Mark Twain

June is almost gone

June has slipped by so quickly and we are making steady progress toward our goal of living aboard.  Kay is officially retired, the container is safely placed at Paul’s homestead in Westford, VT, and the owners of our rental, Stan and Liz, are making progress back from their sailing adventure toward home.  

There are medical matters to get squared away (medications, immunizations, etc.), a few loose ends with insurance, and finishing our packing.  All should be completed by the end of July.

We are finishing up a few repairs on the boat (main furler rebuild, some electrical issues and head repairs) but that should all be squared away by the end of the week.  Kay and I should be ready to move full time to Atalanta by mid August and depart New England waters by the beginning of September. 

In the meanwhile, we are hoping to get some great sailing in with friends in some of the most beautiful sailing grounds on the east coast.  This weekend Tara and Chad will join us.  For the fourth, we are looking forward to joining Blue Moon for a long weekend celebration. 

More to come.

Weekend in the Narraganset

The weather has not been cooperating lately.  This week brought more rain than anyone deserves.  Nevertheless, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday relented and gave us a wonderful weekend aboard with our good friend John.  While the winds did not make Block Island an ideal destination, we did find Newport and Potter’s Cove to be beautiful anchorages.  Once in Newport, a port that John had never been to before, we went on long walks and visited The Breakers and The Elms, two magnificent mansions of the Gilded Age.  While it is great to see such magnificent architecture and art, they also remind us of how our history has and may always be defined by the distance between those that have too much and those that struggle to get through each day.  It is clear that one cannot exist without the other.  Each owes to the other for their quality of life.

We also went to the Newport Shipyard to look at some of the most spectacular yachts in the world.  This is a yard designed to accommodate super yachts, mostly sail.  They had just put together their new travel-lift that took 8 tractor-trailer loads to bring to the site for assembly.  It can lift a mighty 500 tons!  We have never seen a lift with this capacity.  This lift can pull two hundred foot sailboat, rig out. 

Our preparations for traveling south are now focusing on packing up our belongings and placing them in a forty-foot trailer that Paul has so graciously allowed us to place on his property.  Load by load, we will be packing our possessions.  As we are packing up, Stan and Liz, our landlords are in the middle of a five-day sail to a U.S. port after two years in the Caribbean.  We wish them a safe journey and fair weather. 

More to come!