making a temporary home in Bristol for at least some of the next 12 months, while Gringo, his Garcia Passoa 50, built in France and launched in 2003, undergoes some significant interior work and maintenance at Bristol Marine.

Mr. Kennedy was drawn to Bristol Marine, and Bristol, for the comprehensive local marine trades infrastructure.

“I’m here for the yard work, to be a part of the repairs. They’re going to let me be involved,” he said. “And if you can’t get this kind of work done in this area between Bristol and Newport, you probably won’t be able to.”

“I’m stoked to be at Bristol Marine, and this area looks cool,” he said. “I know I’ll enjoy it.”

He arrived from the Bahamas a week ago Sunday, and the next day’s bitter cold and wind treated him to the kind of extremes he’s looking forward to getting back to, once Gringo is ready to go.

“I spent a lot of time on my old boat down in Antarctica, southern Chile, and the Falkland Islands, and I was looking for an aluminum boat for a couple of years,” said Mr. Kennedy. “One came up in New Zealand in December of  2019 and I bought it sight unseen.” He was having work done remotely, but the pandemic prevented him from traveling to New Zealand to take part in it.

“It eventually became apparent I wasn’t going to be able to get to the boat, so I shipped it on a cargo ship to the U.S., and it arrived in early January,” he said. “I got to spent six weeks in the Bahamas then sailed it up here. So here we are.”

Why choose aluminum?

Why aluminum? It’s more forgiving in the austere environments Mr. Kennedy hopes to frequent. As a helicopter pilot who works on a contract basis for a company that fights fires from the air, generally for three to six months at a time, he worked in the skies over Alaska and California last season. When he’s not flying over fire, he likes to sail into ice.

“I just like going to interesting places,” he said. “Unspoiled, unique places. I like looking at the wildlife and these places are getting more regulated. I want to go before the only way to see these places is through a Netflix documentary.”

Some of the best sights seen in his travels include watching humpback whales hunt collaboratively using a “bubble netting” technique, and observing massive colonies of albatross and king penguin. He says that South Georgia Island is probably the most amazing place he’s been — and he hopes to return. He’d also like to sail the Northwest Passage, but Canadian regulations designed to protect native communities from Covid have closed that route through 2021 and perhaps 2022.

“Maybe I’ll visit Greenland and Iceland instead,” of his first trek after his repairs are complete. “I still would like to go north, not sure where yet. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

Mr. Kennedy’s boat fits six, but he prefers to travel with one to three other people. He learned to sail growing up in the New York Finger Lakes area, but left the sport for a while when he moved to Colorado for college “and to be a ski bum” at age 17. For much of the past two decades, the Telluride, Colo., area has been his home, when he’s not working or on the water.

In addition to his expeditions to extreme latitudes, he’s done a lap around the Indian Ocean and a solo crossing of the Atlantic between Cape Town and Uruguay.

“I’ll keep doing this as long as I enjoy it,” he said. “Sailing keeps me out of trouble because it keeps me broke.”