We exist...

well, as of today's first board meeting we do. We are forming a company limited by guarantee (not for profit) to raise funds to build the replica Beagle. Our memorandum and articles of association have been amended and will be agreed at a further board meeting in three weeks time. We also have a bank account. We have deliberately not appealed for funds until the company was formed and had an auditable bank account where we could account for every penny and cent donated. Now we have a bank account and the first donations to pump-prime our fundraising efforts, we are going through the legal steps to form the UK registered not-for-profit company. There are less than 900 days to go until the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth: our target date for launching the replica HMS Beagle. Once the company is formed, we will be formally launching the project, starting corporate fundraising and appealing for donations. Our dream: thousands and thousands of individual members each donating a small sum towards the goal of building a replica HMS Beagle, so that when it's launch dominates the news on early 2009, when it appears in TV documentaries and in films, when its work mentoring young scientists makes the newspapers, magazines and journals, sciencists and their supporters all over the world wil be able to think: "I did a part of that."