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The Oriental Bay Piranhas

The following story appears in Ghost Bus – Tales from Wellington’s Dark Side. I’m putting it up here so I can have a freebie to give away to lure more unsuspecting victims (I mean readers) and also to showcase an awesome illustration done by the very talented Shaun Garea. Details on where to get all the things at the end of the story.

***

They’re in love. A love so true they need to make a grand gesture to the world of its permanence. Perhaps they can’t afford an engagement ring. Perhaps they don’t believe in marriage. Perhaps they’re teenagers whose love burns so passionate and bright that it’s too big for just themselves.

Either way, they buy a padlock – pretty and heart-shaped or sturdy and industrial – and have their initials carved into it. They go to the waterfront footbridge and thread it through one of its metal links, feeling it close with a satisfying clunk. To show how serious they are, they take the key, and its spare, and toss it into the bay, holding hands and leaning into each other as they walk away.

There are hundreds of padlocks on that bridge. Hundreds of different sets of initials – and hundreds of keys. Not much thought is given to those keys once they are ceremoniously tossed in the drink. Sure, there are concerns about the impact they might have on the environment and marine life but those are concerns, not actual thoughts.

You see, when an object is imbued with so much passion – be it a ring or a plaque – it changes. It absorbs those intense feelings. It gains power. When part of that object is thrown away like trash, the power doesn’t go away. It changes. Hundreds of padlocks publicly basking in the glow of love. Hundreds of keys festering on the seabed, growing strong and bitter and hungry.

I’m 100 percent the sort of guy who scoffs at these kinds of stories. They’re creepy tales to scare kids at sleepovers, nothing more. But I’ve been down in that murk and seen things that have turned every hair on my body white. There are things in this world that we don’t understand and if we’re lucky, we’ll never need to try. Unfortunately for me, I’m not one of the lucky ones.

The stories about the Oriental Bay piranhas began around 2014. I’ve been hearing them for as long as I’ve been diving in the bay. A disturbance in the water followed by a swimmer losing a finger or a toe. Nobody ever sees them but the story is always the same – searing pain, needle sharp teeth, blood in the water and a piece of a person missing.

Like any sane person I scoffed at those stories, not in the least because those particular fish can’t survive outside of tropical waters. My theory was that someone had a run-in with a barracuda once and spun a tale that grew taller with each retelling. Whatever the origin, the Oriental Bay piranha label stuck.

It was a couple of years ago, though, that things started getting outright weird. The first missing person was a reveller from the last time the Rugby Sevens was held in Wellington. It wasn’t unusual for hypothermic partiers to be hauled from the harbour in their Smurf outfits and mankinis after the booze whispered to them a midnight dip would be a great idea. So, at first, it was thought to be another alcohol fueled tragedy. That may well have been the case, but when he washed up on shore near the Te Papa museum two days later, people had more questions than answers.

His leg was completely stripped of flesh, a cleanly picked bone, attached to a foot sitting neatly in a sneaker. The poor guy had clearly bled to death. It was all over the news: the distraught girlfriend and parents, the ‘experts’ trying to work out whether it could have been a shark. Swimming at the bay was banned until they could track down the culprit.

Things eventually settled down, the swimming ban was lifted and the news cycle moved on – until the next time and the next. There were four attacks, over a period of two years – a kayaker, a man fishing and a couple swimming off the beach on a hot day. The one thing they all had in common was that, when they were found, one limb or another had been completely stripped of flesh.

Even then, after all that strangeness, I didn’t accept that anything unusual was going on. I spent nearly every day in the waters of that harbour as part of my work and I was damned if I was going to be looking over my shoulder for some mystery fish.

I’m a sort of scuba everyman for the Wellington City Council. If the storm water drains get clogged, if a fishing line comes loose and gets tangled around something it shouldn’t, if there’s a big blow and a chunk of the marina electronics end up in the drink, I’m their man.

I’m also part of a volunteer diver clean-up group that hits the harbour once a year to clear up what Wellington has dumped in it. You wouldn’t believe the stuff we find down there. Shopping trolleys, fishing gear, kids’ toys. One memorable encounter with a mannequin that had escaped from a movie shoot gave a few of the guys nightmares for a while. Not all of it can be blamed on people though – the biggest litterer in the city is Mother Nature herself. It’s not uncommon for us to find laundry tangled around pontoons after a particularly decent blow. That doesn’t get you lot of the hook though. A fair bit of the debris we do find is due to people being too lazy to secure their litter or too bumbly to be trusted with technology – as is evidenced by the number of drowned cell phones we have brought to the surface.

***

It was on one of those clean-up dives that my nice comfortable denial bubble popped. My dive buddy Craig and I were in Oriental Bay near the waterfront, filling catch bags with the usual junk. I pointed towards a submerged shopping trolley a couple of metres away and, wiggling two fingers like miniature legs, mimed swimming over. He gave me the OK hand signal and I headed over to tie on an inflatable buoy to mark it for later pick up.

As I fumbled with the inflatable clipped to my suit, the ocean boiled to life around me. Rising from the seabed was a swarm of something I’d never seen before. A massive school of tiny rust coloured fish, only a few centimetres long, were buzzing and vibrating like a swarm of metallic bees. They were heavy too, bonking against my dive tank and scraping skin off my face as they surged past.

As I turned to Craig to signal “what the hell was that?”, I froze on the spot. He was absolutely smothered in the things. All I could see was a mass of bubbles and flailing fins as he tried to beat them off with his catch bag. I launched myself towards him, brandishing my dive knife. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do with it. Stabbing hundreds of tiny fish wasn’t really the most practical option.

It must have done something though because as I approached, the things started to drop back, letting me through. Frantically, I scraped as many of them off my friend as I could, copping a couple of nasty bites through my gloves for my efforts. Craig had stopped flailing and was instead making frantic slashing motions across his throat – “Out of air”. I discovered to my horror that the little bastards had chewed through the hoses connected to his tank. I quickly hooked him up with my spare air supply and buddy swam with him to the dock, scraping the last of the creatures off him with my knife.

Thank goodness we weren’t diving deep and didn’t have to stop to decompress as both of us were desperate to get out of the water. I hauled him up and checked his vitals. He was deeply in shock, struggling to catch his breath and covered in scores of tiny bite marks but he wasn’t going to die.

“What the hell was that?” I gasped as I wiped the blood from his face.

“Keys!” he said in between ragged breaths.

“What?”

“Keys. Fucking keys. With fucking teeth. The kind you unlock things with. But with teeth. They went straight for my air hose!”

Certain my friend was delirious, I helped him up. “Mate, I think we need to get you to the hospital.”

***

I left Craig in the hospital, still blathering about keys with teeth. I’d never seen him that spun out before. A couple of gashes on his forehead needed stitches but otherwise he was physically fine. They wanted to keep him in overnight for observation though, theorising concussion or nitrogen narcosis. I don’t recall him hitting his head at any point and we hadn’t been deep enough for him to be narced, but he certainly wasn’t himself. I left him in the capable hands of his fiancé and decamped to the pub.

Three pints in and I was decided – I was going back down there to find out what was going on. I was certain there was a logical explanation. I had never seen my friend like that before and I wanted to put his mind at rest.

Two days later, I was back at the waterfront, armed with a specimen jar borrowed from another friend who worked at a local aquarium. I went solo this time. I know, diving on your own isn’t smart, but I wasn’t going far and I honestly didn’t want to bring anyone else in on this insanity.

I dropped down into the water and swam around to just underneath the footbridge where we’d been gathering junk before Craig was attacked. At first, I didn’t see anything, just murk and rocks and the odd bit of snot-coloured seaweed. But then I spotted them – about two inches above the sea floor was a metallic cloud of creatures, just milling about, taking no notice of me at all.

I swam closer, watching them lazily weave along the current, darting in and out of the weeds. They seemed solid and heavy-looking but they floated easily, like they weighed nothing at all. The water was too grimy to make out too much detail without getting up closer than I would have liked, but whatever they were, it certainly wasn’t fish.

They showed no sign of the aggression they displayed when they launched themselves at Craig. So, while all was calm, I grabbed the specimen jar, scooped up the nearest one and screwed the lid up tight. I dropped it in my catch bag and headed for the surface.

Once out of the water, I pulled my mask off to get a better look and – more shakily than I care to admit – took the jar from the bag, holding it up to the light. Swimming in lazy circles, occasionally doinking into the side of the jar was – exactly as Craig had – a fucking key.

***

Three of us stood around the aquarium table, staring down at the jar.

“Yep, that’s a key alright.”

“Definitely the most key-like thing I’ve seen in a specimen jar.”

I was rather surprised at how blasé they were about the whole swimming key situation and told them so.

“I can tell you right now,” Kim, the friend who loaned me the specimen jar said. “This is by far not the strangest thing we’ve seen in this aquarium.”

One look at her face and I could tell she was deadly serious.

“Let’s give it a bit more space to swim around and see what it does,” she said, gently placing the jar into an open topped tank and letting the key swim out.

She didn’t move her hand fast enough. As soon as it escaped, it lunged at her, its oval ‘head’ somehow stretching and splintering into tiny metallic teeth. She snatched her hand out of the way before it could do any damage.

“Well, that certainly woke it up!”

“So, it didn’t react to you at all?” Kim asked, as she, I and her colleague James watched the key/fish/thing fling itself at the glass.

“Is that going to be strong enough?” I asked, taking a step backwards.

“Bulletproof,” she said.

“Oookay …” I said, still dubious. “Well, it certainly wasn’t carrying on like that.”

