Best served......Launched!

Flotation is a curious thing, somethings about it well just don't ...sink in.
Things that don't float for example; my G I JOE SIGMA 6 Mission Ocean Attack Figure, several brands of rubber slippers that fraudulently claim to be "floaters", and Jack from that movie with the ship and the lady's heart that insists on going on.
Things that do; my large orange swimming trunks (especially when liberated from my person a result of an attempted one-half somersault dive), and as luck would have it ELDEMER!
Yup, with one final collective heave and a toddy enriched grunt on the 15th of January 2006, our 3 tonne backyard ornament became as weightless as a rubber duckie.
From an out of context piece of architecture to a sublime form willed upon by sea and wind, anything but inanimate even in the placid waters, meeting each crest and gust with a feline eagerness to break moorings and spread-eagle.
I know now why every one claps furiously when the space shuttle is launched, there is little else to do when the mind orders you to fly!!

Anyway, garlanded by public demand to inspire solemn thoughts; as, the Dalai Lama of Tibet; the Moogum of M'bwango; the temple of Apes in Ceylon; the Crocodile, the Cat and the Onion of ancient Egypt; the Mufti of Moosh; the hair of the dog that bit Noah, etc, Eldemer, survived her first test of structural integrity with coconuts loosing the battle between ship's bow and coconut.
Coconuts replacing the traditional bottle of Champagne, because we are in Kerala and Champagne costs money and money does not grow on trees, but coconuts do.

Ship christenings in the days of the Vikings were marked by the spilling of blood, human sacrifices and incantations by high priests to appease the gods.
During the Middle Ages, papal representatives having found more pressing uses for human sacrifice agreed that a libation of wine – offered as the vessel hit the water – is just about as good a substitute for the earlier blood sacrifice. And coconut milk being one of the many liquids that serve the Keralites in place of state religion is a worthy replacement as well.

For more than a century, the tradition throughout the world has been that women christen ships. A resource that our project has marked dearth of. The job hence falling to the able humerus-es of Mrs. Dominique Radhakrishnan and Mrs. Karen Nejedly; what with our boat having 200% of the usual manifest of hulls and all.

All in all a day that couldn't have gone better and a day that couldn't have been been hotter, a shipload of people that could not be happier or sweatier and the excitement is only just beginning.