Travelling trolls Archives - 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!

Christmas at Sea

As you can probably tell by the title of this blog, we didn’t manage to make it home for Christmas day. The original title was ‘Weather Forecasters are Lying Bastards Part 3’ – but after the lovely Christmas day we had on the water I decided that was far too negative.

When we were finally able to leave Auckland it looked as though our biggest problem would be not enough wind – and for the first couple of days that was pretty much true to form. When the wind did blow from the South (the direction we were trying to travel in) there was so little of it that it was inconsequential – which was why the 30 knot Southerlies we got in the middle of the Bay of Plenty came as such a rude shock.

We’ve been in stronger winds and much more uncomfortable conditions in Wildflower before and coped fine, but I think that must have been the last straw for me, because I kinda lost it. I was still able to do everything I needed to, including clambering up on deck in the howling wind (with a harness on Mummy!) to reef the mainsail and frantically pulling on ropes while the poor boat’s sails crashed and banged, but once all that was done I am ashamed to admit that I hunkered down on the floor of the cockpit and bawled like an angry kitten. I had had enough, I wanted off the boat, I wanted out of these shitty conditions and most of all – I just wanted to get home. It felt like we had been trying to get down south forever. We had already planned to have a belated Christmas with my family in Christchurch, but I was really missing them and was just a teensy bit over it all.

Paddy handled it like a champ. He held my hand and let me rant and rave, which was exactly what I needed. In the end we tacked out to sea for most of the night to keep us clear of the land and tacked back in again in the morning so we could round East Cape. It meant we lost about a day going out of our way but by the time we got round East Cape (which has a reputation for being a little windy) conditions had settled down and it was pretty uneventful.

Unfortunately for Paddy my next attack of Neurotic Crew Syndrome came the following day when we finally got the chance to check our Winlink radio email. Paddy came up to the cockpit, gave me a hug and said “there’s been a couple more quakes in Christchurch, but everybody’s okay.” Dad had emailed us to let us know because he had assumed we would have heard something on the news and been worried, which was absolutely the right thing to do. Unfortunately we hadn’t had any traditional radio access for a while so I didn’t really know the extent of what had happened – though I had figured if Dad was able to email then things must have been alright. I replied straight away and then checked our email before I went on my first night watch. We hadn’t had a response (though it turned out Mum, Dad and little sis had all taken turns writing in an email but for some reason it hadn’t gone through then). This meant I had spent a large chunk of my first watch glaring at my celphone and waiting for some sort of reception and when I got it – at 1am – I immediately woke my poor parents up to make them tell me they were okay. After hearing their voices everything was so much better and when the email came through in the morning it really made me smile.

So when Christmas day dawned, I was in a much better headspace. It helped that it was a lovely, calm, sunny day. Sure, we had to burn some diesel because there wasn’t much wind, but at that point I was okay with that!

Neptune started giving us our Christmas presents at first light, when the fishing rod started going nuts. We caught three decent sized tuna in quick succession before I made Paddy put the fishing rod away (we hadn’t managed to get anything done that morning because we were constantly running to the fishing rod, and there’s no point in being greedy!) We had a couple of albatross fly around us for a bit after that and, no sooner had I started thinking ‘the only thing that would make this more perfect would be dolphins’, they started to turn up.

First it was just a little guy on his own who jumped out of the water a couple of times and then disappeared but he must have got some of his mates because the next thing we knew we had a couple of pods of them hanging out with us for the rest of the day. It was really lovely.

Paddy and I and the goodluck trolls pulled Christmas crackers, wore silly hats, told awful jokes and ate scorched almonds – so all in all it was a pretty awesome day.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful and we even got a bit of good sailing in and were able to give poor old Big Red the engine a bit of a rest. We got a classic Wellington welcome home this morning though, with a couple of knots of tide against us going up Cook Strait. It was reasonably comfortable though, just made the going a little slower. The wind pretty much dropped off completely until we hit the South coast of Wellington, which decided to remind us what city we were heading towards by cranking things up from about 2.5 to 35 knots in rather quick succession. There is a bit of a wind funnel effect there with the land but, because there is such little sea room between the land and you, there is very little swell. So you have a lot of wind but the boat isn’t bashing around. It is a little surreal.