“Interesting,” she said, staring with fascination at the frenzied creature trying to smash its way to freedom. “Leave it with me. I’ll let you know if I have any ideas.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it,” I said, heading for the door, quietly glad to see the back of the thing.

***

The next day, my phone rang.

“Where did you say you found it again?” Kim’s excited voice asked.

“By the waterfront, under the footbridge.”

“The one with all the padlocks on?”

“Yes, that one,” I replied, only just making the connection.

“I’ve got an idea. I’m going to need you to come in.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” I replied, actually dying of curiosity.

Kim and James greeted me at the aquarium.

“Right, experiment time!” Kim said, rubbing her hands together gleefully as the three of us moved behind the front counter towards the tanks.

“You go first,” she gestured to me, keeping herself out of the creature’s sight line – if the thing even had eyes to see.

I raised an eyebrow.

“Just trust me on this. Walk up to the tank.”

I did as I was told, moving slowly towards the glass, bracing myself for the onslaught. They key-thing barely acknowledged my presence, floating calmly just above the bottom of the tank. I moved closer, peering through the glass. Nothing.

“Great!” said Kim from behind the door. “Now, it’s your turn, James.”

James had barely taken two steps into the room when Keyzilla started throwing itself at the walls of the tank, snapping at the glass. I could have sworn the thing actually hissed. He very sensibly backed the hell out of there. Kim was smiling broadly.

“You look like that’s exactly what you expected to happen,” I said.

“Correct. Want to hear my theory? It’s got nothing to do with fish science and everything to do with Marie Kondo.”

“The ‘doesn’t spark joy’-woman who wants us all to fold our undies?” James asked incredulously.

I shook my head, having zero idea what either of them was talking about but concerned about where it might lead.

“I am NOT going to fold my undies,” I said.

“Settle, petals. The last thing I want is to have anything to do with your underwear,” Kim said. “This is going to sound a little woo woo, but hear me out.”

“No more woo than a key-fish that wants to bite me,” James interrupted.

“Good point!” Kim agreed. “Now for those of you who have been living under a rock,” – she looked directly at me – “Marie Kondo is a famous declutterer. She has a TV show and a bunch of books about getting rid of your junk. She’s very gentle and respectful about it though. She gets people to touch each item to ‘wake’ it and only keep those that ‘spark joy’, and when it comes to the things that you want to let go, she thanks them for their service.”

I raised an eyebrow, utterly clueless as to what was going on.

“It’s something that kind of fascinates me,” she continued. “Not the cleaning, but the philosophy behind it. Her method is heavily influenced by the Japanese Shinto religion. Shinto includes the belief that kami – the sacred – exists in everything. That everything, even inanimate objects, contains an essence or power. This power can be good or bad but it is everywhere and in everything. Even the things we throw away.”

I stared blankly, thinking her stark, barking mad but not wanting to come across as an insensitive douche bag. “I didn’t know you were religious,” was the best I could come up with.

“I’m not, but my grandmother was. She had a shrine and talked to everything in the house. The garden too. I used to follow her everywhere when I was little. I completely forgot about it all until the whole Kondo thing started getting air time.”

“I still don’t see what this has to do with ‘that’”, I said, jerking my head towards the thing in the tank.

“Well, think about where you found it. The bridge with the padlocks, objects that have powerful kami, created by people’s love. And after people attach those padlocks to the bridge, what do they do with the keys?”

“Chuck them in the ocean – probably not thanking them for their service when they do,” James interjected, struggling to keep the sarcasm from his voice.

“Okay, it may sound ridiculous, but might I point out there’s a very angry key in that tank,” Kim said.

Having been forced to face the existence of flesh-eating keys, I tried to let myself follow Kim’s logic. “So, what has it got to do with the fact that Bitey McBiteface over there doesn’t want a piece of me?” I asked.

Kim’s eyes lit up again. “I worked that part out when you mentioned that your friend was being looked after by his fiancé while he was in hospital,” she said. “He was engaged. I’m married. James has just met a new fella. We are all, to one degree or another, loved up. You, on the other hand, are the biggest bachelor I know, and as far as I am aware that hasn’t changed, has it?”

“No, it hasn’t,” I replied, smiling. It’s not that I haven’t had the odd bit of fun in the past but I really don’t have that much interest in it all. I appreciate my friendships but really have no desire for romance or relationships. I don’t think I ever really had. I know some people feel sorry for me, but they shouldn’t. I’m happy, it’s just the way I’m wired.

“I did some research into the Oriental Bay ‘piranha’ attacks and sure enough, all the victims had partners,” Kim continued. “I think the keys somehow detect and react to the love pheromone, because that was why they were rejected. At least, that’s my theory. You’re probably one of the few people in Wellington who can get near them unscathed.” James was turning purple.

“Are you trying to say that lump of bad-tempered metal is one of the Oriental Bay piranhas? Are you insane? I grant you it’s bizarre, but it’s just a key. It can’t really do any damage!” Having seen the thing in action, I had to disagree.

“I think that it might be,” Kim said, looking towards the tank in quiet awe.

“Are you buying this crap?” James asked me.

When I didn’t answer, he stomped across the room, opened a cupboard and grabbed a pair of industrial looking gloves. “I did not spend four years studying marine biology to listen to this kind of rubbish. It’s a key. It can’t hurt people. I’ll prove it!”

“James, no!” Kim and I cried in unison but we were too late. James had stalked across the room and thrust his hand into the tank, attempting to scoop up the creature inside. The whole thing took seconds. One minute, James had his hand in the tank and the next, he was writhing on the floor screaming in agony, the water in the tank above him stained with blood.

Kim dispatched me to get the first aid kit and, when I returned, was gently prising James’ hand open.

“How bad is it?” he slurred, clearly delirious with pain. “I can’t look!”

I looked and wished I hadn’t. The top half of his index finger was stripped bare of flesh – a clean white bone sticking out of a bloodied knuckle. I suddenly thought of Skeletor from Masters of the Universe, stifling a hysterical laugh as I thrust a bandage into Kim’s hand.

“I’ve seen worse,” she lied expertly. I had no idea how she managed to keep a straight face when all I wanted to do was vomit. “But I think we should get you looked at.”

So, for the second time that week, I found myself driving someone to hospital.

***

Sitting in the hospital waiting room I turned to Kim. “Okay, this is way out of my comfort zone but I’ve seen two people put into hospital, and if you’re right, there are hundreds of angry carnivorous keys, lurking around a popular swimming spot. Do you have any idea what we can do about it?”

“Yes, but you’re not going to like it.”

“That I don’t doubt. Now fill me in.”

“Well, we’re going to have to conduct some more experiments, but I figure since you are the only one they seem to let near them, it could be that they respond to your interactions with them as well.”

“Interactions?”

“Words and feelings specifically. Like the objects imbued with kami were meant to respond to offerings and prayers. If it’s a similar sort of situation, then maybe you could talk it off the ledge, help it not feel discarded. Let it know it wasn’t tossed away for no reason, that it was sacrificed for love and we honour that sacrifice.”

“You want me to give it a pep talk?”

“Exactly! Maybe we can reprogram them not to respond badly to people who care for one another.”

Before I had a chance to respond, a doctor came out to meet us. Kim stood up. “Is he going to be okay?”

“He’s going to need reconstructive surgery on his finger, but otherwise he’s going to be fine. You say he was attacked by some sort of fish at the aquarium?” he asked.

“Yes, a fish,” Kim said firmly.

***

If you told me a couple of months ago that I would be paying nightly visits to the aquarium to whisper sweet nothings to a key in a jar, I would have told you to lay off the weed. Yet here I am. The scary thing is, it actually seemed to be working.

We tested Kim’s theory last night when James returned to work.

“How’s the war wound?” I asked, gesturing towards his bandaged finger.

“Not bad. They couldn’t fix the nerves but they can make it look a bit more like a finger. They are going to graft some skin from my butt. Guess that will remind me not to be such a butthead about things I don’t understand.”

I smiled, glad he’d managed to keep a sense of humour.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Don’t worry. I plan to keep my hands to myself.”

“Okay then,” I said, nervously leading him towards the tank. He walked right up to the glass and – nothing. No reaction. The key-fish barely raised itself from the bottom.

James raised his eyebrows. “Hey! Key thing! I love my boyfriend!” he yelled, taking a step back.

A little waggle, but otherwise nothing.

Kim walked up to the tank, nervously playing with her wedding ring. The key showed no interest in her whatsoever.

“It worked!” she said, grinning and hugging me. I couldn’t help smiling as well, scarcely believing it myself.

The next part of the plan was for me to catch another key (goody) and see what happened when we put it in the tank with its newly chilled-out mate. Kim’s hope was that they’d somehow communicate and, if I could talk enough of them out of their homicidal rage, they might calm down the rest of the pack. School? Bunch? I don’t know what the collective noun is for a bunch of angry sentient keys, do you?

“So, catch and release?” I asked Kim.

“Something like that,” she said with a smile.

I don’t know if it will work, but it’s all we’ve got right now. This is going to take a long time and we can’t guarantee how many we’ll be able to round up. So, if you are loved up and fancy going for a dip this summer, and you don’t want to end up with a butt-skin graft or worse, might I suggest giving the waterfront a miss for a while. Particularly, a certain bridge.

And if you absolutely must do the padlock thing, a quick thank you to a key is not much to ask in return for keeping your limbs.

Want to read more?

Ghost Bus – Tales from Wellington’s Dark Side is available on most digital platforms here:

https://books2read.com/ghostbus

Paperback Ghost Bus in NZ

Get your Ghost Bus paperbacks here

Paperback Ghost Bus overseas

If you live outside of New Zealand I would recommend ordering your Ghost Bus paperback via Amazon because postage overseas from here is all over the shop thanks to the rona.

