Book Archives - Page 4 of 4 - Which way is starboard again?

The waiting is the hardest part

Wildflower was named after a Tom Petty song

which I think is just perfect for her and Paddy, but it is another Petty song

that’s haunting me right now.

The first question I get from people I haven’t seen for a while is ‘so when is the book coming out?’

If I had my way the answer would be tomorrow.

Unfortunately, the answer is still – next year.

Getting a book published involves large amounts of agonising waiting. There’s the wait after you pop your baby in the post and send it to various publishers. Did they get it? (that is normally answered by the first rejection letter) Did they read it? (also answered by the rejection letters) Do they think it’s a stupid idea? – I was lucky in this respect. A lot of people warned me not to expect to hear anything back from the publishers, not even a rejection. But those I did send material to all got back to me in some form or another and gave me reasons and helpful advice (none of which, thankfully, was ‘it’s a stupid idea’).

If you are fortunate enough to find someone willing to take a punt on you (thank you David Bateman Publishing!) then there is even more waiting in store.

It’s a hard wait too, because you have adrenalin coursing through you. You’ve run hysterically around the office, squealing and waving your arms in the air like Kermit the frog. You’ve told all your family and friends. Your dream has come true, you are going to be an author – and you want it to happen now, now, now!!!

However – while your book may be the center of your universe, at this stage it is only on the periphery of your publisher’s. As one of my publishers politely told me on our first meeting “I have about seven books in different stages of development on the go at the moment. The one closest to being published is the one I love the most. When yours gets to that stage, you’ll be hearing from me every day”.

While that gave me a bit of a reality check and stopped me freaking out over long periods of silence, it didn’t make the waiting any easier.

The first really nerve-wracking wait was the wait to iron out the contract – as far as my paranoid brain was concerned until my signature and the publisher’s signature were on that piece of paper there was every chance they could change their minds.

After everything was signed and sealed it wasn’t so bad. There were still things I could do – arrange photographs, send them in. Then it was back to waiting.

Patience is a virtue I struggle to posses however – so about a month ago I dropped the publishers an email (trying not to sound too needy) just to get an idea of where everything was at.

They were kind and humoured me – giving me late June – early July as my next milestone. That’s when editing will start in earnest. They’ll go through the book decide if they want any changes made and whether they want me to add anything. I’m a little bit nervous about that, but also intrigued as to how the whole process works. Then we start thinking about things like the cover and hopefully by Novemberish there should be an actual, physical book to hold.

It takes about nine months to get a book out into the wild (not counting the time it takes to write it) – and then you have to think about the best time to release it.

This bit I found kind of fascinating because it’s something I’d never really thought of. Christmas is the time that jumps immediately to mind, but for a newcomer into the market it’s not actually that practical. Yes there are more people out there buying books, but there are also more books out there. At Christmas time you are competing with cook books and All Black biographies – even a relatively well-known writer risks getting buried.

Other than that – the next biggest book-selling days are Mothers Day and Fathers Day. Not exactly days I would have thought of, but it kind of makes sense. You don’t really buy books for Easter or New Year, everyone’s birthdays are on different days and books are often the perfect gift for Mum or Dad.

So we are aiming for Mothers Day next year – which means this time next year you could be holding a copy of Which Way is Starboard Again? (or whatever the book ends up being called) in your hot little hands. The aim is to have the book in shops by March and get promoting after that – so I apologise if I am insufferable for few months round about then.

But for now, it’s back to waiting. I’m not complaining – this has already been an amazing ride. I still can’t believe it is actually happening – but I do wish it would happen a little faster!

Up on blocks

February began with Paddy using Jif to clean anti-foul out of my ear and ended with me cutting paint from his hair. March started with a giant crane and finished with paint stains on my favourite jeans.

Lord only knows what April will bring…

The glamour of sailing — Sailing is glamorous

Wildflower has been out of the water for the past couple of months, but it’s been a little more than her usual yearly paint and scrape. This time it has involved shortening her by around 45 feet and cutting a great big hole in the deck/living room roof.

Several years of wear and tear had meant the poor girl’s mast was not as well-supported as it needed to be. The mast step (a big chunk of metal at the bottom of the mast) needed reinforcing to stop it from flexing and it was time for new spreaders as they were beginning to corrode.

(For non-nautical folk: The mast is held up with stainless steel wires – but for these to work properly they have to be held away – the aluminum struts that do this are called spreaders and apparently they are kind of important.)

Paddy’s definition of the work that needed to be done was a little simpler – he told me that over a long period of time money had been leaking out of the boat, which meant she needed to be taken out of the water to have more money poured in.

The spreaders, while allegedly small pieces of aluminium, were actually made out of concentrated cash – and liquid money also needed to be painted on the boat, sanded off and reapplied, he said.

