5 May 15

Happy Cinco de Mayo. We finished our epic drive from Texas to Rhode Island today, traversing New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and half of Rhode Island. We made it to beautiful Jamestown, situated in the middle of the Narragansett Bay on lovely Conanicut Island just after 15:00. Today’s drive of 287 miles took us 6 hours; of course, about half of that was spent just getting across the Hudson River and through NYC. We have logged 2200 miles total, since our departure from Houston 6 days ago. That was a helluva drive; don’t think we will do that again, at least not in a rental 16’ truck.

“c’est le bon” looks just fine; all of the winter work has been completed, except for the inspection of the standing rigging, which will be done tomorrow afternoon. Current plan is to launch the boat on Thursday morning. We unloaded everything from the rental truck except our clothes for the next two days; Gud kens where we will store it all on the boat. And we unloaded the lovely “Swallow” and placed her on the sand ready to be moved into the water tomorrow or the next day.  Tomorrow will be a busy day trying to get the boat ready and starting to provision for the trip.

6 May 15

We got the bimini and dodger re-instated (the new boots on the back-stays should work very well to keep rain water off the helmsman), the falls back on the davits, the inflatable kayak out of the starboard locker and lashed down on the deck under the boom where it will stay until we reach Long Island. Also got the dehumidifier and (now) spare jib stored in the starboard locker. The rigger came by in the afternoon and inspected all the standing rigging; no issues. Then we drove back to Newport, picked up a rental car and turned in the rental truck (glad to see the back of that vehicle). We were also able to pick up the fire extinguishers, which had been taken in for a service; 1 of the 3 was out of date and had to be condemned, so I bought a new one.