South Pacific Archives - Page 3 of 4 - Which way is starboard again?

Why I’m backing the rich boy race

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Come on boys – do it for the little guys!

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

A year in captivity

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

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

A year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And on that note – here’s some explosives.

splosives — Smoooooooke on the waaaaaateeeer….

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

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

So how’s the book going?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The first draft of anything is always shit – ERNEST HEMINGWAY

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

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

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

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

Bon voyage Mirabilis!

The last few weeks have felt like stepping into a time warp, as we watch our neighbours scramble to get ready to head across the Pacific.

I recognise and empathise with all of it – the race against the clock to get the boat ready to go before the weather decides to play silly buggers, the boat maintenance by tourchlight, the million little things that need to be tweaked , tied down and ticked off before you can hit the waves. Then you have to wrap up your life, wind up your job, pack away all your worldly possessions – you find yourself so busy your friends and family begin to forget what you look like.

I watch our neighbours get ready and part of me sympathises with them. But the other part of me is jealous as hell.

Mike and Danica Stent are about to embark on one of the biggest, maddest adventures of their lives. They will get to go places that tourists don’t often go and see things that most people never get to see. They will learn a whole heap about themselves, meet a bunch of amazing people and learn how to live life in whole new way.

Paddy and I first met our neighbours when Dani and I wound up on the same Boatmasters course. When we got to the whole ‘class introduction/why are you here?’ bit we were astonished to discover that not only were we both living at Chaffers Marina but we were on the same pier and practically right next door to each other. Paddy and I were planning to do the Pacific trip and Mike and Dani were getting their boat ready to do the same thing the following year.

It also turned out that Mike shared Paddy’s engineering geek traits so the two of them got on like a house on fire. It got to the point where I was a little concerned Dani would ban him from coming over – because every time he did it ended with “well Paddy’s got this and I think we should…”

This time last year it was Mike and Dani standing on the pier, waving us off – and this year we will happily return the favour.

It has also been great fun watching the nameless boat next to us grow handrails and new sails and morph into the lovely Mirabilis. A Mirabilis is a type of nudibranch – basically a really tiny, really pretty sea slug (Dani is a seasoned scuba diver and her work involves hanging out with all manner of interesting sea-critters). Mirabilis has only recently had her name unveiled, and I think it is pretty stylish!

I’m not going to say when they are planning to leave, because I don’t want to jinx anything – but lets just say it’s soon! I’m sure they will be great. Dani has had the chance to get out on the boat a bit more than I did before we left so she’ll have a much better idea about what all the bangs and creaks and groans mean.

Mike was our crew when we brought Wildflower back home from Noumea and he was great – he even did the cooking when I was too crook to manage it and he witnessed me having a bit of a meltdown reefing a sail in some bouncy conditions heading in to NZ and didn’t run away screaming, which I think bodes well.

But if I can offer any advice at all, here are a couple of things:

1) If you see the Port light of a massive ship coming for you when you are heading towards Auckland – it is probably the Skytower

2) If you see the Port light of a massive ship coming towards you late in the evening – it could very well be the moon rising

3) Venus is a b*tch – no matter how many times you see her and you know it’s her, there will still be a part of your brain that reckons she’s a boat

4) Reheatable passage meals are awesome. The last thing anyone feels like doing is cooking if the boat is bouncing about a bit and sometimes the simplest task seem to take hours while you are down in the galley. Being able to throw stuff in a pot and just stir it till it reheats can be the best thing in the universe!

5) Try to get some sleep. It’s really easy to stay awake all day, particularly if it is nice and sunny and you are really enjoying yourself, but if you don’t have at least a bit of sleep before you go on nightwatch you can end up jumping at shadows all night

So guys, enjoy. You will have an amazing adventure. There will be times when it’s not easy, there will be times when you fantasise about pushing each other overboard – but those will pass. There will also be times when you have to pinch yourself to believe you really are where you are – and you will create memories that will last a lifetime.

We will miss you, and we will expect updates on your progress – no excuses!

Happy Sailing!

Paddy and Anna 🙂