Once we got into Wellington Harbour though everything had settled down and we were able to enjoy watching home appear over the horizon (in between the ferries and mad buggers kite surfing). Once we had managed to get the boat docked at Chaffers Marina we jumped off and hugged each other. We’d made it! Around the South Pacific and back all in one piece and without killing each other. It has been an incredible experience and one I will not forget in a hurry.

I also – despite the way I felt in the Bay of Plenty – definitely want to do it again. There is a line in an Irene Quinn song about a rotten sail in wretched weather that says ” it’s a good thing sailors have got short memories” and I think that’s pretty much it. The rubbish stuff feels like it is going on forever while it is happening, but it is only a tiny part of it. A chap we met in Opua before we left summed it up pretty well too, while climbing soaked out of a dinghy in rough weather, “sailing – the good stuff outweighs the bad stuff” he said, before shaking himself dry and heading towards the yacht club. And, having now experienced it, I couldn’t agree more!

We are headed to Christchurch (on a plane!!!) tomorrow to spend Christmas with the whanau and will be back in Welly early Jan when I will be forced to get used to being back in the real world again by starting back at work. I am actually really looking forward to catching up with my friends and workmates, so it should all be good.

I still have a couple of retrospective blogs to write when I get the chance – so don’t think this is the last you will be hearing from us! I am also working on converting this blog into a book (with lots of extras of course!) so I will keep you posted. If you love me, you will buy it 😉 xxx

Wellington to Auckland in pictures

Leaving Chaffers Marina — Our neighbours Mike and Dani wave us off

Yay!! It looks like I’m able to upload photos again so I am going to stuff as many as I can into this post. The technical difficulties may have stemmed from the fact that the wifi antenna at the yacht club was left sitting on a rather jaunty angle after some rather gnarly winds swept through here. It appears to be upright again now, so fingers crossed!

Paddy with our shiney new NZ ensign flag ready for duty

I should probably also mention that I have Cal the travelling good luck troll with me as I upload, so credit where credit’s due 🙂

Fergus and Paddy — Fergus takes the wheel

Caterpillar — Night watches were a little chilly until we got further north!

Hoping for wind — Fergus hoping in vain for some wind to blow us around East Cape

Leaving Whitianga after refuelling due to lack of wind

Toys! — Paddy playing with his navigating toys

Needle rock — Sun setting over Needle Rock leaving Whitianga

There are some much better sunset shots from the Opua trip!

Auckland skyline - lots and lots of lights!

Orange flowers! — The awesome orange flowers work gave me before we left

Okay, so the last shot has nothing to do with the Welly to Auckland trip – I just really like the flowers!

I passed!!!

Hi all,

Just a quick update (since Dad let the cat out of the bag on my blog about cats on maps)

I PASSED MY BOATMASTERS!!!

I’ve been meaning to let you all know for the past week, but life the universe and everything kept getting in the way.

The written exam went reasonably well (though I made a couple of really silly mistakes that I would have picked up if I had the time to re-read it properly).

I also got a few funny looks when I pulled out my goodluck troll and stuck her on the desk – but she did her job very well, and I am sure they were all just jealous!

The oral exam was hilarious. I arrived there and half the class were sitting around a table filled with chips and beer, swotting up on flashing and beeping things and waiting for their turn.

It was nice that it was that relaxed, but the temptation was to drink the nerves away. I managed to resist this urge and soothed my nerves with potato chips instead. Not so good for the waistline, but much better for the brain!

Basically the oral part of the exam involved sitting down with an examiner and talking through the bits that you stuffed up in the written exam.
Part of the rationale behind this is that some people tend to freak out in written exams, but by sitting down and talking to them you can gauge pretty quickly whether they know their stuff or not. I think it’s a really good way of doing things.

The oral part went well for me and pretty much devolved into a conversation about next year’s Pacific trip. When the examiner pulled out a chart though and started asking me questions I started feeling a bit queasy, but it was Paddy’s love of gadgetry that actually saved my bacon.

While we were looking at the chart and talking about how important they were he asked if we also had GPS. When I told him Paddy had actually installed this other fancypants system called AIS – which gives you a whole lot more info than GPS and lets other ships know about you (if you want a more detailed explanation, Google it) – his eyes lit up and he forgot about the chart entirely!

I must have managed to bluff my way through the rest of it successfully because he passed me quite happily.