(Note: Sanding liquid money off is not only expensive but really hard work!)

Poor Wildflower looked a little stunted compared to the other boats and as a fellow shorty I felt her pain. Unlike her though, even with the aid of an industrial strength crane, I’m not going to get any taller.

Up on blocks (the mast in the background belongs to the boat beside Wildflower)

Working on Wildflower has meant spending more time at Evan’s Bay yacht club and it has been great catching up with familiar faces and meeting new folk as they come through. The stories at the club bar have been highly entertaining too – with one of my favourites being about a seagull invasion.

A chap we met told us about a pair of gulls that had decided the bow of his boat looked like a pretty good place to make a nest. For two days in a row he managed to shoo them off, but he had to leave for a few days. On returning he discovered a two-story bird condo complete with several large eggs and two determined birds attacking him every time he got too close. In the end he decided it would be in everyone’s best interests to allow them to stay and eventually got kind of attached to the squatters – watching as the parents exercised their hatchlings by chasing them up and down the decks. Often he would be watching telly only to be interrupted by big goofy babies pecking at the boat’s windows (though they did learn the folly of that after interrupting his favourite shows one too many times.)

Paddy didn’t have any seagull squatters but he did have a dirty great hole in his roof where the mast used to be – so for the past couple of months he has been living with me.

We did the math and worked out this is actually the longest time we’ve lived together on land in the past five years. We were both a little apprehensive at first but – aside from my cat developing a rather unhealthy attachment to him – it has worked out remarkably well.

Checking out the mast work from the inside — Checking out the hole in the roof

Paddy was fortunate enough to have a partner in crime when it came to chopping holes in his baby. His good friend Gregor the welder, who had helped put together most of Wildflower’s metal work ( including the pilot house I had so many reasons to be grateful for during our trip), was back on the case – cutting holes and helping put bracing underneath the deck and a thicker piece of metal at the bottom of the mast.

A few days (and a few beers) later Wildflower was super safe and solid and I had even more reason to be grateful to Greg.

One of the great and glamorous jobs I always get is scraping the gunk from Wildflower’s bottom. Being smaller and slightly bendier than Paddy means I can get into spaces that he can’t, which means I get the fabulous job of lying on my back scraping fishy smelling weed from the bottom of the boat. I also get to paint anti-foul on the places Paddy can’t reach (to stop more fishy smelling stuff growing on Wildflower’s bum) which is how I ended up with an earful of the stuff.

I must admit it can be somewhat unnerving lying under 18 tonnes of ship. I know it’s ridiculous and that Wildflower is safe and secure – but that doesn’t stop Anxiety Girl from thinking, what if there’s an earthquake? Would I be able to get out in time? It was a regular internal battle at first, but one I was able to win, and after the first week of boat work I didn’t even notice anymore.

I have also been spending a fair bit of time polishing rust spots out of Wildflower’s paintwork – and I’m actually pretty impressed there is polish strong enough to remove rust from steel. It’s a repetitive job, but the view from the top of the boat is pretty good – and blasting David Bowie on my i-Pod makes the time fly.

People ask why I do it when I could be spending my weekends in a much less goop-encrusted fashion, but the way I figure – I want Wildflower to look after me so it’s only fair that I help look after her. I feel much more confident about going to sea in a boat I know is safe, solid and free of rust.

Wildflower's dangly bits — Wildflower’s dangly bits

On pulling her out of the water we also discovered that Wildflower’s propeller had a terrible case of acne. I was in the middle of sanding sea-goop from the blades when I noticed there were more craters than usual. On closer inspection it turned out the prop had a severe case of electrolysis (really bad corrosion that happens under water).

I’d heard the dreaded E word muttered a lot in connection with steel boats but had never seen it with my own eyes. It’s usually caused when two different types disagree with each other underwater – but in this case there was no real explanation for it – other than money had leaked out.

We sent it back to the manufacturer – who also had no explanation for it – applied a liberal coat of liquid dosh, and it now has a perfect complexion again.

The sit rep at the moment is that most of the painting, scraping and polishing has been done, the spreaders and mast step are shiny and new and – thanks to the intervention of a giant crane – Wildflower has her height back. All going well we should be back in the water – and to relative normality – in the next week or so.

Wildflower's mast rises again — Wildflower’s mast rises again

PS – for those of you wondering what is happening with the book – it’s still really going ahead. Both the publisher and I have signed the contract and the next step is to work with them editing the copy. It’s still a long wait I’m afraid – with a publication date of March next year – though I should have an actual book to start promoting by the end of this year. It still doesn’t seem real yet but I’m sure it will eventually! – I shall keep you all posted with progress.

What if they don’t love me anymore?