Ghost Bus – Tales from Wellington’s Dark Side paperback

Want to see more awesome artwork?

Shaun Garea – the creator of the awesome bitey key image is the artist behind The Legend of Gareus – a hilarious webcomic about Gareus, the David Brent of fantasy. You can check it out here:

The Legend of Gareus

Learning to let go

This is a blog I have been putting off writing for a while. It’s about letting go, but I have to keep reminding myself that it’s not about giving up.

We’ve talked about this for a while but it wasn’t until the last time we took the boat away that we officially made the call.

We’re putting Wildflower up for sale.

It’s a really hard thing to do. She’s been a massive part of Paddy’s life, and a big part of mine for the last 10 years. It’s like letting go of a family member or, the way I prefer to look at it, preparing your child for every possible eventuality and sending them out into the world.

Wildflower is tough and beautiful and created by Paddy to be the ultimate ocean-going vessel – but she’s not crossing oceans. All the little things that went wrong when we last took her out were simply due to lack of use. She needs to be out on the ocean waves.

New adventures

Part of me is really struggling to fight the feeling that this is giving up. I gleefully signed off my book with plans to take her away again in 2016 (note to self: never put a date in print). That year came and went and we are still here in Wellington.
We have taken the boat away on smaller adventures – across to Tasman Bay and Nelson and over to the Sounds, but also embarked on different adventures of our own.

We bought a house, I tamed a feral garden, we got engaged (there’s a half-finished blog about that too. We had a party which involved putting 3000 ball pit balls in a spa pool. It was awesome.) We inherited a new fur child, I wrote a book and got it published and I am writing more.

When we moved from living between the boat and a flat to a house (a move that went amazingly smoothly and, I would like to point out, was Paddy’s idea so no rubbish about me making him swallow the anchor) we thought we would have more time to sail the boat because we weren’t living on her. We could keep her set up for sailing all the time and it wouldn’t be such a drama having to pack up our life every time we wanted to take her out.

The best laid plans

Unfortunately things didn’t happen that way. For a million, very valid reasons, we just didn’t get the chances we thought we would. As I have mentioned before, one of the issues with having a cruising boat in Wellington is the fact that you are in Wellington. You can’t just pop over to the Sounds for a weekend and be back for work on Monday. You need several days either side to make sure you get the Cook Strait crossing conditions right. So, while it’s a lovely idea, it doesn’t happen that often in reality. And in reality, with the new directions our lives have taken, we aren’t going to be able to take a year or so off work to get the boat ready and head over to the tropics any time soon.

This isn’t a bad thing. We are both in a really good place right now and I am happier and less crazy than I have been in a long time. It’s just that it’s a different place than we thought we would be.

Not the end of the adventure

This isn’t the end of sailing for us. There will always be a boat, just a smaller one that means less maintenance and more sailing. One thought is a trailer yacht that Paddy can actually sail and maybe get back into racing. The other possibility is to get a berth down in Picton and have a smaller boat there, so we can fly over in the weekends and already be in the Sounds.

One of the things Paddy asked me when we were talking about this was “what part of sailing do you like best, getting to places or being in places?” And when I honestly think about it, being in places is the winner for me. What I loved about our Pacific trip was the access to islands and villages and people that you normally wouldn’t have on your standard tourist holiday. And while I am super proud of myself for crossing oceans and it gave me a huge amount of confidence, I can’t say I enjoyed it hugely.

The odd clear night with bright stars and a calm sea made it all worth it, but that was the exception rather than the rule. Most sailors I have spoken to don’t enjoy long passages. A couple of days between countries is all good, but I can’t say I get much out of anything longer – other than bragging rights. So another option for us could be flying and chartering a boat. The sailing isn’t over, it just might be a different kind of sailing.

Rules for dating our daughter

It’s not the end of adventures on Wildflower yet either. It can take years to sell a boat and we are certainly going to vet potential purchasers. Our baby isn’t going to go to just anyone. It has to be someone who will love her and look after her and can handle the fact she’s a little bit ‘extra.’ If you are going to date our daughter, you are going to have to get past us. (So don’t worry Mum, you will get your ride round the harbour!)

So, as Paddy has said ‘the star of Which Way is Starboard Again? is up for sale’. She’s strong and beautiful and has more whiz bang gadgets than you could possibly need (don’t even get me started on the fridge) and a piece of me will go along with her.

She is sturdy and safe and got my anxious arse around the South Pacific and back. She is the goodest girl and we are very proud of her. We want to find someone who will love her as much as we do but give her the freedom to sail she needs.

The deets

For those interested, Wildflower is a Bruce Roberts designed R432.

She has a “Solent” cutter rig and an 80hp Ford D series engine.

On board there’s a generator, water maker, dive compressor and SSB radio.

She has new or upgraded pretty much everything.

Paddy has a complete inventory for anyone who is interested. Just drop us a line at whichwayisstarboardagain@gmail.com

We are happy to answer any questions – and will probably have a few for you as well!

Which Way is Starboard Again? the book — Cover girl

Salt and vinegar

The yachtie circle of life.

So here I am on holiday, finally getting the chance to finish writing up the blog I started last time we went on holiday. If that isn’t a wake up call to take more time to tell life to get bent and do more writing, I don’t know what is! (Of course I say that every time and as we all know, life can be terribly persuasive.)

We are in Vanuatu at the moment (actually we are back now but the internet was really bodgey when I wrote this). We took a plane rather than a boat this time because, as Paddy likes to say, nothing goes to windward like a 747.

We are staying in our favourite Vanuatu spot, Hideaway Island. It’s a resort but it has a much more laid back village type feel about it, which is about my comfort level when it comes to resorts. It is on the edge of a marine reserve and so there is good snorkeling and great diving spots. They have their own dive shop and it is where I got my scuba licence many moons ago. I really love the staff here too. You can always tell when they are around from the gales or raucous laughter, which makes me happy.

We are also happily taking part in the yachtie circle of life. Last time we took our boat round the Pacific we had friends act as mules, bringing over boat parts and other necessities (like Clearasil – the tropics did terrible things to my skin!) This time round it was us bringing supplies for our friends Mike and Dani on their boat Mirabilis – spare parts and a paddle board oar. Dani and I met when we were both doing our Boatmasters course and discovered we lived down the pier from each other and Mike crewed back from us from New Caledonia to New Zealand to get experience for when they took their boat away for the first time.

This time they had an extra hitchhiker – 8 month old Arlo, adding yet another awesome chapter to the yachtie circle of life. Arlo is officially the most chilled out child I’ve ever met. He’s like baby Buddha. He just takes everything in his stride and has this whole boat kid thing down. The boat kids I have met all seem to be pretty cool and well-adjusted and I think his parents are giving him an awesome start in life.

Anyway, enough gloating about being in the tropics. Here’s the blog I have been trying to finish for so long:

Dusting off the cobwebs

For various reasons (life) it has been a long time between swims for Wildflower – and us. Give or take a couple of little outings it’s been roughly three years since we have been able to take her for a good run.

So we both took a couple of weeks leave to head over to Queen Charlotte Sounds over Easter.

In getting ready to go we discovered parts of the poor old girl had seized up due to lack of use and we felt like the worst boat parents ever. There was also a slight concern that the same thing may have happened to us, in sailing terms at least.

We were both really ready for a break but also a little nervous. Heading to the Sounds means crossing Cook Strait – a narrow stretch of water between the North and South islands of New Zealand known for wild and woolly sailing.

It something we had done a frillion times before but you can make things much bigger in your head when you haven’t done them for a while. I kept telling myself I had made it round the South Pacific in her and that this was just a New Zealand puddle jump, but I’m not always the best at listening to myself.

Waiting on the weather (again)

Once we’d carved out the time to go it was the usual story of waiting for the right weather pattern. The good thing about that was by the time we fond a window where the wind was blowing in the right direction, at a reasonable speed and without too many lumpy bits, I was ready to go.

Things were starting to come back to me too. How to tie certain knots, how to attach ropes to cleats, everything except how to decently throw a rope – which I was embarrassingly reminded of when we were at the diesel dock. I’ve said it before and will say it again, I deeply lament the location of the fueling dock on Wellington’s waterfront.

It’s exactly the spot where people stroll past with their morning coffee looking over at the goings on in the marina. Hell, there’s handy public seating right in front of the frigging thing. So I can pretty much 100% guarantee that when I am ineffectually flailing a piece of rope in the air as I utterly fail to lasso a bollard to make us fast to the wharf, there will be an audience. I don’t know what happens, the mechanics of it work fine when I am practicing on the boat, but when I need it to work I revert back to the kid in primary school who can’t throw or catch anything and nobody wants on their sports team. Luckily there wasn’t too much wind though and with a bit of teamwork we go there in the end.

Flashbacks

By the time we got Boaty McBoatface out of the harbour and towards Cook Strait there was stuff all wind – which was both good and bad. It means you aren’t getting shunted along at an alarming angle, but it also means a lot more sudden flapping and banging noises as the sails flop from side to side looking for wind to fill them. We had about 10 knots of wind, but anything less than 15 and Wildflower just says ‘no’. She’s a fuller bodied lady and it takes quite a bit to push her through the water. It was a good thing we had Big Red the engine to keep us chugging along.

