"Are you feeling excited or nervous?" I asked Colin as we left the harbour office on a Monday afternoon, having made the arrangement for Emerald's launch tomorrow.

"Both" he replied. "Me too!"

We learnt that it is possible to feel so incredibly excited by a moment whilst at the same time feeling absolutely terrified. Emerald's launch would be the moment when we would learn whether all our work over the last year was good or not.

If everything went well we'd be floating not just on water but also on a euphoric high, celebrating the successful completion of what at times felt like an impossible ask. Or, it could end in failure, with a sad return to the boatyard and an even longer postponement of our dreams. I tried not to think too much of the former in fear of jinxing it, whilst being absolutely terrified by the latter.

But we didn't have too much time to dwell on the bad as we now had to cram two days of final prep into half a day. Click here to read more on our blog page.