To use a Paddyism, I am the queen of Catastrophising. Give me any situation and I will find the worst, most ridiculous outcome and start worrying about it. If a building creaks in the wind it is going to fall down, if I’m driving down the road I’m going to flatten a pedestrian. When we were sailing every splash I heard was Paddy falling overboard, every groan was the boat sinking and every light on the horizon was a freighter coming straight for us.

Anxiety Girl - able to leap to the worst possible conclusion in a single bound! (from the Anxiety Girl facebook group — Anxiety Girl – able to leap to the worst possible conclusion in a single bound! (from the Anxiety Girl facebook group

So you can imagine the kind of ridiculousness that was going through my head when I sent my full manuscript to the publisher, got a “thanks” back, then heard nothing for a couple of weeks.

The logical part of me was saying – “pull yourself together, they must be extremely busy at this time of year and you are not the only writer they have on their books”.

Anxiety Girl on the other hand was screaming at the top of her lungs “They’ve changed their minds, they hate it, you’ve gotten your hopes up, told all your friends and family and now it’s not going to happen. Who were you to think you could be a proper writer anyway?”

It didn’t matter that several emails before I sent the whole manuscript through the publisher had teed up a time and date to meet me and talk about things, as far as I was concerned the silence was deafening.

It was like being a teenager in your first relationship. While back then it was notes passed in class and phone-dates and now it’s emails and text messages, the premise is still the same.

Why haven’t I heard from them? Was it something I said/wrote? Is there somebody else? What if they don’t love me anymore?

I was constantly checking my emails and texts, wondering if I should email or whether that would seem too needy – in short, I was pathetic.

There was a little bit of reason behind my paranoia though – publishing in New Zealand is hard. I was constantly reading articles about authors getting dropped for not being enough of a commercial prospect. Getting a foot in the door is no small thing and I wasn’t really certain how far my size six orange sandal was wedged in there.

I wasn’t until I was so close I could smell it that I realised how much I wanted this book to actually happen.

Even though I hadn’t heard anything and was still convinced it was going to fall through, I had worked out a professional-type wardrobe to wear to the meeting, which was set to happen tomorrow.

Today at lunch time I decided to distract myself by getting wrapping paper and the remaining Christmas cards I needed. After dealing with the queues in Whitcoulls I decided to go to a nearby food court for a comfort curry (the diet starts after Christmas okay?!) and when I finished I did my usual obsessive phone-check. There was a text sitting on there “Hi Anna, I’m downstairs now”.

Holy crap! I’d gotten the date wrong! (it turns out we’d had a bit of an email miss-communication). I shot back a reply and ran like a crazy person, arriving disheveled and juggling wrapping paper. So much for my organised, professional first impression! We were meant to have lunch but I was full of illicit curry and couldn’t face anything else, so I fessed up. Luckily she had a sense of humor – she ate, I drank coffee and tried to regain my composure.

The long and the short of it is, she was lovely and I still have a book deal. The draft contract should arrive by the end of the week.

I also learned that I’m not alone in my neurosis. Apparently another author had recently commented that they hadn’t heard anything for a while. It was explained diplomatically to me like this “I usually have several books at different stages of development on the go, the one that is closest to being printed is the one I love the most. When you get to that stage, you will hear from me every day.”

I’m cool with that. And I’m also pleased to know I’m not the only worrywart out there.

I also learned that getting a book published is a long, slow process and that I will need to get used to long periods of silence. Apparently it takes about nine months from go to whoa (so it really is like my baby) and then they need to work out what time of the year to release it for maximum sales. I would automatically think Christmas, but of course that’s what everyone else thinks and the market gets swamped, so we are potentially looking at September next year or March 2015.

I also need to make sure it is a time that I am available because I am going to have to do TV, radio and newspaper interviews. Something I’d never really thought of and am quite terrified about. I’m the person who helps other people work with the media – I don’t get in front of the camera! I’m certain I’ll freak out and forget all my own advice!

So that’s where we are at the moment. The family, friends, workmates and complete strangers who have had to put up with me wittering on about whether or not the publishers have changed their minds can breathe a sigh of relief.

It’s really, truly, actually going to happen and Anxiety Girl can just pipe down!

Make room on your bookshelves!

Apologies in advance for what I suspect will devolve into an excited squeal of a blog.

It’s just that I kind of GOT A BOOK DEAL!!!

It’s official, Which Way is Starboard Again? the book is actually going to happen.

I have been grinning like an idiot since I got the call on Friday and still can’t quite believe it.

The wonderful people at David Bateman Publishing will be working with me on the book as part of their travel series. They describe it as ‘travel tales with a twist’ – so I guess that means I’m twisted enough to make the grade!

If you have a snoop around their website you will see that Bateman is a real grown-up publisher that puts out some really cool stuff http://www.batemanpublishing.co.nz/ – which I guess will make me a real grown-up author – quite frankly I am still pinching myself!