So now I just need to get out and practice it all.

It’s a gorgeous day today so we are planning on putting the sails back up on the boat and take her out for a spin.

You’ve got to pick your moments in Wellington when it comes to putting up sails because if the wind performs its usual tricks there is a high likelihood of doing a Mary Poppins number!

Wish us luck 🙂

Avoiding dentists with the wobblies

Paddy once told me about a dentist in Tonga who wouldn’t let being in the advanced stages of Parkinson’s disease prevent him from doing his job. While I respect the man’s determination, it did make me a little nervous, and was one of the reasons behind me deciding to get my wisdom teeth out before we go to the islands.

While the Tongan dentist only charged Paddy’s friend $20 to fix a tooth that was giving him grief, it was a bit of a traumatic process – and the filling fell out after two days. This led to Paddy’s first ever use of an emergency dental kit which he says was a resounding success – after the application of some putty stuff and a shot of serious antibiotics, the patient was right as rain.

Don’t get me wrong, I do admire Paddy’s enthusiasm for amateur dentistry, but I still think I made the right decision getting the ouchy stuff done here, particularly since it was far from straight forward.

amature dentist — Been there, done that, got the t-shirt

I didn’t pick up Dad’s navigation genes but I did inherit his rather difficult teeth – which I think is a pretty bum deal. My wisdom teeth weren’t actually causing me any pain, but when I did check them out I discovered two were badly impacted and slowly creeping sideways towards the nerves that control feeling in my mouth. The other two had roots wrapped around things that roots definitely shouldn’t be wrapped around. So we called in the dental surgeon (thank you health insurance!)

It was the first time I had been under a general anesthetic and I was a teensy bit terrified. It didn’t help that something had held up the works earlier in the day and I several hours to sit in a hospital bed waiting and stewing. Luckily I had Paddy, Cal the good luck troll and (the newest addition to the troll family) Deco the diving troll to keep me company. I was even such a nerd that I tried to distract myself by reading my Boatmaster’s notes.

Sadly the gown didn't come in orange — Before - indulging in some pre-operative troll therapy

The waiting actually turned out to be the hardest part – I only actually remember two things before waking up groggy with a face surrounded by icepack. I remember staring up at a big light shaped like an alien spaceship and watching it get darker and darker. I also remember the anesthetist telling me there used to be a giraffe hanging from it to distract children – apparently the kids loved it but adults woke up complaining of having terrible dreams about giraffes, so they took it down. I didn’t dream about anything – not a single solitary giraffe. I felt ripped off.

Next thing I knew I was waking up in recovery asking if I could say thank you to the anesthetist for making everything so quick and painless – only to be told that I already had. Lord knows what else I said in there!

In the spirit of public humiliation, here is the after pic that Paddy so kindly took for me on his celphone.

Stoned — After - drugs are good mmm-kay?

It has taken a wee while for everything to heal up and one of the holes has been giving me a bit of grief but – through the magic of antibiotics and painkillers – I am feeling heaps better. I don’t look like I have a tennis ball stuffed in my left cheek any more and I am no longer rivalling the cat for the flat’s biggest drooler. I’m still not quite on solids yet, but I’m getting there – and I still think it was a better option than chancing the emergency dental kit!

Chickens, seasnakes and a whole lot of courage

Waking up to this is pretty sweet! — Room with a view

Niue – population: 1400 people, a pod of dolphins and more chooks than New Zealand has sheep.

It is also an amazing example of courage in the face of disaster.

In 2004 Niue was clobbered by a tropical cyclone that pretty much levelled a large portion of it. Cyclone Heta was a category 5 that devastated the tiny island’s capital of Alofi, wiping out most of its commercial, electronic and communication infrastructure.

Six years later, after an aid injection from New Zealand and Australia, the tourism industry is growing,the marine life is returning, you can scuba dive, swim with dolphins, snorkel and sample the local cuisine. Both Paddy and I agree its somewhere we are happy to see our taxpayer dollar at work.

So technically this blog entry is a little off topic since we didn’t actually sail to Niue, but it ticks the tropical paradise and scuba diving boxes so I’m running with it – It’s my blog and I can bend the rules if I want to! 🙂

Paddy and I have just come back from a week in Niue (though both of us felt we really needed two!). It was essentially meant to be a diving holiday, but we fell in love with the place in the process.

