We're Off!!!!!

Thursday December 10th 2009

This last week has just gone by so quickly. Yesterday was spent doing last minute preparations. Kerr was extremely generous and took me into Arrecife to get our fruit and vege for the journey. He also gained a lot of brownie points when we arrived at the boat with ice creams for everyone!

Last night was our farewell dinner with all our families together. It was a lovely meal and just nice to spend another evening with everyone. I then went and had a farewell drink with our Italian neighbours who will hopefully be starting their journey across the Atlantic in the next few days.

This morning Jandy took me up and we collected our vacuum packed meat and racked my brain to think of anything that had been forgotten. Who knows! I'll let you know about day 8. Back to the boat where a load of people had turned up to say goodbye. I can't even begin to list everyone without fear of forgetting someone but thank you to all who came. I had done my last phone calls to NZ earlier on Skype and then it was really emotional saying goodbye to Jandy and friends on the pontoon.

We slipped the lines and started to go. The support boat followed us, it was so nice to see everyone and wave goodbye. When they turned around to head back I got all choked up again. But not too much time to dwell as there were things to do. However, my plans to tidy things up was quickly stopped when I discovered that my sea sickness tablets had not in fact worked. Don't worry, at least today I managed to keep my breakfast but in the afternoon when I took another tablet, I was knocked out for two hours.

Geoff and Digby have been really busy with lots of interviews to various radio and television shows. My role of obscure jobs and 'Hold this piece of rope please' has now become a 'Hold this microphone please'! It's all good. Not really sure how to explain the whilrwind of emotions I'm feeling. Excitement for the trip has finally started and sadness because it has been such a lovely week with everyone. None of them helped by the queasiness but it will pass. We saw a pod of pilot whales this afternoon, so I'm going to take it as a good omen that this trip will be great.
Oddly enough, we still have cell phone coverage so family and friends have been getting texts from me. I'm going nuts with it too, as I'm thinking this is the last time for a while. All will be fine! But the thing I'm quite intrigued about is that I have heard rumors to expect to lose a stone in weight on this crossing. When you see the amount of food we have on board, I will beg to differ!!!!! However, as soon as I am acclimatised, the measuring tape is coming out and we will see if my bum does actually get a bit smaller.

Dinner preparation now, get this, it's going to be chicken with lime and chilli served with rice. Mmmmm, who's jealous yet?!