After reading countless articles on the demise of publishing in New Zealand and having my hopes of leveraging off the America’s Cup dashed I had pretty much resigned myself to self-publishing. I was determined to get the book out there one way or another and self-publishing certainly doesn’t have the stigma it once did, but having a professional publisher pick it up is amazingly validating.

It means someone is prepared to take a punt on people wanting to read about me bumbling my way around the South Pacific, and I appreciate that more than words can say!

Since my only experience in publishing has been with newspapers and magazines this will be a whole new adventure for me – one that I plan to drag you all on too.

Writing a book has pretty much all I have ever wanted to do since I first picked up a pen and started chewing on it, so this really is the most amazing feeling in the world!

Paddy of course will be my technical advisor to help turn descriptions like “and then he pulled on that rope over there” into something a little more nautically accurate and we both really look forward to sharing our stories with you – even the embarrassing ones!

I will keep you all up to date on how things progress and promise to spam you horribly as soon as I have something to spam you with.

– Anna the shameless self-promoter xx

Why I’m backing the rich boy race

It’s become pretty trendy at the moment to bag the America’s Cup for being a drag race between rich gits with ridiculously expensive toys. Normally I would be right on the bagging bandwagon. People who know me know I am the last person to get excited about sport – it’s really just not my thing, so when they see me screaming at the telly every morning in hope and despair it tends to leave them puzzled.

But the rich gits race has a trickle-down effect, and at the bottom of that trickle are people like me. (I am on the cusp of Gen Y so it’s allowed to be all about me sometimes, okay?)

I am trying to get a book about sailing published and I strongly suspect that is going to be a whole lot more difficult if we lose the cup.

I would like to think the publishing industry and book buying public are not that shallow, but I am also very aware of what a competitive and increasingly shrinking publishing market we have here in NZ. Publishers are not going to put money into something they don’t think will sell – and if ‘sailing’ becomes a dirty word in NZ then it’s not looking good for me!

In saying that, I have had some great and positive feedback from publishers and I am waiting to hear back from a couple. Even the publishers that turned me down gave me lots of great advice and basically said the ‘no’ was just because their publishing range didn’t include travel/biographic non-fiction anymore (of course they could all just be humouring me!)

Getting books published seems to be all about sales-pitches and marketing (two things I am remarkably crap at) and I thought NZ winning the cup might give me a few decent publisher pick-up lines.

I’m sure there are a lot of small-timers like me who are in the same position. There has been a lot of conjecture about whether or not the cup would bring bazillions of tourist dollars into New Zealand, but it can only do good things for the marine industry.

The little guys are benefiting already – I’ve lost count of how many breakfasts I’ve had at the Evan’s Bay Yacht Club waiting for someone to win the damned thing!

We have an amazing sailing and marine industry in NZ, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need support. I reckon the cup coming here would be a way of showcasing our marinas, yacht clubs, sailing schools, boat builders/painters and mechanics and of course wannabe writers!

There was a chap on Campbell Live’s opinion caravan last night saying the money spent on the race would be better off going into the arts – well here’s a way for that to happen, positive thoughts people!!!

Perhaps I can take some comfort in the fact that, while one of its central characters is a boat, the book is not about racing. It’s about fear, sailing and the South Pacific – about keeping your sanity when you really have no flaming idea what you are doing and learning to deal with reality again once it’s all over. It’s also about the amazing people and places of the South Pacific so hopefully that’s material enough to survive the worst outcome.

Don’t think I’m giving up on Team NZ. For a sport-o-phobe these races have been brilliant fun to watch and as far as I’m concerned if it weren’t for forces out of our control we would have won several times already. I guess that’s part of the frustration really. As someone at the yacht club bellowed last weekend “how many times do we need to win this bloody race before we actually win it!?”

Our sailors are good, the rich boys’ toy is amazing and we’ve proved time and time again that we can beat the other guys – so tomorrow, once again, I will be screaming at the television.

Come on boys – do it for the little guys!

Cal the good luck troll has her eyes on the prize!

Letting go

So this lunchtime I did something quite terrifying – I finally let go. I took a year’s worth of agonising, second guessing, swearing and maniacal cackling, stuffed it in an envelope and threw it in a post box.

Fly my pretties! - manuscripts ready to hit the postbox — Fly my pretties! – manuscripts ready to hit the mail

My regular (and infinitely patient) readers will know exactly what I am talking about, but for those of you just poking your noses in – I am writing a book based on this blog. A book I have been writing for what feels like forever.

It’s not the writing that’s hard, that’s what I do – it’s as simple as breathing. I’m not saying that I am spectacularly good at it, just that it comes easy. Other things, not so much. Like marketing and sales-pitches and trying to work out what kind of book people actually want to read.

I could have churned this book out in a month if I’d had the time and the space, but it would have just been a gratuitous travelogue – and while those certainly have their place, I wanted to do something different. And also, let’s be realistic here, I wanted to write something that people would buy.

