Happy Anniversary!

Today marks the passage of one year since we got married at Round Lake in Michigan. It has been a very good year and we are both happy to have made it so happily to the one year mark. One of our wedding gifts last year was a gift certificate for a bed and breakfast in the Berkshires. Hence, part of our blogging absence has been due to the fact that we spent a couple days last week at the Berkshire 1802 House near Sheffield Mass. It was very nice place to stay for our one year celebration. The landscape is beautiful there and we got to go for a hike at Bartholomew's Cobble. The B&B served a great breakfast, and the old house had a nice feel to it. I think for us one of the best parts was having air conditioning and as much running water as we could stand. That sure felt different!

Speaking of a/c, it has been HOT here. The picture above is Willie's typical pose these days: panting. I think we've only had one day below 90 F since before we hauled the boat out. We did get to go for a nice evening sail early last week. It is always great to get out in the harbor on a Tuesday afternoon. Nobody else is on the water then and it provides a much calmer more relaxing experience. More like sailing should be.

Our haul out and bottom painting made all the difference in the world for Madrigal. I had begun feeling like we had this slow old antique sailboat.... we could only motor at about 4.5 kts, and when under sail power, even in 15 kt winds we could only get going about 6 kts SOG. It was miserable. The motor back to home from the boatyard we hauled at: 7.5 kts! It was a amazing. Truly, truly amazing. Our sail on Tuesday afternoon drove home the point of the importance of a clean bottom. It was gusty out, probably 12-15kts sustained with gusts up in the mid twenties, so we didn't even bother putting the main up. We just wanted to relax and stroll around anyhow, so we just unfurled the genoa. Lo and behold, even beating against the wind with only a headsail we never dropped under 5.5 kts. We mostly sailed around 6-7 kts the entire time. It was AWESOME.

Anyhow, Happy Anniversary to us. I'll be in New Hampshire doing some archaeological digging for the next week, and then we hope to be able to get out and do some sailing with our newfound speed in the following weeks.

-Justin