Bon Voyage Party

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Saturday night, our friends from the Nordic Tug 42, Joy Girl, that we met while they were doing the loop several years ago, picked us up at home and took us to Upper Lake Park picnic area 5 in Port Washington for our going away party.

Believe it or not, this was one of the most stressful things in getting ready for our loop. We put out the invitations, ordered the food, reserved the site, put out the announcements..... And we still had no idea who was going to show up except for the few people that responded. if we only had 15 people show up, we were going to have a LOT of extra food!

We chose the site because of the abundance of parking, but when we arrived there was NO PLACE TO PARK! There was a concert and beer garden going on in the adjacent picnic area and almost all of the available parking for over 100 cars was taken up. Oh crap. And to make things even more exciting, this park is NOT easy to find, especially with all of the construction in Port Washington right now.

But regardless, people started showing up, old friends, new friends, family. We had over 50 people that took time out of their Saturday afternoon to come and wish us well. It was an absolutely amazing afternoon and evening, Christine and I felt like we were at our wedding reception, I don't think either of us ate more than a few bites of the amazing food that was brought up to us from Danny's Catering in Racine, and we talked to more people than we ever had dreamed would show up. In the end, everything worked out.

After it was all over, our son Nick and his wife packed us and our leftovers into their car and drove us to our boat, Patriot and we settled in for the night around 9 PM. After all, we had an early departure Sunday morning at 05:00 and as we collapsed into our bunk, we realized this was really and truly only the beginning of our adventure.