Noel Sharpe

The culmination of thousands of hours of work is finally coming to fruition. The past few weeks have been some of the most stressful I’ve ever experienced.

I am so grateful for the support of everyone who has helped, either physically or through their support.

The boat looks great. It’s not “finished” but it’s good enough. She’s watertight and has a means of propulsion (no it’s not the tractor).

Ellipsis will make her way to the bottom of the slip at low tide (at about 4pm today) and then, as the tide rises she will rise too. I expect she will be afloat as the sun sets.

Once again, thank you all.

The mysterious beige box of course contained Ellipsis’ electronics package. You can now see the short version of the unboxing below.

When I got home yesterday, I found this waiting for me:

To the untrained eye, this may look like a very boring beige box, however I can tell you untold wonders are contained therein.

It’s like christmas and my birthday all rolled into one happy event. I am saving opening it until I have some time to show you all

It was snowing yesterday. It’s still cold outside, but it’s important to remember it’s not always this way.

The photo below of Cawsand in Cornwall was taken in March 2012. It’s my favourite beach in the UK.  I can’t wait to moor Ellipsis there in the very near future.

It’s been a tough couple of weeks. Karen has been in hospital as she had been having a small amount of haemorrhaging due to the placenta previa (a condition of pregnancy where the normally well behaved placenta is blocking the baby’s exit route necessitating the use of an emergency exit). This was not wholly unexpected, but nevertheless unwelcome. This meant that I was at home looking after all four of the kids. I had no idea exactly how much running around that involves. I have still been trying to get my work done, but that’s not easy when your day is so interrupted, and mainly involved me staying up way too late working ineffectively. Still I did manage to get though a few things.

Anyway, on Tuesday evening, I was summoned to the hospital as Karen had developed quite dangerous pre-eclampsia (another condition of pregnancy which is a collection of symptoms rather than any specific condition). Her blood pressure had rocketed and there was a lot of protein in her urine. The staff on duty managed to control her blood pressure, and decided that the best plan was to monitor her until the morning when the hospital would be at a higher staffing level which would be better for a pre-term baby. Cue a long sleepless night for both me and Karen.

By morning, Karen had developed quite acute pre-eclampsia, and was showing hyperreflexia, where a tap just below the knee caused her leg to quiver rather than just react once as it normally would. This was obviously bad for baby and for mother, so we were told that they would perform an emergency cesarean section immediately. It was off to don scrubs for me and a gown for Karen.

Baby (no name yet; we’re really bad at this naming thing) was born at 10:15am on the 16th February 2011. He weighed 2.288 Kilogrammes (that’s about 5lbs for those of you who have not yet adopted the metric system). There was much blood and gore, which I will spare you, but both are doing well. Karen is still at risk of eclampsia, and baby is in a heated cot to help keep him warm, so they are both still being monitored closely. I’ll keep you posted.