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.
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.
Hideaway Island
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.
The cruising circle of lifeHey, no problem!This is how you hold a kid, right?
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.
Trolled up and totally ready
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.
Captain calm
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.
First mate meerkat
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.)
The Easter bunny found us
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!
Erie Bay morning
Chilling in Milton BayLeaving Milton Bay in the cloudsWildflower at Punga CoveBit more relaxed now!
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.
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!
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.
Gumboots at work
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!
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:
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:
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!
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.
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
Who knew our back door had a signature?
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
There’s a table here somewhere!
Man and refrigerant
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!
The mysterious note
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.
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.
From the lounge to the garage
One happy engineer!
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!
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
‘Swish and flick!’
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.
Voices by the pool
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!)
Island meows!
Swimming in bath temperature warm ocean water
32 degrees!!!
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
Muppet flowers!
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)
I got Paddy in orange!!
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)
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.
Wildflower takes up stilt walking
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!
Skipper watching like a broody chookNice arse! Shiny new paint jobAll aboard!Relieved Skipper is relieved
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 fuelPre concert excite! (Yes Paddy is wearing a laser kiwi T shirt. NZ represent!)The man himselfWaving celphones is the new waving cigarette lightersPost TP glow – and awesome T shirts!
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
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
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!
I got ‘the call’ from the publisher – Starboard has been out for a year and the copies they have left aren’t moving anymore.
With limited space in their warehouse it was time for the oldies to make way for the new kids, leaving me with the choice of buying up the stock they had left or letting them pulp the excess.
Because I couldn’t bear the thought of my first book becoming garden mulch, there really was no choice.
So I am now the proud owner of 22 boxes of my own book.
My book-babies
All up I sold just over 1000 copies, which isn’t too bad for a first book with a Kiwi publisher. Now it’s my job to move the rest.
I’m still fundraising for the Mental Health Foundation so if you or someone you know would like to contribute to that you can buy it here for $19.99, with 50% of the proceeds going to them
If that’s not affordable for you though, just drop me a line at whichwayisstarboardagain@gmail.com and we can sort something out – I have plenty of them!
Seriously, I have plenty of them.
Other plans for this many books include; building a giant book fort and filling a pool with them so I can swim about in them ala Scrooge McDuck.
I was hoping to make one of those cool book Christmas trees you see on Pinterest but with copies of the same book but I ran out of time before Christmas (I suspect I will still have enough left to be able to do it next year though!)
Any other suggestions for what to do with a stupid amount of books would be much appreciated!
Please don’t think I’m having a cry here. As I said, I think Starboard went pretty well for a first book by a new kid. I just wasn’t going to let what was left be turned into mush. Thank you so much to the thousand plus people who bought it, to those who bought the e-book, to those who got it out of the library and recommended it to their friends. The support has been amazing and overwhelming.
And yes, there will be more. I’m working on a couple of projects at the moment (fiction this time) and there will be a Starboard followup when life lets us do another big trip.
Short version for busy folk – 50% from Which Way is Starboard Again? book sales will now go to the New Zealand Mental Health Foundation – you can get it here for $19.99
Reading the stories generated by Mental Health Awareness Week has been both inspiring and depressing.
It has been inspiring to see the strength of those living with mental illness and speaking out about it to remove the stigma, and depressing to hear about the state New Zealand’s mental health system is now in – particularly for young people.
I was lucky enough to receive excellent support when diagnosed with OCD, anxiety and depression as a teen (20 years ago) through the 198 Youth Health Centre in Christchurch (now 298 Youth Health) and the Youth Specialty Services there. I read a story in the Sunday Star Times about a Ministry of Health target that 95% of youth referred to mental health services have their first treatment within eight weeks. Thousands assessed as ‘non urgent’ are waiting longer than that. I honestly don’t think I would be here (or at least who I am) if I had to wait that long.
I know there isn’t a huge amount one person can do to help. If I wasn’t certain I would take it all home with me I would retrain and join the mental health profession.
What I do have though is a book.
A book about living with mental health issues and going outside your comfort zone. A book about bumbling around the South Pacific on a boat and the amazing people we met there. A book that people living with anxiety issues have told me made them smile (which is by far the best review I could ever hope for) and a book I hope I can use to raise a little bit of money and awareness for mental health services in New Zealand.
So I’m now working with the awesome people at New Zealand’s Mental Health Foundation to see if I can make that happen.
From now on, from every copy of Which Way is Starboard Again? bought through me for $19.99 50% will go to the Mental Health Foundation.
You can buy them here
or if you don’t use PayPal just drop me a line at whichwayisstarboardagain@gmail.com and we can sort something out.
The Mental Health Foundation will also be selling the book through their website and I’ll share the link when I get it.
So if you are interested or know anyone else who might be – point them our way. We would love your support.
