Askari out in the cold

That's it Askari has left the shed, she's all painted on the bottom and is now in the testing bay at Wroxham, her final stop before she goes to be launched. Andrew and I will now be monitoring the weather in the UK knowing our girl is outside.

Ready for testing

In other exciting news our boxes arrived in the UK and are being delivered to Ipswich tomorrow and we have ordered our ensign.

The ensign job turned out to be harder than we thought as Australian yachts can either fly the Australian Red Ensign or the National Flag - so research was required. We learned out that it is 'right and proper' to fly the Red Ensign (thanks to our etiquette guru Eva), we then had to find one that wasn't printed polyester and then check the size. We learned that the ensign should be 1 inch for every foot of boat length so a 1.5 yard, fully sewn, ensign has been ordered for Askari. We also ordered some courtesy flags including the UK which felt a bit strange - that also had to be checked, and we confirmed that you should not fly the union flag but also the red ensign also as a courtesy flag. The Union Jack is a land flag and should not be flown at sea by cruising yachts, according to the RYA who would know!

70 days to go.