Because we’d had a strong southerly blowing through over the previous few days we also had a bit of a southerly swell (2 meters and easing). It wasn’t much, and while hearing it described over the radio made me nervous, I was surprised at how minor it seemed and how easily I handled it after so long out of the water. It did mean things were a little bit bumpy through some of the rips though. There are three rips near Wellington and you have to go through two of them to reach Cook Strait. It was a little wibbly wobbly through the first rip, but not too bad. Next was the infamous Karori rip.

Because it had been a while since Wildflower had been on the water, Paddy and I were both in meerkat mode, poking our heads up and checking that everything was okay every time she made a sound that wasn’t quite the norm.

We were both still meerkating through the Karori rip when we heard a bang from below deck. In my new ‘don’t jump to the most terrifying conclusion straight away’ mode I said “It’s probably just something falling off a shelf inside”. Paddy nodded quietly and headed downstairs. Unbeknownst to me the bang had been followed by the engine sounding slightly different.

I tried to keep my cool, but the last time Paddy quietly headed down to the engine room like that ended in a Mayday call, Paddy having to use brute force, towels and hose clips to stop water pouring into the engine room and me on the radio to our would-be rescuers – who we didn’t need in the end because Paddy is awesome (see Which Way is Starboard Again? the book for the full story).

So ‘don’t catastrophise’ went right out the window and was replaced with ‘okay, can I remember how to use the radio, it’s channel 16 for emergencies right?’ It didn’t help that we were pretty much in the same place where the last incident happened either. So when Paddy popped up I was braced for the worst and doing my best not to lose my shit. It turned out the bang was just the engine room door swinging open, hence the change in engine noise. When we got to the Sounds we also discovered there was a crack in the engine mount – but there were three more holding the engine up and it was working fine. We needed to get that welded up but through one of Paddy’s friends based in Picton we managed to find someone to do that – and on Easter Sunday too!

Absolutely everything was fine, we were completely safe, and there was nothing at all to worry about. The problem was I had a bunch of adrenaline dumped into my system and it had nowhere to go. Once upon a time that would have been the cause of a screaming panic attack. It’s always when things stop and I am completely safe that these things happen. This time though, I just sat down on the floor of the cockpit and took a bunch of deep breaths. Paddy asked if I was okay and I said yes, and actually meant it. I was a little bit jumpy for a while but I was fine. It wasn’t actually the fact that we were safe that was the win, it was the fact that I actually managed to convince my brain that we were that was. I was quietly proud of myself.

Salt and vinegar

With my regained calm I decided to pop below deck and make a pot of coffee. This began with me muttering about what a good job I had done stuffing the cupboards with pillows to stop everything crashing around before we left. After I managed to wrestle the coffee pot out from under several pillows I discovered one of them was soaking wet. Pulling it out I discovered a couple of pots were filled with what looked like water too.

I remembered the first thing you should do when finding water on the inside of the boat that shouldn’t be there is check if it is salt or fresh. If it’s fresh it’s not great as it could mean you are losing your drinking water, but if it’s salt then you really have a problem because it’s coming in from the outside. So I grabbed a potful, gave it a big sniff, and nearly burned all my nose hairs off.

It turned out it was neither salt or fresh water, but white vinegar. I located the culprit – a plastic bottle of cooking vinegar that had expired in 2014. I gently picked it up and promptly got squirted in the eye by a geyser of vinegar through a tiny pinprick hole in the bottle. It turns out that while vinegar doesn’t really expire, it’s packaging certainly does! So instead of getting a nice cup of coffee I ended up covered in vinegar and smelling like that one fish and chip shop in Christchurch that served chips in brown paper bags covered in vinegar.

After I peeled off as much of the vinegar covered clothing as I could (unfortunately it was also all over my sailing overalls) I got the coffee on the boil. Paddy actually said he was proud of me because once I would have seen water where it shouldn’t have been, freaked out and got him to come down and fix it. This time I assessed the problem, worked out the issue and found a solution (de-vinegaring the cupboards when we got to the Sounds.) It sounds pretty obvious but when you run on fear and adrenaline as much as I do , that can actually be a big thing. It was really nice of him to recognise that, because I probably wouldn’t have.

Postcard New Zealand

We had a fabulous time in the Sounds. It’s such a beautiful place and when you are staying on a boat it’s like waking up to a different postcard of New Zealand every morning.

We settled in at our favourite chill out spot Erie Bay which offered us eerie fog and stunning blue skies alternately. The use of a friend’s mooring in Milton Bay meant time spent in another idyllic spot – and the Easter Bunny even managed to find us there (though Paddy needed a little bit of help with the Easter egg hunt.)

When we began to run low on supplies (and get sick of stir-fries) we headed to the Bay of Many Coves resort, where cruisers often pop in for lunch and a drink. However it turned out that the entire place was closed for a private function, and given the disappointed looks on the family who had dinghied in looking for ice creams, we weren’t the only ones surprised at that fact. We were able to stay on their moorings overnight and on the up side, with the employment of walkie talkies, I was acing picking up mooring buoys.

Next stop was Punga Cove, where the cafe was open. It was awesome sitting there watching families play on the water’s edge and people coming in covered in mud from the cycling tracks. Sometimes you forget how lucky we are in this country, being able to take a break and go play in paradise.
We both splashed out on fancy fish and chips – no vinegar in sight!

Waiting on the weather (again) part 2

The only drawback was, as soon as we arrived in the Sounds we had to start planning when we would leave. When you are sailing back to Wellington you have to get the timing right when you hit Cook Strait, in terms of weather and tides. It’s not a stretch of water you want to take your chances with. So if you have a deadline you need to get back for (work, family, pets), working out when you are going to leave is pretty important. So as soon as we hit the Sounds we were listening to the marine forecast and checking the tide tables to see when the best time to head back would be.

We had a lovely time, but it’s not super easy to relax into a holiday when you are constantly checking ‘are we leaving tomorrow? Maybe the next day?’
Paddy managed to get the timing perfect and, in contrast to our ‘no-wind’ trip over, we had the perfect amount of wind to actually sail on the way back. Wildflower loved it (so did the skipper). She really does feel better when she is sailing, like a big dog being let out for a run. She puffed out her sails, heeled over and made quick work of the crossing.

A strange quirk of the ocean is that celphone reception is better in the middle of Cook Strait than it is in the Sounds. This meant I was able to snap a couple of ‘hey, we’re sailing!’ shots to send to our Whatsapp family group chat. I think the smile on both our faces said it all.

Little legs

We literally had a one day window to get back to Wellington before the wind switched back to the opposite direction we needed it to blow and we timed getting back just as it started to change. Everything was going swimmingly until we were just outside the marina and attempted to drop the sail.

One of the facelifts we gave Wildflower when we got back from the Pacific was a much bigger main sail to help push her along in lighter winds. A larger sail meant we needed a longer boom and when this was replaced it was also raised a bit to stop it banging on the roof of the pilot house. Since one of my jobs on berthing/anchoring was to clamber round the front of the boat and a help pull the sail down, I voiced concern about the extra height. Paddy’s response: “It’s only a couple of inches!”

It turns out when you are four foot eleven, ‘a couple of inches’ is actually an awful lot. It also turns out that we probably should have practiced lowering the new sail a few more times before having to do it in earnest. Because the wind was getting up, Paddy headed us right into the harbour where it was more sheltered and would make dropping the sail easier. That would have been a great plan, if the East-West Ferry wasn’t trying to berth at the same time.

The extra two inches meant I had to clamber as far up the mast as I could reach (not very). I had also completely blanked on how to get the mast steps to go down properly so I was balancing pretty precariously (don’t worry Mum, I was clipped on!) trying to yank down the sail as Paddy dropped it. Another problem was the whole system hadn’t been used for so long it was a bit stiff and my puny arms just weren’t up to the task. So there we were, circling around with a bunch of ferry passengers and people on the waterfront looking on as I stretched as far as my little legs would let me, flailing my arms ineffectually. Even my dad, who was stalking us via GPS, was wondering why we were sailing in circles. In the end Paddy pointed the boat into the wind and headed up to the bow to help me with the final few yanks and we decided that perhaps next time I would point the boat into the wind, while he acted as sail monkey.

All’s well that ends well though and, even though it was just a little trip, it gave me my confidence back in a lot of ways.

End note: Our Vanuatu holiday gave me confidence back too, in terms of scuba diving. I normally get quite angsty at first but this time, with the help of one of Hideaway’s awesome dive guides, it was just like riding a bike (or flying over fields of coral). I was relaxed enough to be able to get my buoyancy right and Paddy busted me doing the Kate Winslet in Titanic ‘I’m flying!’ arms. So I guess that means I’ve got a decent handle on the crazy right now and that really does feel pretty good!

Gumboots and porridge

Porridge in the air

Comedian and mental health advocate Mike King describes depression as feeling like walking through mud. That was the inspiration behind the first Gumboot Up NZ day on April 5.

The idea was for people to walk a day in the shoes of someone with depression, while raising awareness and funds for youth mental health support.

For me, instead of mud, it’s always been porridge. For some strange reason, if anyone asks me to describe what depression feels like I have always said ‘walking through porridge.’

It’s as if the air has turned into a sort of lumpy sludge and for every movement you make through it, a pile more slurps back in to take its place – and that’s just getting out of bed.

Counter-intuitively, something I often can’t do when I’m depressed is cry. God I want to, I really do. But the more I want to, the more I can’t. Sometimes I see the porridge as a mix of all the tears and snot that I want to pour out of me pushing back down on me from the outside.

Now that I think about it, it’s actually a pretty gross analogy and mud is a lot better. The mud was actually what caught my attention about this particular mental health initiative. For the first time I was hearing something that described exactly how it felt for me, and knowing that someone else feels something so scary and internal and personal as depression the same way you do is hugely relieving and empowering.

