The past few days have been a blur. The boys are now with Grandma & Pa back East as we prepare for departure. Friday the 7th was very emotional - the boys saying goodbye to their best buddies, and also Steph. I suspect the boys didn't really realize the significance of the latter farewell, but after 3 years as our live-in nanny, Steph is very much part of the family and has been a big influence on key years in their development. Thanks heaps, Steph. We'll all miss you, but hopefully you will squeeze in a Mulan visit to Z-what.
Mulan is ready to go - or nothing significant enough to hold us back. We'll be learning how to operate a few things enroute, but the new AIS system works, and test emails have been sent and received via Ham radio. Have successfully send weather file requests via Ham, but haven't yet figured out how to get the data back again - user error no doubt.
First leg crew have been outstanding with their contribution of time to the preparation efforts. Rob and Chester have eased the stress levels with several installations - seemingly mundane things like the cockpit table, which instead of being a plug & play el-fresco dining enabler, became a head scratching configuration challenge.
Also in the kudos column are Debbie, Melissa and Sonia at the West Marine store in Blaine (you guys are great!), defender.com (for the stuff I couldn't get at West Marine, or wouldn't due to too big a price differential), and the folks at Hagens in Blaine - an outstanding service for receiving packages when shopping online. In the brickbats column is Toshiba direct. Their computers are great, but their questionable rebate offers, and lack of customer service and/or incompetence means we are departing without our second computer intended for navigation.
Several weeks of frantic planning, packing, storing, house repairs, yard projects and administrative stuff are almost a memory - or will be a memory until we get somewhere with internet and see which bills need to be paid. We've probably racked up enough points on the Mastercard for us all to fly to Mexico. But then sailing is about the journey, not the destination! A few things got scratched off the buy list to ease the financial situation, and only one managed to sneak back on - a last minute purchase of a Rocna anchor to provide a wee bit more peace of mind in a bumpy anchorage.
We've upgraded our sailblogs subscription, so we now feature on the map, and if you enable the Google earth gadget you will be able to zoom in and see they lay of the land (or sea) whenever we update our position. Not sure if we can post via Ham, but I'll check the help file.

There are also sites that track boats positions via AIS, but I will test these before I share the links in a future posting. Another tracks positions via Ham Lat/long when you connect from the high seas.