We have finally arrived in Ipswich for the handover of our yacht. Its a fantastic yacht, full of very nice features. We threw a party to celebrate and invited folks from Oyster and their contractors to come along as well as some of our family from Australia and the UK.

On our voyage we will be joined by David Cutcliffe, an experienced yachtsman who is also doing the sailing adventure of a lifetime with us. Here is David helping out trying to find tools from all the spare parts currently stored at Oyster that we will be bringing onto Josie Maria in a few days ! We certainly have a lot of stuff, more on this in later posts - it should be quite funny...

David Cutcliffe

John, Vicki and sister Katy

and big sister, Liz

 Matt, Liz, Vicki and Katy

Some of the wonderful folks at Oyster who gave us a great inauguration/naming party

 Sally-Anne, Liz, John, Vicki and Katy

Now our plans are to complete our two day handover where we get to learn all about how everything works, and go for a sail.

We are also receiving a few requests from family and friends to join us. I can say that November 2013 right through the end of January 2014, when we are in the Caribbean, we are totally full ! We have some friends who will be coming over in all of February2014, and March 2014 looks like its fairly open. The Galapagos leg, probably mid April 2014 is also fast filling up. There are some great times to be had.