We love you too

When your ex crew email telling you that they had such an amazing time on Lilly they want to do something nice for you, it's easy to feel a little bit nervous, what could it possibly be......?? Will they attempt to single handedly dinghy sail around South America? Will they set up a business manufacturing canvas buckets? Have they invented a way to cook for 9 people on passage without throwing most of it on the floor?

Well no, none of these, but they have, nonetheless, achieved great feats of engineering and really got a taste for extreme weather conditions.....

(and just in case the blizzard is onstructing your view, the flag reads 'Happy 2009 Lilly Bolero'

We love you too Chris and Gilles....

A very serious business

Well the new year brought forth the Bay of Islands Tall Ships race. This is a very serious and prestigious event where lots and lots of boats gather together to compete once a year, they tweak their sails, polish their hulls, streamline the rigging, varnish the woodwork. keep a keen ear to the wind, agonise over the best course and race unto the bitter end with victory the only goal in sight. As usual we approached the event with the seriousness and commitment it deserved.To be honest I'm not entirely sure that everyone else appreciated the endless supply of water balloons and huge wads of soggy toilet paper being thrown at them, and the tumbleweed silence at the prize giving when I asked if there was a prize for fancy dress seemed to imply that maybe we hadn't taken it quite seriously enough.... by midnight when I found myself head banging to metallica even I realised it was time for us to go home

More pictures coming soon....