However, we are ready for anything. Ms Olive Branch explains that this is exactly what happens when you (a team of pirates true) make spectacularly big and complicated installations, in a miraculously short span of time that bears little comparison to the depths and fathoms toward which our natures lean. First you get what you pay for. And then you pay for what you get.

As of 4pm yesterday the 1st of November in the year 2011, we had been advised that of the 26tonnes of steel needed to build the \ARK/, only 12odd tonnes of the precious matter was available across the known face of our beloved earth.

During the night, Ms Branch dreamed of building a giant ship made of dried wattle.

At the crack of dawn, the cook arrived with red hair, freckles, a kiss and this hopeful sketch which was duly entered into the log.

It worked. By noon the red flag had waved at the bull and the steel was on its way to Durbs.

And now, to tell the truth, the journey feels ... err ... heavy. As we wait for our Jacek to produce machine drawings in the time it takes to say landlubber.