Erin -

Wow, phew and yippee - summer has arrived to New England! I finally broke out the flip flops, sunscreen and hoop earrings! We had a great weekend weather-wise and boat-wise. Weather was clear, light breeze and 70-80 degreesf F. Boat-wise we had a lot come together with great outcome; the mast went up, Chris manhandled the 200 lb main sail, solo, and got it rigged, we changed up roles to anchor, Parker and Chris installed two winches and we got the guest bedroom back in shape after tearing it apart for the winch installation.  (Chris - I am learning how to post pictures, so even though I don't have a picture from our weekend at BI - and it has nothing to do with sailing at night - I do have a couple of pictures from the prior weekend when we stayed in Newport Harbor.  Here they are.  Click on them and they should get big.  I am also going to go back and insert a couple of pictures of the watermaker in my prior post ... )

We left Friday night with the plan to anchor in Newport then continue to Block Island on Saturday morning. Well, the night was amazing - clear, light seas and light wind so we made hummus/avocado/papaya sandwiches and kept going all the way to Block Island. It was my first night travel...definitely takes a little getting used to. No, there wasn't anything to hit just because it was dark (I had to keep telling myself) and the instrument panels did need to have their lights turned down (boy were they bright on "day" mode). Oh, but the stars were amazing! We anchored at 11:30pm and had a celebratory cocktail on the bow and stared at the stars.

Block Island does not really get going until July so it was a bit less crazy than usual - but we still made a pilgrimage to The Oar (home of the best onion rings). We also stumbled on something that we had not seen before - a farm of some really interesting animals - running ducks, emu, llama, brahma cows (bunny cows for a visual), camels and lots more. All could be fed (at your own risk) except the camel. I guess it must be pretty ornery because every two feet was a sign - DO NOT FEED THE CAMEL.

 We headed home on Sunday and our luck continued - wind that allowed us to use the spinnaker all the way. We got up to as much as 8 knots of boat speed. We used the winches Parker and Chris had installed and they worked perfectly (great job guys). We docked in some less than perfect conditions (healthy wind pushing us off the dock and toward a boat tied up in front of us) and still have all our fingers and toes. This weekend helped the upcoming adventure sound again like a good idea.