Long Island (of Boston)

Madrigal had her first sail of 2010 today, and all went very well!

We decided to just sail out to Boston's Long Island, where we used the rocna for the first time. What a scary feeling to throw such an expensive, heavy chunk of metal over the side of the boat!

We made up a lunch of fish cakes and corn bread and played a game of cards. While we took the dinghy along, we decided to just keep it a short trip so we never did use it.




The sail itself went really well too - we got up over 7 knots a few times and averaged 5 knots or so. Not bad, considering the condition of our bottom!

picturesque

It has been an incredibly busy spring. Jenny has been working all her waking hours split between indexing and the library. Only 6 more days at the library though :) I've been indexing as well as doing massive amounts of boatwork. In the meantime, we haven't really had the chance to upload many of our own pictures. Well today I finally cleaned out the camera and decided to just upload a bunch of pictures. They are roughly in order of oldest (about 6 weeks ago) to newest (yesterday). So I'll just give them some quick captions and hope you enjoy.

Jenny snapped this shot of me applying the second

coat of easypoxy to our deck.

and one more.

This photo is facing starboard and slightly forward in the cockpit.

The big white panel at left is the forward bulkhead which I removed

the old wind gauges from and fiberglassed over.

Willie, admiring himself.

My left hand looks funny up there.

Apparently I was about to scratch my head.

Sometimes, we're odd.

Somehow, Gollum is still alive.

Springtime in a Boston marina is a fantastic time.

Everyone comes out of their little plastic shells and starts to be

social again. It's really very nice.

Ladies, pictured at right is Keith. Keith is a single white male,

roughly 30 years old. Keith enjoys boating and wearing cardboard

shark heads. If you share these interests call him at 1-800-my-shark.

Willie and Rusty love to play. Rusty is 14 years old and so arthritic he can barely

walk, but he still manages to give that young pup a run

for his money.

This is one of our assistant dockmasters, Howie, helping move Madrigal

to it's temporary summer slip. We'll be docked on the outside

of the marina until we leave for Thayer's Landing on May 1st.

Willie has a new superhero costume.

Don't tell him you know who he really is.

He prefers if you call him Wondermutt. It helps him

stay incognito.

Our new Rocna finally arrived yesterday :)

Now we can sleep at anchor with much greater confidance.

It will be a very fun summer.

And just a couple quick shots of the boat in its current state,

new deck paint and all.

and Willie too, of course.

Rocna

Thanks to the anonymous poster on our blog back in February who pointed out that the rocna's were selling far cheaper than they were a year or two back.

In preparation for my new endeavor as a full time freelance indexer, we're setting the boat up to 1) be easier for me to work on, 2) be easier for me to work on anywhere at all, and 3) be a little more self sufficient so that we're spending a chunk of change now, but in the long run we'll save money. Fancy that.

We're doing a few really cool things...one of which (if you haven't guessed) is the purchase of a rocna!

A stock photo. We'll take pictures of ours soon.

This puppy will let me index with ease from any nook and cranny in the ocean, without worrying so much if our anchor is holding. We also have a couple of danforth anchors for backup.

Many more projects are in the works - we'll keep you updated.