That winter we spent most of our weekends up in Jamestown Boat Yard working on Cisnecito. It was cold, so Chris bought us matching blue mechanics suits. I felt like the Michelin man, but at least we were warm. We stayed in a little b&b with a lovely woman named Mary and after working from sunup to sundown, would head over to Newport to our favorite restaurant, The Candy Store, for a dark and stormy and cioppino.

Our first major project was pulling out the mast which was no small job. We also did several new installations and a lot of cleaning - bilges, holding tanks, etc. We would take Amtrak back to Manhattan late on Sunday night, weary after two grueling days of work, and drag ourselves to work the next morning. We were really determined to get the boat into the water to be able to use it during the summer, so we kept this pace up pretty much all winter.