Boots and suits

One of the things that was really cool about ‘walking through mud day’ was actually just walking around town. I paid a little more attention to people’s footwear than I normally would and I spotted quite a few people in gummies.

The cool part was that those people were obviously doing the same thing, because often we would catch each other’s eye, smile and walk on. It was a quiet acknowledgement ‘I know why you’re doing this, you know why I’m doing this. You get it.’

That small public acknowledgement – from the guy in the suit, from the woman in the amazing 50s style dress, from my workmates – was worth so much. I even appreciated the ‘helpful’ offer from a colleague to pinch me on the soft but under my arm to help with the not-being-able-to-cry thing (you know who you are!)

The teenager I used to be, utterly convinced that talking about mental illness would have landed her in the nuthatch, would have been completely blown away.

Radio gaga

I also have a bit of a soft spot for Mike King, who gave me a spot on his Late Night Nutters Club radio show when I was hawking Starboard when it first came out.

It was a scary and exciting adventure where I got to stay in a hotel in Auckland and blather on the radio about mental health and sailing. Mike and his cohost Malcolm Falconer were really great and made me super comfortable even though I was completely terrified.

I blogged about it at the time and you can listen to the broadcast on there. I have no idea what I said and probably completely blathered. I haven’t listened to it since because I hate the sound of my voice, so I can’t vouch for quality!

Radio Gaga (seamunchkin.com)

I am hope – counselling for youth

I am also quite passionate about where the money goes for this particular fundraiser. 100% of the donations go to Mike King’s I Am Hope charity, which provides access to counselling support for young people.

When I was 15 and diagnosed with OCD, anxiety and depression in Christchurch in the 90s, I was lucky enough to have access to good counseling and support. Sadly, for a lot of young people now, that is just not the case. More people are aware of mental health issues, and this is amazing, but I think what it also means is that more people are seeking help and the resources just aren’t keeping up with it. Some young people in crisis are waiting up to 6 months for their first appointment and that’s just not acceptable or safe.

The way the I Am Hope donations work is that your money is deposited into their Kiwibank account and is then given directly to a registered health professional upon receipt of an invoice. This means 100% of the money goes to help kids get the support they need, when they need it.

Even though Gumboot Friday is over, you can still donate to I Am Hope through their website and Give A Little page:

Gumboot Friday (iamhope.org.nz)

How to Donate (iamhope.org.nz)

When you can and can’t write

From one former Christchurch kid to the current ones, all I can send is hope and love right now. If any youth are going to need access to good counselling and support it’s them.

While I was able to write about the quakes that struck my home town, I just can’t find the words for the recent tragedy that happened there. I’ve tried and I just can’t do it. I honestly don’t know if I will ever be able to.

I was proud though, through my work at PPTA, to be able to share the words of others, and that is what I’ll share here:

Against hatred we send love (ppta.org.nz)

One thing it has done though, is throw into sharp relief the little light-hearted ‘Gators, guns and keeping calm’ piece on our trip to the US that I was working on. I will still use the material in some way but it needs a different lens and a lot of different thinking, that I’m not quite ready for yet.

There is another project in the works however, and I promise I won’t rip it out from under your feet this time because it actually is finished. I’ve had some super helpful feedback from beta readers and it is now with a manuscript assessor to help me iron out the rest of the wrinkles before I decide what to do with it. It’s something a bit different in that its my first foray into fiction – and it’s a nice escape from reality for me right now. Its a young adult novella, and never fear sailors, it has boats, scuba diving and various other marine activities in it (it also has bitey mer-people who farm dolphins for snacks). I will fill you all in when there is more to tell, but whether I self or ‘trad’ publish it as young folk say, I promise it is something you will actually be able to have.

For those who aren’t into that sort of thing, don’t worry, I am going to keep up with the non fiction about sailing and being bonkers, it’s just always fun to try new things!

Of love and refrigerant

RIP big fridge

A few months back something truly sad happened. After 13 years of loyal service, the mega boat fridge Paddy built – the one that made it all the way round the South Pacific, helping out cruisers with less functioning fridges and housing the 50kg Tuna of Terror – cooled its last cold thing.

Since we were no longer living aboard, it took a while before we actually noticed it. It wasn’t until I stayed over on Wildflower to make it easier to catch an early morning flight that I made the discovery. First the lack of noise tipped me off – the fridge’s comforting buzzing and whirring was part of the boat’s soundtrack – then it was the smell.

While we didn’t have much food in there, it was enough to make it smell like something had died and was in the process of quietly decomposing. So I did what sensible adult would do, I slammed the lid shut and hoped the problem would go away.

It didn’t.

The cleanup

On getting home and finding the problem hadn’t fixed itself, there was nothing for it. We picked a weekend, gathered all the cleaning products known to mankind and set to. The smell was horrific. We grabbed black rubbish bags and threw the freezer’s contents in them without pausing to identify what anything used to be (the former bait was fairly easy to work out though.)

Once the offending former-frozens were jettisoned (stuffing black bags into the marina rubbish bins while stifling gagging noises when fellow yachties walked past) we scrubbed the living daylights out of the fridge and freezer cabinets.

Being a chest freezer this necessitated extended periods of time hanging headfirst over the edge of the cabinet, holding my breath while the blood rushed to my head. I am pleased to say though that this and a combination of cleaning products, bleach, vanilla essence and airing the thing out, means Wildflower is now blessedly stink-free.

A new obsession

Wildflower’s lack of refrigeration left Paddy with a couple of choices. He could buy a new fridge or he could build the Mother of All Fridges. I’m pretty sure you can guess which option he went with. Building Fridgezilla is actually something Paddy had been talking about for a while when the old fridge was starting to reach the end of its life.

And so the research began. I would come home to find Paddy mesmerised by YouTube videos on how to build a boat fridge. So many YouTube videos… I had no idea so many people were so passionate about refrigeration – and that so many of them had YouTube channels.

A couple of top examples for the geeks:

AC Service Tech LLC (YouTube channel)

HVAC in SC (YouTube)

Note: Paddy says most of the stuff on YouTube is biased towards air-conditioning but the principals are the same for freezers and refrigeration.

I joke about it but it’s actually pretty cool that people are so generous with their time and prepared to share information that otherwise giant nerds like Paddy you wouldn’t know.

Goodbye kitchen table

It started off with a few packages arriving at the back door with the odd switch or coil in them

Then our kitchen table turned into a steampunk nightmare of copper piping, wire and dials. Every day a new package arrived and the mountain grew bigger. A hermetic compressor, suction line accumulator, sub cooler, liquid refrigerant receiver, a water cooled and air cooled condenser appeared, along with lots of copper pipe and fittings, various valves and (after some negotiating) a big orange bottle of refrigerant.

Note for nerds: Paddy says he was going to put the whole thing on a basal platen made of prefabulated amulite, but when he discovered that didn’t exist he used aluminum, which he got from his mate Gregor’s workshop

I am also learning a lot of things about fridges.

For example I know Wildflower’s new fridge will use British thermal units, which Paddy tells me are the best kind of thermal units you can get.

“BTUs have always been better than kilowatts. If you don’t believe me just go on Google and see how many BTUs there are in a kilowatt. There’s more, so it must be better” – So sayeth Paddy.

A mysterious love note

Things got even more fascinating one weekend when Paddy was away for work and I spotted a hand written note on the coffee table in our living room.

‘That’s nice,’ I thought. ‘Paddy’s left me a note. I wonder what it says?’

I picked it up and quickly realised Paddy hadn’t written it. In a woman’s handwriting was the very un-Paddylike sentence ‘I love you, you handsome (something a little tricky to make out) wonder’.

I was, understandably, a little surprised.

Examining the note more closely I discovered it was not exactly a new one, and apparently not from New Zealand. It was written on the back of a deposit slip from the Camden National Bank in Maine USA and the empty date section started 19– , so definitely not written recently!

So what was it? Where did it come from? Was it a memento from a past love? Did a time-traveler from the US have a crush on one or the other of us?

When Paddy got back I handed it to him and said ‘sweetie, do you know what this is?’ It turns out he was just as puzzled as I was. When I told him where I found it he had a eureka moment and burst out laughing, then fished out a retro looking book.

He had bought a second hand copy of Refrigeration for Pleasureboats by Nigel Calder online and when he opened the package a piece of paper that had been used as a bookmark fell out. He didn’t think much of it and put it on the coffee table. Mystery solved.

Help us find the handsome wonder

Except the mystery isn’t solved, not really. Who is the handsome wonder? Did he ever get his note? Was it a secret admirer? Unrequited fridge-building love? Did he and the note-writer live happily ever after? We need to know!

My workmate Liz helped with one piece of the puzzle – the two words in the note I couldn’t quite make out.

I love you, you handsome ‘car heart-clad? car hat Dad?’ wonder.

I was puzzling those two words out loud in the office when she said ‘I know, it’s Carhartt!

It turns out Carhartt is a US brand of work wear (Liz was gifted a pair of Carhartt overalls and says they are brilliant).

So we now know the full text of the note reads: I love you, you handsome Carhartt-clad wonder. Which in the context makes a lot of sense!

As for the rest of the mystery, if anyone can help us, we would love to hear from you.

Our clues so far are:

A second hand copy of Refrigeration for Pleasureboats bought on Amazon.

Richmond – written on the side of the book in vivid. It could be a surname, it could be a place, it could be the name of a boat.

A deposit slip from Camden National Bank in Maine.