Once I thought I’d achieved that I then found myself in the position of having to convince other people that they wanted to publish it – and that was where I fell down. Basically I am a rubbish salesperson. I’m short and I’m loud and I’m stroppy but I’m really crap at talking myself up. What right did I have to assume that publishers would want to take a punt on me? What if all the people who have given me feedback on my blog were just humoring me? What if I really actually suck at this?

So I agonised. I did a tonne of research into what publishers wanted – how to present it, how not to present it, how to write chapter summaries and covering letters, and discovered of course that everyone wanted something different. I hit a complete brain-block. Things that should have taken me an afternoon took me weeks and there was no real reason why.

But finally – with a lot of patience and support from family, friends and of course the Skipper – I got there, Today.

The goods - Part 1, chapter summaries, salespitch and sample pics — The goods – Part 1, chapter summaries, sales pitch and sample pics

Saying it was like printing my hopes and dreams out onto A4 and dropping them in a letter box is probably a little too melodramatic. It was more like ripping off a Band-Aid that has been there so long it has kind of fused into your skin. It hurt, but it was also enormously liberating. There is still more to write, but as I said before, that’s the easy part.

It’s out there now, for better or for worse, and if it isn’t what the publishers want then so be it. I’ve had enough interest that I am quite happy to have a crack at self-publishing, but the book-snob in me wants to try traditional route first.

So wish me luck!

Letting go

But finally – with a lot of patience and support from family, friends and of course the Skipper – I got there, Today.

So wish me luck!

Back on (and off) the seahorse

There’s nothing like spending the day with barnacles down your bra to remind you how glamorous sailing can be.

Paddy and I have spent the past week getting Wildflower ready to leave the marina for the first time in more than a year. It’s just a short hop – cruising down south round Nelson way – but, since we both work fulltime, it has necessitated doing a year’s worth of boat maintenance in a very short space of time.

Part of this involved hauling the boat out of the water to water-blast and scrape all the growth from her hull and – because I am smaller and slightly bendier than Paddy – I got to crawl underneath to give her a bikini wax with a wire brush. Considering we had found mussels big enough to cook on the barbecue growing on the poor old girl’s fenders, we were pleasantly surprised at how little gunge there really was on her (bra-nacles and sea-slime aside).

After a fresh coat of antifoul Wildflower was back in the water and we have been hauling things on and off the boat, putting up sails and playing with the engine ever since.

I must admit I am a little nervous. It sounds crazy – I’ve sailed across the open ocean to the South Pacific and back and a little trip across Cook Strait is giving me the heebee geebees – but it really has been a long time. What if it’s not like getting back on a bike? What if I forget how to do it?

Because if this level of rustiness a few weeks ago I decided to get pro-active. When we went away last time we spent a huge amount of time getting the boat ready to go and not really enough getting me ready and I wasn’t going to make that mistake twice. It was time for some remedial sailing lessons.

When we hit the water on the way to Tonga I realised very quickly that I didn’t really have a handle on the mechanics of sailing. I knew I had to pull on a rope when I was told to pull on a rope but I didn’t really understand why I was pulling on it. In Paddy’s words, learning to sail on Wildflower was like learning to drive in a housebus.

One of our crew members had done a bit of racing and seemed a lot more confident about what was going on than I. Since I didn’t think I would be much chop as racing crew I thought I’d go right back to basics and learn to sail in a dinghy.

Enter our friends at the Evan’s Bay Yacht Club again and in particular Hamish the incredibly patient beginner sailing instructor.

Unfortunately the beginner classes were full up, but Hamish reckoned I would be fine on the intermediate course – I had had previous sailing experience after all. Well, it was sweet and optimistic of him but I found myself floundering pretty quickly in the smaller 420 dinghies we were sailing.

The 420s are 4.2 metres long – bigger than the little dinghies the beginner sailors used, but much smaller than Wildflower. Compared to our boat the ropes on the things were like dental floss! Playing around in the 420s was really great because it gave me a very immediate example of how your actions affect the way a boat sails. In a big boat everything happens quite slowly and there is a delay between your actions and its reaction. In a dinghy you know pretty much straight away when you’ve stuffed it up.

Hamish was great as an instructor but he’s definitely of the boatgan genus – constantly trying to get me to tweak this or that to get the boat to go faster. Again, sweet and optimistic but at that point my biggest concern was not sailing into anything or ending up in the drink.

My first lesson was hilarious. A fellow learner and I ran over the buoy we were supposed to be tacking around and ended up taking it with us, necessitating the nautical version of the Birdie Dance bum-wiggle to remove it – with instructions helpfully shouted by Hamish from the safety boat. I kept muffing my left and right (sorry, Port and Starboard) and may have picked up a couple of new swearwords – it was brilliant fun and I left with a huge grin on my face.