If you’re looking for flash hotels with hottubs and Sky TV then perhaps Niue isn’t the place for you. But if you want to be able to chill out, commune with awesome seacritters, and are happy to operate on island time, you will love it. There is only one plane in and out each week, so you arrive on a plane full of strangers and leave knowing the vast majority of them through running into them at the islands local hangouts (like the Niue Yacht Club that doubles as an icecream parlour or the Washaway Cafe where you pour your own drinks, write down what you bought in a book, put your money in the till and take your own change).

For me the highlights were diving, dolphins and whalesong and I experienced all of these through the fantastic folk at Niue Dive. I’m a bit of a newbie diver and I hadn’t been in the water for a little while so I have to admit I was a bit of a scaredy cat at first. I was by far the least experienced on all the dives we did but Annie, Ian and BJ from the dive shop were wonderfully patient with me and in the end had me doing things that exhilarated and challenged me. I hadn’t had much experience cave diving and we did quite a bit of that, but I was able to do it in my time and at my pace and was really proud of myself when I actually did it. I also went down the deepest I have so far (27 metres) which wasn’t half as scary as I thought it would be.

Sometimes, when you’re inexperienced, you get the feeling that you are holding up the works for those who actually know what they are doing, but I never got that feeling from any of the people we went out with, it was pretty much all in my head. Whenever someone said ‘don’t worry, we’ve all been there’ it didn’t feel like a platitude and I actually really appreciated it every time I heard it.

While the caves were fascinating, and some truly beautiful when you saw the sunlight shining through from the surface, I have to say it was the reef diving I enjoyed the most – just cruising around checking out clown fish and giant clams and seeing the coral regenerating.

When you are underwater it becomes very obvious how much damage the cyclone has done. There is a vast amount of dead coral, which is sad, but there are also signs of life – and that life becomes all the more vibrant in contrast. The new coral growth and the fish and the sea snakes stand out all the more for it I think.

One of my favourite dive spots was Snake Gully – it had coral and critters, beautiful caverns – and of course, sea snakes.

I didn’t know this, but sea snakes (or at least the ones in Niue) actually swim up to the surface to breathe. It was quite fascinating watching them from the boat before we dived in, their little snakey heads popping up out of the water to gulp a few breaths before slowly slithering back down again. From the bottom it was really lovely to watch, four or five snakes at a time winding slowly winding upwards like reverse reptilian rain.

And yes they are poisonous, but they have such teeny tiny teeth that you’d pretty much have to shove your finger down their throat and squeeze their head for them to be able to do any damage – all the same, I wasn’t game to cuddle one, no matter how friendly they seemed to be!

Whales are another reason people are drawn to Niue, and usually at this time of year mother whales come in to the island to calve. Unfortunately this season, because of the La Nina weather pattern (please correct me if I’m wrong, I always get them muddled up!) the water has been a couple of degrees too warm for them, so there haven’t been so many around. We were able to see some coming in pretty close from the Coral Gardens resort we were staying at, but we didn’t have so much luck finding them when we were out in the boats. We were however able to hear them singing underwater, which was magical.

The dolphins were fabulous too – it was my first time swimming with dolphins and they were just beautiful! The dolphins that hang around Niue are Spinners, named for their habit of leaping out of the water and whirling around like dervishes – apparently just for the hell of it. I’ve heard that dolphins get all the food they need in 15 minutes a day and spend the rest of their time playing and shagging – and we definitely spotted a little bit of both on this trip!

My favourite was a little baby dolphin in the pod who was trying desperately to keep up with the big kids – when they leapt out of the water he followed with a bit of a feeble splash and he could only manage about one and a half spins before falling back into the water – but hey, he was trying!

Sadly there are a lot of abandoned buildings that still have not been rebuilt and apparently there are three times more Niueans living in New Zealand than there are now in Niue. But as one local said to us ‘if they all came back, where would they fit?’ I guess it shows that those who stayed are the ones who love the place, and that there is the opportunity to leave and make a life elsewhere for those who want to.

Niue is a lovely little place, but it is isolated so the tourism industry is vital for it. So go there, it’s gorgeous – and if you don’t believe me, here are some more pictures to make you jealous 🙂