If any of this rings a bell to you, leave a comment or email whichwayisstarboardagain@gmail.com

It’s alive (kind of)!

After migrating from the kitchen to the lounge the parts made it to the garage and formed the shape of a fridge (or at least a condensing unit – which Paddy tells me is all the smarts of a fridge). It makes all the whizzing and whirring motions a fridge should make and passed its tests with flying colours.

For the fridge nerds: Fridgezilla was pressure tested with inert gas to 300 PSI (pounds per square inch of pressure) – 50 PSI more than it is going to use when it’s running – to make sure there weren’t any leaks. He found a couple and fixed them. Then it was vacuum tested to suck out all the moisture and it vacuum tested down to 200 microns.

Even more for the fridge nerds

If you know the lingo, are building a fridge or are just really interested in enginerding, then here’s a five minute video explanation of the condensing unit of the Mega Fridge.

Stay tuned for when Fridgezilla is on board and cooling its first ice cream!

Harry Potter and the Customs Official

Note: This is one of those blogs that travels all over the shop, from New Zealand to Samoa and back – so I have broken it up into bite-sized chunks so you can easily stop reading when you get sick of the sound of my e-voice. You’re welcome.

Also content warning: This post deals with mental health issues including anxiety and depression. It is unbelievably okay to ask for help so if you or someone you know needs assistance there are New Zealand-based contacts below. I am sure there are similar resources available for overseas readers.

When the crazy comes back

This sort of feels like an admission of defeat, but my gleeful post about switching meds for the first time in 20 years appears to have been a bit premature.

In short, the crazy came back.

Basically things went really well, right up until they didn’t. I was functioning fine during the working day, but by the time I got home I was completely out of gas from holding it all together. I was pretty much on an anxiety tight-rope. When it got to the point where Paddy sneezed and I screamed, we knew something was seriously wrong.

I didn’t give up easily. In fact, in trying to find another answer, I probably took longer than I should have to realise it was the meds. I did all the right things, I talked to an awesome head doctor, I started seeing a physio because the tension had munted my back and I was trying to eat healthier. (Getting more exercise was the next on the list, but I hadn’t quite got there yet!) When none of that worked that pretty much left one thing, it was chemical.

I didn’t want to admit this at first because I was so convinced the last happy pill switch was going to be the answer, so when things got steadily worse I felt a bit gutted. It’s silly, I know people who have been through at least six different medication changes before they found the right mix. I just figured that wouldn’t be me.

In typical Anna fashion, crunch time came at the least convenient moment, just before we were due to go on a planned holiday to Samoa. (Before you ask, we totally cheated and flew rather than sailed. We’d need a bit longer than 10 days if we were going to try something like that!)

No time was going to be a good time to switch, so my choice in terms of going on holiday was – wait until I got back, knowing there was 100% likelihood of feeling crappy while I was over there, or start beforehand with the small hope that I might actually feel a bit better. Not much of a choice I agree, but in the end I went with the latter.

This involved weaning myself the old happy pills, a couple of days of no happy pills and then gradually building up the new happy pills – which meant a fair bit of time with Anna’s brain not having enough happy juice. I was a bit scared, but I had done it before, and I knew it would be okay eventually.

Harry Potter and the Customs Official

One of the joys of having an anxiety disorder is that you fixate over every possible way anything could go wrong. If you are under-medicated and have an anxiety disorder it’s like that on acid (not that I ever tried acid, my brain was already fizzy enough!).

We were flying to Samoa from Auckland and circumstances meant that Paddy would be there before me (in Auckland, not Samoa), so I was going to catch a red-eye from Wellington and meet him at the Auckland International Terminal.

So of course my brain got busy with all the things that could go horrifically wrong before we even got out of the country. I stayed on the boat the night before to be closer to the airport and, after very little sleep (except for enough to have a nightmare that Wellington Airport was fogged out and no flights could leave), I got there ridiculously early and everything went super smoothly leaving me with an hour to kill. So far so good…

Turbulence on the flight to Auckland made me a little bit jittery, but it was nothing compared to bouncing around in the middle of the Pacific Ocean (which is what I kept telling myself as I gripped the armrests.) I arrived safe and sound and made contact with Paddy to let him know I was about to head through customs. He told me there was plenty of time, but as far as I was concerned there wouldn’t be plenty of time until I was sitting at the gate waiting for them to call our seat numbers.

Customs went fine at first, I was waved through the people scanner, got most of my stuff, then noticed my handbag was heading away from me down the Naughty Conveyor Belt for Naughty People Carrying Naughty Things. I signaled to the customs officials that it was mine and they waved me over.

I stepped towards them and they were all “stay behind the yellow line please ma’am”. This was serious, I couldn’t even check to see if time was running out for my flight because my phone was in my handbag!

It was actually the second time this had happened recently, the first was when I was visiting my sister and new niece in Brisbane, but they found nothing then.

After confirming I had packed my own bags I joked (because that is what I do when I am stressed or nervous) that it might be my good luck troll. For those of you who don’t know me: My name is Anna and I never travel without a troll.

The customs official said “no, but I can see the troll, it looks quite funny!”

“Can I have a look?” I asked excitedly, forgetting I was still under suspicion.

I mustn’t have looked too dodgy because he let me lean over to see.

There she was, smiling benevolently up at me through the x ray. ‘Get me out of this Cal! (Short for Calorie, a story for another time),’ I thought frantically at her. ‘We’ve got a flight to catch!’

Cal the good luck troll (spoiler- as you can see we made it safely to the Pacific and she became TropiCAL)

After a bit of scruffling around and finding nothing, he finally said “What we are seeing is a pointed metal rod with sort of bumps all the way down it.”

I let out a massive sigh of relief. “I know exactly what it is. It’s the Harry Potter wand on my keyring!”

Instead of looking at me like I was a crazy person, he dug in deep, grabbed my keys and said ‘So it is! And it’s not just any wand. It’s the Elder Wand!”

(It’s totally a knock off of the Elder Wand, but I’ll take it).

It was a ‘graduation’ gift from a Wizarding Academy steam train trip I took recently with my Mum, two of my best friends and not a child among us – because #adulting. (Important note to anyone else who went on that trip. Take the wands off your keyrings if you want to fly internationally.)

Wizarding Academy graduates – adulting at its best!

It turned out Mr Customs Official was a massive Potter geek and had just returned from Harry Potter World (I didn’t catch whereabouts, I was still a little flustered).

He preceded to wave my tiny wand around *, showing his fellow customs officers the proper ‘swish and flick’ motion and trying to cast Alohamora.

I was massively relieved and glad to have provided some entertainment and found a kindred spirit, but I was also all ‘dude, flight to catch!’ I didn’t say that out loud though because I was still so relieved he hadn’t pulled out the rubber gloves.

In the end he gave me back my wand and my troll and I made it to the gate with time to spare and a story that I probably found much more entertaining that Paddy did.

* Yes I am aware of how that sounds. If your inner 14 year old boy is as vocal as mine, just google ‘Harry Potter wand replaced with wang’ and get it out of your system.

That’ll keep you going through the show
(with apologies to Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb)

Sometimes you don’t realise you haven’t been feeling anything until your emotions come back and you start Feeling All the Things.

It’s like when you stub your toe or otherwise bang yourself up. You feel nothing for a split second after you injure yourself (mostly because you are in a wee bit of shock) and then EVERYTHING IS FIRE AND PAIN.

As I mentioned in my book (which you should totally buy if you haven’t already because half of the proceeds go to the NZ Mental Health Foundation – see I can do product placement!) I have the cray-cray trifecta – obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety and depression.

The anxiety is pretty easy to identify because you jump every time a spider farts, but the depression is a creeper and often you don’t realise you are going through it until it has its claws well hooked.

Paddy noticed I was sleeping a lot at home, but I just put that down to having a pretty full life. That was really the first sign. The second was that I had stopped feeling. I was making my way through life fine, but I didn’t really feel happy or sad, or anything really. I was numb.

It wasn’t until I was unwinding in a tropical paradise that I realised just how long I had been like that, and I realised it because I suddenly started to feel things again.

Something really silly made me cry. It might have been something in a book I was reading, or I might have lost something, or I might have stubbed my toe – I honestly don’t remember other than it was pretty minor – and I suddenly realised I hadn’t done that for a really long time.

That opened the floodgates. I’d get really involved in a discussion, I’d read something that resonated in a book, I’d see a cute cat on the internet and I would start bawling. It seems perverse that feeling sad can actually be a good thing but when you have felt nothing for so long it really, really can.

The first couple of days were a bit rough. Different people deal with depression in different ways and different approaches can work at different times for the same person. There is no right or wrong way to do this, so please don’t take my coping strategies as gospel, I might have different ones next week.

You often hear people talk about ‘battling depression’ and often that can be exactly the right thing to do. Fight the bastard. Throw everything you have at it. Don’t listen to a lying word it has to say.

Sometimes though you just don’t have the energy to do that, and that’s okay too. Sometimes you need to know when to stop and regroup, to recharge and get your energy back to kick it to the curb. That’s when I find myself sinking into it, just curling up and letting the feelings wash over me, acknowledging them but not fighting them. Sometimes that can take their power away.

Of course from the outside that looks a whole lot like curling up in a ball and feeling sorry for yourself, and when you are in a tropical paradise that some people might never get to see, that seems rather ungrateful and something you should feel ashamed about.

Now that I am out of that ball and feeling recharged and ready to face what’s ahead of me I can tell you that’s absolutely not the case, but it can be a tricky argument to win with yourself at the time.