My second experience in a dinghy wasn’t quite so successful however – since I was back on the sailing bandwagon, Paddy decided it would be fun to enter us in the East-West Dash ‘race’ from Evans to Days Bay and back again in a 420. In hindsight, given I had only had one lesson and Paddy had never sailed a 420 before it probably wasn’t one of our brightest moves – but enthusiasm won out at the end of the day.

We were doing really well for a while – even passing a couple of other boats – until we were swamped by a rather large wave just as we’d reached the end of the bay. Another big difference between Wildflower and a 420 is that a 420 doesn’t have a keel, which means – unlike our sweet, solid dependable ship, they actually can tip over – which is exactly what this one proceeded to do.

Before we had time to bail out the excess water we found ourselves on a rather unfeasible angle. Paddy very calmly said “okay, we’re going over now” – but I, in utter denial, had other ideas, roaring “No we’re not!” while ineffectually trying to throw my weight against the quickly capsizing boat. I’m sure it would have looked hilarious to any onlookers – like trying to stop a tank with tissue paper, particularly when the inevitable happened and we both ended up in the drink.

To add insult to injury I found myself surfacing under the sail and not being able to reach open air was really rather frightening. I managed to keep calm and swim for the nearest bit of open blue (which, given I am prone to freaking out, I am actually rather proud of) and gulped deliciously fresh air just as Paddy was heading over to help me.

Having established we were both safe, Paddy and I clung to the upturned boat, in rather choppy waters, trying to work out what the best course of action was.

Unfortunately we hadn’t reached the “how to get your boat back upright” part of my sailing lessons and there is a trick to righting a 420 that neither of us knew, so Paddy and I flailed around failing miserably.

The coastguard was lurking around, but just watching us at this point, until they saw a local boat come to ‘help’. The skipper of said boat (who shall henceforth be referred to as Captain Angry Beard) proceeded to do so by shouting instructions on how to right the dinghy and getting angrier and angrier when we were unable to comply. “Get on the bow!” Captain Angry Beard roared, so Paddy climbed on top of the bow of the boat and sat there looking puzzled (we later deduced he probably meant ‘point the bow into the wind’). “Get in the boat!” he bellowed at me after we managed to get it partially upright – I however had been treading water for about 15 minutes and just didn’t have the strength to pull myself over the side, much to his obvious frustration.

At that point my lifejacket popped open (slightly too big with sun-damaged clasps – am now going to buy my own dinghy jacket) and everything ceased to be even remotely fun. Angry Beard was shouting at us, I was swallowing water and Paddy was roaring at him to get help to get me out of the water and sod the boat. (He then whispered to me that I wasn’t in any danger, he just wanted to get Angry Beard to get someone who could help us.) At that point I’d been treading water for 25 minutes, I was tired and scared and utterly over it.

Then one of the Evans Bay locals came to our aid with a launch. I managed to swim aboard, he helped us get the boat upright and Paddy managed to limp the dinghy back to the yacht club using just the headsail.

We stayed at the yacht club for a few medicinal beers, licked our wounds and watched the rest of the boats come in. Our rescuer’s biggest concern was that I wouldn’t let the incident put me off sailing so I assured him I would be back the following Wednesday – I’m nothing, if not stubborn.

The following Wednesday we got the Capsize Talk (which I’m sure had nothing to do with me!) which was just as well since it was a rather windy evening! In Wellington if you don’t go out when the wind is up then the odds are you will never go out at all and I felt safe knowing we were in the bay and being stalked by a safety boat.

Long story short the dinghy I was in ended up capsizing (this time I jumped well clear of the sail!) but this time we were able to right it. Unlike a smaller dinghy the 420 is heavier and you can’t just stand on the centreboard (the little bit that sticks out at the bottom) and flip it over. It’s a two-person job where one stands on the centreboard until the boat is halfway up and the other swims in, clutches on to something like the toe-strap and uses their bodyweight to help right it (though you have to make sure you scuttle to the high side of the boat as soon as its upright or the whole thing goes over again – something else learned from experience). So now I know exactly what Captain Angry Beard was trying to say when he was yelling at me to “get in the boat”.

Capsizing and righting the boat did huge things for my self-confidence and every subsequent lesson did the same as I was able to translate a lot more of what was going on in the smaller boats to the way Wildflower worked.

I wasn’t the world’s best student – I stuffed it up, got scared and swore a lot – but I left each night grinning like an idiot.

I won’t jinx things by saying when we are leaving (other than it’s very soon!) but, while still nervous, I am feeling a lot better about hitting the waves again.

I have concluded that I will probably always be better as crew than as skipper – but hopefully this will make me better crew.

PS – we will be lurking around down south for a few weeks and my big plan for that time is to Finish the Damn Book. Will keep you all posted on progress.

