Bon Voyage Party!!!

If ever a title deserved 3 exclamation points, this is it. Zero days to cruising*! We made it! Woooohooo! Holy crap. We're stunned.

With friends spread across great distances, Carol and I are having a virtual Bon Voyage party (and Carol's retirement) right here and YOU** are invited.

Come in, say hi, tell us what you would like to drink, make yourself comfortable, wear non-marking shoes, share a story, tell us about a friend's or your own adventure, share a tradition, give advice, warn us off, whatever you like.

In a traditional leave taking, family might give letters and trinkets that could be opened at various stages of the journey. For example, they might send an envelope saying "open at the Equator" or "for your first night North of 50 degrees". However, given the state of border and customs I don't think we'll be able to bring a bunch of unmarked gifts (letters I suppose we could).

Also, traditionally, the cruisers would also be fending off unwanted, bulky gifts from well-meaning relatives that they didn't have room for on the boat like potted plants or wall hangings.

And finally everyone would have too much to drink and the poor cruisers would have to get up in the morning and sail (this may very well still happen at a small local gathering tonight).


We would like to thank everyone for their support. In particular, we would like to thank Carol's mother Marcelle for asking us every few months what she could buy for the boat and Livia's parents for being a support-and-gear logistics team extraordinaire. We are hoping to abuse your kindness more in the future.


Tomorrow morning we sail with Marcelle et Roland aboard for a week in the Gulf Islands - our fourth set of sailing guests so far. After they leave we'll be...possibly picking up another set of guests flying in from Colorado and heading North?


*Not to be confused with Mike & Rebecca's most excellent blog
**Yes, even if we've never met.