When you suck at being a VIP

Before anyone tells me what I missed out on, this is not the first time I have been to Samoa. Around 10 years ago I visited Upolu, Savaii and even American Samoa and saw some stunning places, had awesome experiences and met some lovely people. I particularly recommend Savaii if you are thinking of going there yourself, it is absolutely stunning.

This wasn’t meant to be an adventure holiday, it was more of a stop, drop and flop affair. Somewhere warm to go and do absolutely nothing to stave off burnout in our real world.

So for the first time I stayed in a proper resort. To be honest, and I really hope this doesn’t come across as privileged and ungrateful, I’m not really a huge fan. Don’t get me wrong, it was absolutely lovely. We had lovely air conditioned rooms in a gorgeous setting with BATH TEMPERATURE ocean water just outside, the food and people were lovely, but I’m just not that crazy about people running around after me like I’m some sort of VIP.

I know it’s their job and if they didn’t do it they wouldn’t have one, but I just find people serving me and cleaning up after me a little hard.

I think I might have been a bit hyper-sensitive to it because I wasn’t 100% and I kind of just wanted to be left alone. But every day staff were desperate to get into our room to tidy up and, even if we left the ‘do not disturb’ sign up, they just circled until they had the opportunity to. I understood why after a couple of days, when it turned out hours later a manager would come in to check that the first lot of staff had done their job properly.

That didn’t sit super well with me, and is also a little hard when you are already feeling a bit guilty and ashamed about being busted taking a two-hour depression nap in the middle of a beautiful sunny day. I know it’s silly and that people who are on holiday rest a lot but, trust me, depression isn’t big on making a whole lot of sense.

Sometimes superpowers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

One of the side-effects of going through the medication switch at a resort is that I now know far too much about the people staying there.

I know that three Australian men were there on a racing trip (though I’m unsure what type of racing) and that they were rather fond of the local beer. I know that the kid two tables down from us hadn’t slept for three nights in a row (and I felt terribly sorry for his parents), I know that the woman at the table behind us was headed to Tonga but something her son was supposed to do back home hadn’t been done – and I learned all this in about 10 minutes, while trying to have a conversation with Paddy.

I first experienced this when I was 15 and diagnosed with All the Things. At the time I thought I was hearing voices or had suddenly developed the ability to read minds.

I would be in the supermarket and suddenly be assailed by inane conversations.

“This brand is cheaper but Frank likes that brand better.”

“Susan is a total skank!”

“I told you we were running low on petrol two days ago.”

I would hear all these things simultaneously until I wanted to scream “just put the house on the market Janet – it’s not going to matter if you buy new curtains or not!” at the top of my lungs.

When I told my head doctor about it I was convinced I had developed some sort of unwanted psychic superpowers. “You know, like when Superman got overwhelmed by being able to read everybody’s thoughts until he got control of his powers?”“

No,” she said, disappointingly. “You are not turning into a superhero.”

So much for silver linings!

She explained the fight or flight wiring in our brains, which kept us alive when we lived in the jungle and every cracking twig could be a bear creeping up on you. This was useful when humans were more regularly potential bear snacks, but not so much when you are in the supermarket buying yogurt.

As humans became less likely to be lunch, this hyper-vigilance faded. But those of us with anxiety and out of whack brain chemicals didn’t seem to get the memo. So here I was, in a tropical paradise, drinking pina coladas while utterly convinced there was A BEAR RIGHT BEHIND ME all day, every day. We don’t even have bears in New Zealand, and I’m pretty sure they’re not native to Samoa.

Once I got this under control the first time (and I will again) it actually became a useful skill as a journalist. I had developed bat ears and often conversations inadvertently tuned into, grew into promising story leads.The moral of the story is, don’t whisper things around me, I will automatically tune in, whether I want to or not. Also, that colour really does look good on you, you should totally buy that dress!

Anna’s list of things that help when you are going bonkers in the tropics

There is most definitely a light at the end of this particular tunnel. I am not better yet, the drugs still need tweaking, but I am getting there.

The fact that I am writing again is a pretty good sign. In fact, I wrote most of this while we were away, which is an even better sign. I find writing down the things that have helped me through a wobbly patch is useful for the next time things go bumpy, so here’s my list this time round:

Sending silly messages to my family Whatsapp group chat, and seeing what they are up to (particularly looking at photos of my wee niece and grossing my sister out with photos of my Crocs)
Island cats (none of which were as beautiful and snuggly as my beloved at home of course!)

Swimming in bath temperature warm ocean water

Having breathing space to write again and actually feeling like doing it (it took four days before I was in the right headspace but I got there!)
Umbrella drinks
Putting umbrellas from said drinks in my good luck troll’s hair

Tropical flowers that look like fuzzy Muppet caterpillars

Reading three books in 10 days – a record, which is a shame because I love reading, I just never take the time to do it.
Wearing pretty summer clothes (that probably won’t come out again until the next holiday)

Paddy – for being right there with me while I slept, wrote, stalked island cats and put umbrellas on my troll. Love you babe!

Paddy in training for the 2019 International Competitive Hammocking Championships

Where to get help if you need it (in NZ):

Need to talk? Free call or text 1737 any time for support from a trained counsellor

Lifeline – 0800 543 354 (0800 LIFELINE) or free text 4357 (HELP)

Suicide Crisis Helpline – 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO)

Healthline – 0800 611 116

Samaritans – 0800 726 666

The Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand also has a great list of specialist helplines which you can find here:

Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand helplines (mentalhealth.org.nz)

Learning to forgive myself – and a big splash

A while ago I learned it is never wise to put a date you are going to do something in print.

If you miss that date for whatever reason its just staring at you and you spend more time beating yourself up about it than getting on with things.

When it comes to work or writing for other people, I eat deadlines for breakfast. When life gets in the way of my own self-imposed ones though, I get unreasonably mad at myself.

I should have learned after publishing Which Way is Starboard Again? the book, which I ended by saying we would do the South Pacific trip again in 2016. For various reasons that didn’t happen. Life moved in different, and amazing directions. There will be more sailing and there will be other trips, they may just be at a different time and in a different form. I don’t regret that at all, but I still have that 2016 date glaring accusingly at me from the page.

I did the same thing to myself when I announced the new book ‘Gators, Guns and Keeping Calm’ about our trip to the US. It started with a hiss and a roar, I had the chapter summaries ready to send to publisher and was all ready to self-publish as an e-book if they weren’t keen this time. I was taking regular ‘writing days’ as leave from work when I could and, if I’d stuck to my self-imposed deadline, I would have finished by now. But I didn’t, and I haven’t. And the reasons I haven’t have been mostly out of my control, but I am still bashing myself up over it.

And don’t even get me started on the half finished fiction…

I realised it was getting beyond a joke when I found myself getting all panicky and angry at myself and the world because I hadn’t written a blog. Well I had written it, but in a notepad, which has been sitting on the coffee table looking disappointed in me for months now, waiting to be transcribed.

It’s an important blog. It’s our engagement blog. (For those that don’t already know, after 10 years, the Captain finally proposed -spoiler: I said yes!) It was getting so long between the event and the blog that it was ridiculous. At least that was what I was telling myself. Yes I had a whole lot going on in my life, but what kind of writer am I if I can’t even make the time to write about my own engagement?

It was a couple of days after that last meltdown that I realised the only person who was upset and angry about this was me. That the voice I thought I had chased away during my earlier battles with mental illness was coming back.

“You’re a failure.”

“You’re letting everyone down.”

“Who do you think you are calling yourself an author? You’ve written one book. You should give up now before everyone realises you are a fraud.”

It is a voice that a lot of people have and it can be really hard to accept that it is a voice that is actually full of shit.

People aren’t thinking those things. They never have. But it doesn’t make it feel any less real. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the hardest battle anyone can fight is the one against their own brain.

But I am telling that voice to shut up and get back in its box. No doubt it will pop up a few more times, but I fully intend to slam the lid shut.

I am capable, and I will do all those things I said I would.

There will be a trip.

There will be a book.

There will be a blog (with lots of lovely photos from our engagement party).

But they will happen when they happen and I refuse to feel guilty about that anymore.

Speaking of deadlines, another one we missed, through no fault of our own, was getting Wildflower back in the water for summer. Instead of the usual paint and scrape, her butt was due for a major overhaul – sandblasting 14 years worth of antifoul right off and giving her a whole new beautiful paint job.

Last time Paddy did this he had a bit more time on his hands (and he was also 14 years younger) so this time we decided to enlist a bit of help.

Events that were mostly beyond our control meant the process took a lot longer than anticipated and crept into the colder season which meant then having to wait on the weather. The end result was that we missed the summer’s sailing, but Wildflower now has a lovely arse.

Last weekend we made a massive splash, plonking her back in the water again, where she is most definitely in her happy place.

Poor thing had been sitting so long that a bunch of gunk had clogged the switch of my nemesis the bilge alarm and jammed it on, meaning alarm bells ringing in the middle of the harbour.

Paddy calmly said “would you mind steering the boat for a bit?” and popped down to check things out and I only (internally) freaked out a little bit. Firstly over whether I could actually still remember how to steer the boat and secondly, well, those who have read the book will know why that particular alarm gives me the heebie geebies. It was good news though. I did remember how to steer and the issue was with the alarm, not the boat sinking. I kept my nerves in check and any anxious meeping stayed inside my head. I was quite proud of myself!

I don’t see the point in dwelling on past frustrations, so while it was sad we missed the summer sailing, I am super happy our boat is back in the water and look forward to restoring her from a cesspit of dust and toolboxes to our floating home away from home again.