A year in captivity

We hurtled headlong past a milestone last week and I didn’t even notice – I was too busy being busy.

Paddy was the one who worked out we had been back in civilisation for a year. Fittingly it was a text message from our celphone provider that tipped him off – thanking us for a year of our custom.

A year.

A year of celphones and emails, alarm clocks and meetings. A year of job hunting and job finding (Paddy), flat hunting and job renewing (me). A year of wondering where on earth the year had gone.

A year ago I had returned from paradise wondering how I would ever be able to fit into society again.

A year ago I had a tan – now my pasty white legs are safely hidden from sight by brightly coloured tights.

A year ago the prospect of not having to do laundry in a bucket anymore still excited me.

I thought I had returned a changed person. That the challenges we faced, the people we met, the fear and the excitement would make me look at the world in a very different way – and for a while it did. But I have slotted in as though I never left.

When we got back had a lot to catch up on – the tailend of the election campaign and the colossal mess that was the Rena disaster being the most apparent. We’d also missed all the internet memes. It was as though the entire country was talking gibberish. We had no idea what a ‘nek minnit’ or a ghost chip was. Now I check my twitter feed every five seconds to make sure I haven’t missed any breaking news and I am Grumpy Cat’s biggest Kiwi cheerleader (though I still don’t really get Gangnam style).

In some of the more isolated spots we visited I found myself fantasising about things that I once took for granted – ground that didn’t move, shops that stocked what you were looking for, being able to give a friend a call and meet them for a coffee.

Now I’m getting irritated by the little things – long queues in the supermarket, busses running late, people who don’t answer their emails. I’ve had a lot less coffees with friends than I planned. I have been too busy being busy.

Don’t get me wrong – being back has been great. I’ve caught up with much missed family and friends, I have custody of my fur-child again, I’ve remembered how important it is to have a job that you really enjoy. I’m getting fitter, I’ve lost a bit of weight and I’ve even started riding a bike again for the first time since I was a teenager. I’m not unhappy. I’m just shocked, really shocked, at how fast the year has gone.

In the book I am writing there is a chapter called The Time Bomb (and yes, the book is still happening – that’s the subject of a different blog, which I guess means I am officially blogging again).

It describes the battle Paddy and I had with suddenly having to deal with time. Not island time, which we all know is a pretty fluid concept, or weather time, which nobody can argue with, but ‘real world’ time. And we really did struggle. The plan was that we would get back, fix the things on the boat the needed to be fixed, get out on the water more so I could keep practising and getting more confident, and finish the damned book.

Instead, Paddy went from nautical Mr Fixit to corporate Mr Fixit, I got embroiled in politics and education and come the end of the week our brains were frazzled and we’d sleep all weekend. We began to get frustrated and began to second-guess ourselves. We’d had all this time and now we had none. What had we done with it? Had we wasted it? Could we have done things better?

I took us a while to get out of that slump – a year to be precise.

The boat hasn’t moved for a year, not really. There is a terrible looking green sludge growing on the fenders. The dinghy was practically growing a forest below it had moved so little (except for that time someone took a joyride in it and the police found it – yet another subject for another blog). But the weather is warming and so are we.

We had a big springclean on the boat before our annual Guy Fawkes party (they light the fireworks on the Wellington waterfront so we get the best view in the house), Paddy has a new boom he wants to attach, I’ve started sending material to publishers and I’m blogging again for the first time since July. I’m happy to be writing again. I get twitchy when I don’t write.

I’m going to get out sailing casually with the guys at the Evans Bay yacht club (my new flat is far too conveniently close to their bar!) and now that the weather starting to warm I’m going to rejoin the local dive club – because I haven’t done that for a year either. I am a little nervous about the latter though, since the last time I was in the ocean the water was about 26 degrees! We’re also planning on taking the boat out for a decent trip somewhere in February, which I am quite looking forward to.

Now I find myself standing in supermarket queues fantasising about a tiny little store in the middle of nowhere where you can’t find anything you want and half a cabbage costs $20. I want the ground to be moving again. I miss the sea and the sand and the people and thinking about seeing them again makes me smile.

We’re coming out of hibernation, stretching and yawning and sniffing the air, and it feels good.

And on that note – here’s some explosives.

splosives — Smoooooooke on the waaaaaateeeer….

splosives7 — Ooooooh! Aaaaaaah! Captain Paddy keeps an eye on things

splosives5 — ‘Splosives showing the scaffolding of the old overseas terminal development

So how’s the book going?

For those of you wondering why I haven’t blogged for about a million years, it’s because I am working on Which Way is Starboard Again? the book – based on this blog and the journal I kept while sailing.

For those of you wondering where the book is – that’s why I’m writing this blog.

I figured this whole book thing would be a doddle. I love writing, I’ve got the material – how hard could it be? Answer: Harder than you think grasshopper.

