Well we had a lovely and busy weekend this weekend! Friday night was the annual Portuguese feast over at the Portsmouth Portuguese American Club. It’s right up the street from Debbie and Andy’s house so every year we go over and walk up for some great food, great music, and a fun time. This year was no exception even though it rained right at the end.

Saturday we went out on avalanche with my parents with Elias and Nikki to watch “the bucket”. It’s Newport’s version of the bucket which is a mega yacht race in St Barts. My parents have been telling us about this for years, and this was our first chance to catch it. Basically, you have to have a boat AT LEAST 90′ long to even enter. Then they take their handicap at the start so they should all finish at the same time at the end. We went out on avalanche and sailed around a bit to finish just in time to catch the finish off Castle Hill. And what an incredible finish it was! The last leg was a tight reach in that got just wide enough at the end that they could carry spinnakers. So the guys not winning all put their chutes up to try to catch the boats ahead. It was amazing to see Ranger put theirs up forcing the hand of the boats in front. We had most of the boats up on AIS so we could see their SOGs all easily in the twelve know range BEFORE their put their chutes up!

Then today was another sunrise shoot (Point Judith) and then I went over to sluff to do a little maintenance. 😉 Dad came over and helped me with some careful measuring and supervising of the drilling which was honestly a huge help. Then I came home and mowed the lawn (which gets a mention now because I use and old school push mower that’s 100% human powered) and then we went TO THE BEACH!!!! Elias had a great time at second beach where we got to watch the bucket boats go by again (but WAAAAY out there, luckily their giant boats!). Nikki and I both took a turn surfing which was awesome and then we got some clam cakes and stuffies as well as Frosty Freeze on the way home.