Also, if you pick your days, winter sailing in Wellington can actually be more settled. We might even enter her in a couple of races in the cruising division of the Evans Bay Yacht Club winter series – though no firm commitment, and definitely nothing in writing!

You belong in a boat out at sea

You belong among the wildflowers
You belong in a boat out at sea
Sail away, kill off the hours
You belong somewhere you feel free

– Wildflowers, Tom Petty

Once I met a bloke who lived on a boat named after a Tom Petty song.

His name was Paddy and hers was Wildflower and they must have made an impression because nine years later they are still in my life.

Wildflower the boat

Wildflowers – the song

Nine years later and the Captain and I were privileged enough to see the man himself in concert. We had no idea it would be our last opportunity.

I’d always quite liked Tom Petty, but he certainly played a bigger part in my life after I met Paddy. The first time he came over to my house I tried to impress him with a best of Tom Petty CD casually playing in the background (smoooooooth…)

He still gives me shit about that.

Petty for Paddy is like Bowie for me – a massive part of his life for most of his life. He has a Petty lyric for just about every situation. He’s dealing with the loss of his idol in a typical Kiwi bloke fashion, but I can tell he is hurting. We both are. We have so many memories wrapped up in TP. In the end even my cat (the late, great Mr Pies) was a fan.

The best of those memories was earlier this year when we actually got to see a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers concert.

Paddy was turning 50 and our initial plan was to head to Hawaii – Hawaii Five-0 styles. Our plans changed pretty quickly though when I spotted on TP’s official Instagram that he was touring the United States at the same time we were going to be over there. My fuzzy American geography decided that our best bet was to detour via Texas, and so the adventure began.

When tickets went on sale I found myself at 4am mashing keys and refreshing my browser in a bid to secure our spot. I was mildly hungover after a few drinks to celebrate the end of the working year and all the usual things went wrong. The internet dropped out, my computer froze, the website got confused because I was in New Zealand trying to buy tickets for a concert in the United States.

But I got there in the end, waking Paddy up to crow about my success. (He muttered something unintelligible and went back to sleep.)

TP didn’t disappoint – the distance we traveled, the adventures to get there – the frisking Paddy got at the airport trying to leave Hawaii (a story for another day) were all worth it. The man still had it. It was an absolutely amazing concert and you could tell he was loving every minute of performing.

The crowd were loving it too – quite a bit judging by the funny smelling cloud of smoke that appeared over the stadium when he played Last Dance with Mary Jane.

It was amazing and we were both so freaking happy (and not because of the funny smelling smoke).

And to make the night even more perfect, out of all of his massive back catalogue, what did he play? Wildflowers.

Paddy probably won’t admit it, but it was quite an emotional moment.

Here’s my wonky recording – ignore the wobbles, the sound is good!

Margarita slushie – essential Texan concert fuel

Pre concert excite! (Yes Paddy is wearing a laser kiwi T shirt. NZ represent!)

Waving celphones is the new waving cigarette lighters

Paddy says losing Tom would have been so much worse if he had never got to see him play. It’s like the best thing and the worst thing happened in the same year. I’m so sad, but happy at the same time that I could help make this happen for him.

I’ll leave you with another favourite of Paddy’s from the 2010 Mojo album

I know that look that’s on your face
But there’s somethin’ lucky about this place
And there’s somethin’ good comin’
For you and me
Somethin’ good comin’
There has to be

– Something Good Coming – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Getting back to nature – whatever it throws at you

This year’s mental health awareness week’s theme is Nature is key – which would be great if nature wasn’t being so bastard cold at the moment *

(*When I started writing this blog Wellington was behaving awfully weather-wise. It has since bucked its ideas up but I can’t be naffed changing my intro or cover pic. Nice one Wellington – keep up the good work!)

In all seriousness though, they’ve put together some pretty cool material to remind people not to get buried in things and to look to nature to support mental health and wellbeing.

One of the things they have produced is a little green N sticker to put over the N on your keyboard to remind you to take a break and go hang out with the grass and woodland critters. It’s a great idea in theory, but I’m a bit of a keyboard masher and N seems to be right in the firing line – so mine kind of looks like this now.

Hopefully it stops raining for long enough to go outside before I wipe it off the face of my keyboard. (See asterisk above).

It might seem a bit tree huggy, but there’s actually something in it all. When I’m having a hard time with anxiety, one of the best things I can do is just drop everything and go for a walk. Blowing out the cobwebs by moving is a great distraction when your brain is trying to eat itself. Going to the gym is great but sometimes you just can’t deal with other people – going for a walk around the harbour (even if it is head first into a gale force wind) can be much more healing.

I discovered the benefits of getting out and walking when my OCD was bad all those years ago. I would get to the point where I couldn’t stay still. I couldn’t stand still, I couldn’t sit down I just had to get out of where I was. Walking through botanical gardens, parks and along beaches saved me in a lot of ways and the friends and family who walked with me (when I was up to dealing with people) even more so.

Gardening is now one of my go-to’s (a genetic predisposition from my Mum). I can spend hours playing in the dirt, freeing plants from weeds and vines, talking with worms and helping things grow. It can be very zen in some ways but great when you are frustrated too. Sometimes the more violent the gardening the better. Hacking up blackberry and ripping out weeds by the roots can be exceptionally satisfying.

Getting away from the dirt – I guess, if you think about it, heading out to sea is about as close as you can get to nature. While it wasn’t always super relaxing – and at times rather traumatic -our trip around the South Pacific in Wildflower also provided me with some of the most peaceful moments oof my life. A night watch on a still night can be stunning. When there is nothing but sea, stars and fluorescent algae to keep you company, nothing but waves and the Milky Way, there is nothing more beautiful. It is one of my go-to images when I feel stressed out.

Speaking of images, the Mental Health Foundation also has a photo challenge going, which I am having a go at this year. You can check it out here:

Mental Health Awareness Week photo challenge

If you’d like to have a look at my pics you can find me on Instagram as Seamunchkin, @Seamunchkin on Twitter or check out the Which Way is Starboard Again? Facebook page. Let me know if you are taking part, I would love to see your photos too.

The best thing is you don’t have to be officially cray cray for this sort of thing to help. We all lead highly stressful lives in one way or another and sometimes we just need to be reminded that there is a world out there. That outside of that meeting you were in, that difficult class you took or that politician that annoyed you on the internet, there’s an ocean and stars and trees and flowers and dirt.

I’m not saying going outside will fix everything. If it did I would spend much more time out there than I do. Treating mental health is much more complex than that. It may involve talking with people or in some cases, like mine, medication.

That’s why I get so mad when I see those stupid memes about how hugging a tree is better than medication. You know the ones – I’m not giving them the airtime of reposting. There is a great response by the wonderful mental health advocacy website The Mighty that I will share though:

To the Person Who Made a Meme Calling Depression Medication ‘Sh*t’

Like everything, it is all about balance.

So kudos to the NZ Mental Health Foundation for encouraging people to think about their brains as well as their bodies.

I know I bang on about it a lot but mental health support in this country needs so much more support than it gets. I am so glad it has finally become a political issue. It affects so many of us and we need to stand up for ourselves and each other and push it where we can.

In the meantime, if you have anything to spare, I highly suggest sending it the Mental Health Foundation’s way. They need all the support they can get.

As always, 50% of the profits from Starboard physical book sales are going to them so if you want something to read and a warm fuzzy feeling feel free to push the button below ($10 sale is still on)

Note: The super funky image at the top of this blog is called Rain and wind. It’s by jaci XIII, and was created for the Kreative People Challenge 59 CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

1000 subscribers! Let’s have a sale! (proceeds to NZ Mental Health Foundation)

I’m super excited to see that 1000 lovely people have subscribed to this blog (especially since I have been a bit rubbish at regularly updating it of late) and a big wave hello to the new followers on the Starboard Facebook page!

This is an awesome surprise and a good wake up for me to share more with you all.

To celebrate I’m selling signed paperbacks of Which Way is Starboard Again? for NZ $9.99 with free postage in New Zealand.

50% of the proceeds still go to the New Zealand Mental Health Foundation . Mental health is severely underfunded in New Zealand and this is a fantastic organisation that deserves all the support it can get. I have already made our first donation of $200 so thank you so much for everyone who has been a part of that.

For those of you who would like to donate more the $19.99 full promotion is still available and there is more information about it here

Mental Health Foundation fundraiser

You can also purchase it, and other cool stuff, through the Mental Health Foundation website (where they have also done a really cool review!)

NZ Mental Health Foundation – buy useful stuff

If you live outside of New Zealand and are interested in buying a copy, drop me an email at whichwayisstarboardagain@gmail.com and we can sort postage. The book is also available on most ebook platforms, but I don’t have control over the pricing of those. Do shop around though, I have spotted it on sale at different sites. At the moment Amazon has it at $6.59

In other news, book number two is definitely on the way and I will share a sample with you shortly. I am also investigating turning Starboard into an audio book, I just need to get my head around the technological side of that!

Will keep you posted.

Again, thank you so much for the support. It might just be a matter of pressing a subscribe button, but it means an awful lot to writers like us – so yay you!

***

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The yachtie circle of life.

Dusting off the cobwebs

Postcard New Zealand

Waiting on the weather (again) part 2

Little legs

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Porridge in the air

Boots and suits

Radio gaga

I am hope – counselling for youth

When you can and can’t write

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RIP big fridge

The cleanup

A new obsession

Goodbye kitchen table

A mysterious love note

Help us find the handsome wonder

It’s alive (kind of)!

Even more for the fridge nerds

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