Since I didn’t know the first thing about getting a book in print (I’ve been published in newspapers, magazines and online, but never in anything with more than 50 pages) I decided to consult the experts. I discovered, through author advisory groups both in NZ and overseas, that when writing non-fiction your best bet is to write a chunk of the book then provide chapter summaries of the rest so publishers can let you know what they are interested in hearing more of.

Well the first part was easy. I wrote a chunk of the book – the first third to be precise. (I am breaking it up into three sections; the craziness of getting ready to go, the trip itself, and attempting to reintegrate into society once we got back – which was a lot harder than either of us had anticipated.) 20,000 words, just like that. Done and dusted. Now all I needed to do was shoot off a few chapter summaries and I would be ready to start harassing publishers.

It was round about then that I discovered writing chapter summaries is not actually that easy. Essentially, when you are doing this, you are outlining your entire book. Which means you have to have a pretty clear idea of where you book is going to go. It is also rather difficult to précis an entire chapter of experiences and feelings in a couple of pithy paragraphs designed to make a publisher want to read the whole thing.

Then I hit another snag – outlining the entire book meant I needed to know exactly where the book was going and which events led to which. I was thrown into a bit of a chronological dilemma – which came first, the chicken or the volcano? I honestly wasn’t sure. I wrote in my journal frequently but haphazardly. I wrote about things when I thought of them or when I had the chance, I scribbled them down in all sorts of strange places – but I was pretty rubbish when it came to dates and locations. I had the main geographical areas sorted, but often had no idea of the exact name of the reef passage we were going through when some event or other happened.

I was about ready to give up in frustration when I had a brain flash. Through the awesome Winlink radio-email system (run by an amazing bunch of volunteers) we had emailed home regularly and Paddy had been much better than I in terms of names and dates and locations. So all I had to do was sift through our inbox and outbox and problem solved!

Going back through those emails a bit of an emotional experience actually – like going through the whole trip all over again, even the bits that I had probably deliberately blotted out a little.

The emails home during the start of our trip from NZ to Tonga were the hardest to read, knowing damn well that Paddy’s “Anna was a bit scared last night” was a much kinder way of saying “Anna is losing her mind right now”. Yes I still managed to do all my night watches and yes I did get better and better – but there were times at the start when things got pretty dark. I fully suspect there were questions over whether I would actually make it through the entire Pacific trip, and I am proud to say that I did. It was also great to read the later emails, particularly when it was just Paddy and I sailing on our own. The fear gremlins were at bay and, while I wasn’t going to win any sailor of the year awards, I was definitely getting there.

The emails were great and helped kick things back in to gear again – I just had to put the jigsaw together. The problem being, this was a lot more like work and a lot less like fun. I had to really think about what I was doing and a single paragraph would take me half an hour. So I started making excuses – the last thing I felt like doing after work was sitting in front of a computer screen at home, I had a bazillion other things to do in the weekends, I needed to keep up with the housework, hey look – there’s a picture of a cat on facebook….

I had to force myself to sit down and write the damned summaries and the more I looked at them and at what I had written the more I convinced myself it was unpublishable tripe. Every time somebody asked “so how’s the book going?” I felt a pang of guilt and wrote a bit more, but it really was an uphill battle.

The thing is I’m stubborn and I am determined to get this done. I am going to write a book. When I think about it, that’s all I have ever wanted to do – ever since I was a geeky child with my nose permanently buried in one of the things. And thanks to the support of my friends, family and Paddy of course, I am back on track again.

I’m going to try the conventional way (they say you aren’t a real writer until you have had your first rejection letter from a publisher!) and if that doesn’t work I’ll look at self-publishing or print-on-demand, either way it is going to happen in some form or another. I’m sure I’ll hit a few more speedbumps along the way, but there WILL be a book dammit! I will keep you all posted and you are more than welcome to kick my arse if I start procrastinating again!

PS – I have also discovered this great website called AdviceToWriters which I have been following on Twitter. It provides writerly wisdom and tips for people who are stuck and gives brilliant quotes from a range of really awesome authors. Whenever I feel like I am banging my head against a brick wall it always makes me smile. Here are some of my favourites:

The first draft of anything is always shit – ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it. – NEIL GAIMAN

Writing is like sex: You should do it, not talk about it.- HOWARD OGDEN

Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life. – LAWRENCE KASDAN

The act of writing puts you in confrontation with yourself, which is why I think writers assiduously avoid writing. – FRAN LEBOWITZ

Category: Book

The waiting is the hardest part

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Up on blocks

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What if they don’t love me anymore?

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Make room on your bookshelves!

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Why I’m backing the rich boy race

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Letting go

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Letting go

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Back on (and off) the seahorse

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A year in captivity

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So how’s the book going?

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