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.
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!
When I look back on it, my mental health blogs seem to jump from ‘bugger I’m bonkers again’ to ‘yay I’m better!’ with nothing much in-between.
That’s because in-between isn’t much fun, and writing when you are in-between is not an easy thing to do. But it’s probably the most important time to write, because in-between is the time that people need to hear that what they are going through happens to us all. That the ups will eventually stick around longer and the downs won’t last forever. I think we have a tendency to block out the in-between when we start feeling better because we don’t want to focus on the crap stuff. So we don’t write about it and we don’t talk about it.
So my blog for this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week (which kicks off tommorrow) is about what in-between being sick and being well looks like for me.
Why do I feel sad? I’m better dammit!
In-between is having an awesome, productive weekend where you do all the things that seemed so insurmountable for so long. You mow the lawns and remember how much you love spending time in the garden. You tidy your room and hang up those pictures that have been gathering dust. You feel successful and, for the first time in a long time, really happy.
In-between is coming home the next day and crying your face off because you have felt sick and sad and anxious all day and you shouldn’t be feeling that way because you are better now dammit.
Poor, long-suffering Paddy says getting better isn’t a straight path, it’s a continuum. And he’s right. When you start to see little glimpses of sunshine you take it so much harder when it starts to cloud over again. But the sun is still there and eventually it will stick around longer and longer.
Okay, who stole my teeth?
In-between for me this time was also finding out how much damage my anxiety had done to my body. It was going to the dentist to have a filling replaced and finding I had anxiety-clenched my teeth so hard, for so long, I had ground down the enamel so far you could almost see the nerves.
It was also having to be a grownup and working out a payment plan so I didn’t have to sell a kidney to get it fixed.
Funnily enough, I had actually noticed in a couple of pictures friends had posted online that I seemed to have a weird gap in my teeth when I smiled. I remember thinking ‘that’s odd. I don’t have a gap there’ – not after all the money, time and trauma my parents went through getting me braces as a teen.
Then the dentist broke the news to me.
“You have the mouth of an 80 year old,” he said.
“What?!” I spat.
“Well, maybe a 70 year old…”
“Dude, that’s not much better!”
It turned out he was talking about wear. I had done about 80 years worth of wear and tear to 37 years worth of teeth.
Yeah alright, it was me.
After the initial shock, I wasn’t actually surprised. I most likely grind my teeth in my sleep, and I have experimented with sleeping with a mouthguard before, but the real issue was during the day. When my anxiety was up I could judge how tense and jumpy I had been by how much pain my jaw was in by the end of the day. I wouldn’t even realise I was clenching my teeth until I unclenched them. My jaw would pop and my back teeth would be stuck together like glue.
It was actually one of the first signs for me that the new medication was starting to work. I would get to the end of the day and think – ‘hey! My jaw doesn’t hurt!’
So while I wasn’t exactly surprised, I was rather shocked that something that was going on in my brain could do that much damage to my body without me realising it. (I may have had a minor meltdown over that, but seriously, who wouldn’t?)
Goodnight, sleep tight – don’t let the tooth monster bite!
The next step was, what to do? Leaving it was an option – for six months or so anyway, much longer though and it would be the difference between $3000 for building up what was there and $50,000 for getting crowns on everything.
I decided to rip the bandaid off. I knew that if I put it off I would just keep putting it off. There was a psychological component to it too. What’s more symbolic of getting better than taking a ragged, crumbling, anxiety mouth and giving it a proper smile again?
So I booked in to get some scans and moulds made. When I saw the mould of my mouth I was horrified. It looked like something parents would use to scare their children. It turns out I had ground several millimeters from both the top and bottom of my front teeth. I needed nine teeth built up with the equivalent of 11 fillings worth of schmoo.
Ahhh! Run away!!
They probably aren’t lined up exactly right as I was balancing them on a chair in the dentist’s waiting room while taking the pic, but you get the idea.
New gnashers!
It all happened quite quickly. A week after seeing the funhouse horror moulds I was in the dentist’s chair having scaffolding put on my teeth. Two hours in the dentist’s chair later (no fun drugs, just lots of injections) and I pretty much had a new set of gnashers.
It was actually a fairly painless process, the crick I got in my neck was the worst of it really. Hearing comments to the dental assistant like ‘look at all the wear there’ and ‘have you seen many procedures like this before?’ and learning that one of my front teeth was actually loose from all the pressure I’d put on it was a little more traumatic.
