A pleasure to read.  And in other VSF news, cargo wholesale orders went out yesterdayI If you have a place for us to mail flyers about the sail barge please send your mailing address to Cara @thegreenhorns.net

There is much to report since my last post here three weeks ago.  Since our first spaghetti dinner on Ceres we have completed nearly all the rigging and put Ceres through some baby steps in protected bays and out on the open lake.  All the while there is feverish work going on behind the scenes as Colin builds new web architecture on http://www.vermontsailfreightproject.com and Patrick builds our network of suppliers and clients.  I am amazed by the array of fantastic farm goods we have brought together.  And in the end it is the job Ceres will do — the work of bringing these goods to market — and not Ceres herself that we are really all about.
But, that being said, let’s just go ahead and focus on Ceres herself just because I can’t completely stop myself.  Please understand that everything about this sailing barge, from the rig, to the hull shape, to the overall dimensions and scantlings was designed to make her a practical tool for the job at hand.  We expected her to be utilitarian.  And while we didn’t go out of our way to make her ugly, we never expected to pick up any yacht beauty contest awards.  To paraphrase Red Green, if we couldn’t find Ceres handsome, at least we could find her handy.
So it is with some sense of surprise that I can now report that Ceres is, at least to me and a few of my friends, elegant and gracious beyond anything I could have imagined when drawing lines on Sketch-up some six months or so ago.  This is thanks to the passion and the sacrifice of our amazing volunteers, Matthew Wright, Jordan Finkelstein, Carrie Glessner, Will Young, and Brian Goblik and many others.  All of these talents pooled together, and what a thing we have accomplished!
Just speaking frankly and personally, the sight of Ceres gladdens the heart, in a way I suppose I hadn’t anticipated, and I think the other participants in this project feel the same way.  Much like when the local community gathered here on the farm to roll the barge over, we maybe doubted our combined strength, but stuck with the task, and in the end we all surprised ourselves with what we could do.  Will any of this sentimentality stop us from putting Ceres to rough service and wearing her out in the line of duty?  I very much doubt it.  Ten, maybe fifteen years and we’ll decommission Ceres and use whatever parts we can salvage to build the next boat.
Of course, this is just the beginning.  We are entering the last few weeks of preparation for our trip.  We are working towards finalizing several key partnerships, not the least of which is the bringing on board of our captain.  No, it won’t be me, and trust me, that’s a good thing.  As with the building, there’s no reason not to bring as much talent, passion, and experience to the project as we can, and there are some people who are exponentially more qualified than I am to guide a loaded sailing barge down the river to New York City.  I look forward to announcing that and more soon.  We still have plenty of challenges ahead, of that I am totally certain.
Faithful readers, please accept my apology for the long wait for this post.  I will try to come up for air more often in the future!