June 21, 2010 - Newport, RI

First thing this morning we took the boat back over to Alofsin Pier. This spot is a seriously sweet public resource. There are so few places in the world where one can tie up and water a boat for free. The boating community in Rhode Island is lucky to have such a facility. We're surprised by how little it seems to be used.

We spent the day scrubbing Mata'irea's decks and topsides. Suzy swung by to pick up another load of gear to be stored at her place for the summer and stuck around for a while to polish stainless. I'm pretty sure that I won the MIL sweepstakes.

We are expecting several friends to join us onboard this summer and so we are moving off mountains of stuff to make room for everyone. Being able to pull up to a dock to offload gear is such a boon.

This afternoon we brought Mata'irea back to the mooring, quickly showered and hailed the launch to bring us ashore. We met up with Laurie and caught a lift to the airport so that we could surprise Sten's dad upon his return from a conference. Back in Jamestown, Bill fired up the grill so that Sten could overcook the steaks (that'll teach him to leave the boat without a meat thermometer in his back pocket). We had a wonderful evening sitting out on the back porch catching up with them both. What a perfect way to celebrate the summer solstice.

I simply can't get over how late the sun sets at this latitude this time of year - or how early it rises. It starts getting light around 4:30. Since we are used to get up and going to bed with the sun (a nice schedule in the tropics where the nights are 12 hours long) we are getting a lot less sleep than we're used to.

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