The Departed

Somehow Keith and I were able to cleverly convince Bikeman and Bachman that they should join us on the first leg of our journey . Key West to Isla Mujuers, Mexio. We told them it would be an experience of a lifetime, and we thought gleefully to ourselves how it would cut our 'on watch' shift in half! They are no fools but joined us anyway. On Tuesday May 13^th at 6pm Geri, Simone and Charlie gathered at the dock to wish us farewell. Bikeman and Bachman loaded their gear onto the boat. Keith and I were slightly harried as we had not quite stowed everything adequately and were down to the final hour. At some point we gave up and decided we were leaving ready or not!

One last item on the agenda, however, was the christening of the boat. We had recently changed the name to Penzi but had yet to do an 'official' christening. To ward off any bad luck we knew we had to do a proper Christening. All 7 of us gathered on the bow of the boat and each said something very witty about the boat and the journey in general. Keith and I then grabbed onto a large bottle of champagne, stood on the bow and swung the champagne hard into the anchor on the tip of the bow. The bottle burst magnificently sending chards of green glass all over the dock and one nice piece into Caroline's leg. We were on our way!!!

Amidst teary farewells, Penzi pulled off the dock at 7:15pm. Quite literally we sailed off into the sunset waving back at our friends who were waving madly, and then they disappeared. We raised our sails. The first leg of our trip was about to begin.