Nearly all of those friends, it seemed, were on board Monday to celebrate the first jacket foundation having been lowered onto the seabed over the weekend – marking the oft-repeated "first steel in the water" for the nascent US offshore wind sector.

The ferry was packed like a sardine tin with VIPs wanting a glimpse of the Block Island wind farm as it begins to take physical shape.

Among those on board, scarfing coffee and pastries, were Rhode Island's governor; two sitting US senators; two US congressmen (tiny Rhode Island's entire contingent); the secretary of the US Interior Department; the heads of many of the most important US environmental groups; senior figures from major renewables companies (like SunEdison, which owns a stake in the project); and a gaggle of lawyers, bankers, regulators and press.

It was, in many ways, the debutante ball of the US offshore wind industry. Only with heavily armed security bobbing in the surrounding waters.

Not everything went smoothly. Rain lashed the gussied-up guests as they scrambled onto the ferry in North Kingston, and thunder rumbled overhead as the boat shoved off.

The waters in Block Island Sound were so choppy that people had to squat like sumo wrestlers to keep their balance while walking around the boat for pictures and glad-handing.

The microphone failed to work, forcing speakers to bellow out their prepared remarks. But no matter. The mood was festive during the three-hour tour – a timeframe which coincided perfectly, as one speaker laughed, with that of the ill-starred S.S. Minnow of Gilligan's Island fame.

Beyond the press releases, photo opportunities and canned remarks, everyone seemed to genuinely grasp that they were witnessing a truly historic moment not just for US offshore wind, but the US energy sector generally.

Bryan Martin, managing director at D.E. Shaw, the private-equity firm behind Deepwater Wind, talked about getting emotional as he watched the first foundation splash into the water on Sunday with his 11-year-old son.

As the crane on-site at Block Island loomed larger behind her, Sally Jewell, the strongly pro-renewables US Interior Secretary, spoke of the need to cut incentives for oil and gas and boost them for renewables – a sure-fire applause line for that crowd.

One point made time and again, publicly and privately, was the importance of Deepwater having assiduously built up broad support for the Block Island project over the last decade, both locally and throughout the state, allowing it to avoid the kind of litigation that has dragged Cape Wind to a standstill from which it may never recover.

"Not everyone was fully on board [with Block Island] at the beginning," Deepwater chief executive Jeff Grybowski told Recharge, looking around the boat.

"A number of people came along in the middle of the process, for one reason or another. It was always important to us to build a project that people supported," he said.

"We didn't want to litigate our way to building the first offshore wind farm.

"Rhode Island's a small state, so it's relatively easy to gather a lot of decision-makers together – that's definitely helpful. But it really was a lot of hard work over many years, engaging people in what the project should look like, how big it should be, how we should go about building it."

How – even whether – the US offshore wind industry takes off in the coming decades is anybody's guess.

"It won't take long for the US to catch up" to Europe, Jewell told Recharge, although she noted that America's abundant fossil fuel reserves and the lack of a carbon price are significant handicaps for US offshore wind.

But focusing on the decades ahead seemed churlish on Monday. The US offshore wind sector has its start. And Block Island has its place in the history books.

In Dispatches, Recharge journalists offer a personal insight into the issues shaping the development of renewable energy around the world.(Copyright)