After four and half days of some very wet and lumpy sailing, Jeff Kuller and I picked up a vacant mooring at 3:00AM this morning in Newport. Jeff came to life the last couple of days as we beat into a Northwest wind for the last two hundred miles of this leg. My head still hurts from the boat slamming down as it fell out of waves. The boat might pound on twenty percent of the waves, but you still had to hold on for everyone, because it was impossible to predict which twenty percent. Now Jeff has departed for Maine, and I am spending the day drying out and cleaning up at the Newport Shipyard where I must be close to the smallest and cheapest boat in the yard. Newport is very empty at the moment, but the yard is busy preparing a fleet of twelve meter boats for the season. It is springtime in New England. The cherry blossoms are out all over town. The air is clear,and the sky is blue, and its cold. I am happy to be back and headed to Camden.