The day before the Regatta
Hobart, Australia A young man of near eighteen years old walked out of his bedroom of the apartment that accommodated him alone and waltzed progressively across his lounge room carpet to an antique gramophone wearing only what he had worn when he came into this world.
He lifted the needle and placed on a record that he had slipped from its cover. Replacing the needle, he rotated the handle for the turntable to spin.
Out of the bell came the music from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and the sounds of a Russian orchestra flooded the room.
Colin McKenzie closed his eyes to enjoy the music before he would reopen them and glide across to his suitcase that he was in need of packing for his flight to Sydney. He gracefully opened
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Liam also exited his plane and made his way into the terminal.
The two young men ended up walking side by side all the way to train station beneath the airport without saying a word to each other being the strangers they were.
Both boarded the same train after collecting their luggage and both exited as close to Darling Harbour as they could get then hiked with their bags on their backs down different streets.
As they neared each other again to cross the Pyrmont Bridge in order to reach the docks where the ships of the Regatta sat in port, other sailors carrying their backpacks unknowingly joined them on the trek.
A hundred metres in front of them were Jed and his four friends who were descending the stairs from the footbridge down to the docks below.
The five men walked along the port, located the tall ship Africana and boarded.
There were seven ships in all that were taking the journey across to New Zealand. The Africana was the largest of the lot. It carried sixty people, had three large masts and was well built for more types of weather and water, including within the Antarctic