Today we committed - we despatched the Boomer! With a lot of help from friends and family, it is squeezed in, padded, chocked, strapped down, desiccated and locked away. Thank you all.

It is going to take some six weeks for the Boomer to reach Southampton . In that time we have to get all our stuff ready to go into store, get our home ready to rent out for the next eighteen months or so, and get ourselves sorted so that we can finally believe we are going. Checklists will rule.

The master plan is to spend 2014 in Europe, and six months of 2015 in North America.

More to follow.