The dentist looked pretty proud of his work and he had every right to be. I thought I looked like a whole different person. He said I looked younger but he would – I was paying three grand and he had that ‘mouth of an 80 year old’ line to make up for!
I’m pretty happy with it though and think it’s an awesome symbol that things are getting better.
New gnashers
It does feel rather strange though, like I have someone else’s teeth. I tried to bite my nails the other day and I actually physically couldn’t. Maybe after all these years I might be able to quit that habit!
Four weeks of schmoo
The only drawback now is that for the next few weeks I am pretty much on a diet of mush until things settle down. So for me in-between is now soup and smoothies and sneaky KFC potato and gravy – but it will be worth it to have my smile back.
I have also developed a whole new respect for people on special diets. I got my teeth done just before a big work conference that involved catered meals. Everyone was fascinated when my dinner looked different to theirs and I got the third degree. By the end of three days my answers ranged from ‘I have new teeth and can’t eat solids’ to ‘I anxiety clenched my teeth to oblivion, please leave me alone to eat my schmoo’ – I seriously couldn’t do that all the time.
I love my new chompers though, and they are helping me in more ways than one. When I have a rough day and (as Paddy so eloquently puts it) ‘the black dog takes a dump on my brain’ I can look in the mirror and see that no matter how ratty things get, they can be fixed. It won’t be an easy fix, it could be the equivalent of four weeks of eating slush, but there is a fix there. In-between sucks, but it’s exactly that, in-between. You will come out the other side, potentially with a whole new smile (even if it’s one held together by plastic and dental goop).
Mental Health Foundation fundraiser
As always, and especially this week, 50% of paperback sales of Starboard the book go to the NZ Mental Health Foundation. Depending on how financial you are feeling you can either pay $20 and donate $10 here
Or take advantage of the sale price and pay $10 and donate $5 here
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
This year’s mental health awareness week’s theme is Nature is key – which would be great if nature wasn’t being so bastard cold at the moment *
(*When I started writing this blog Wellington was behaving awfully weather-wise. It has since bucked its ideas up but I can’t be naffed changing my intro or cover pic. Nice one Wellington – keep up the good work!)
In all seriousness though, they’ve put together some pretty cool material to remind people not to get buried in things and to look to nature to support mental health and wellbeing.
One of the things they have produced is a little green N sticker to put over the N on your keyboard to remind you to take a break and go hang out with the grass and woodland critters. It’s a great idea in theory, but I’m a bit of a keyboard masher and N seems to be right in the firing line – so mine kind of looks like this now.
Sorry N key!
Hopefully it stops raining for long enough to go outside before I wipe it off the face of my keyboard. (See asterisk above).
It might seem a bit tree huggy, but there’s actually something in it all. When I’m having a hard time with anxiety, one of the best things I can do is just drop everything and go for a walk. Blowing out the cobwebs by moving is a great distraction when your brain is trying to eat itself. Going to the gym is great but sometimes you just can’t deal with other people – going for a walk around the harbour (even if it is head first into a gale force wind) can be much more healing.
I discovered the benefits of getting out and walking when my OCD was bad all those years ago. I would get to the point where I couldn’t stay still. I couldn’t stand still, I couldn’t sit down I just had to get out of where I was. Walking through botanical gardens, parks and along beaches saved me in a lot of ways and the friends and family who walked with me (when I was up to dealing with people) even more so.
Gardening is now one of my go-to’s (a genetic predisposition from my Mum). I can spend hours playing in the dirt, freeing plants from weeds and vines, talking with worms and helping things grow. It can be very zen in some ways but great when you are frustrated too. Sometimes the more violent the gardening the better. Hacking up blackberry and ripping out weeds by the roots can be exceptionally satisfying.
Blackberry slaying therapy
Getting away from the dirt – I guess, if you think about it, heading out to sea is about as close as you can get to nature. While it wasn’t always super relaxing – and at times rather traumatic -our trip around the South Pacific in Wildflower also provided me with some of the most peaceful moments oof my life. A night watch on a still night can be stunning. When there is nothing but sea, stars and fluorescent algae to keep you company, nothing but waves and the Milky Way, there is nothing more beautiful. It is one of my go-to images when I feel stressed out.
Speaking of images, the Mental Health Foundation also has a photo challenge going, which I am having a go at this year. You can check it out here:
If you’d like to have a look at my pics you can find me on Instagram as Seamunchkin, @Seamunchkin on Twitter or check out the Which Way is Starboard Again? Facebook page. Let me know if you are taking part, I would love to see your photos too.
The best thing is you don’t have to be officially cray cray for this sort of thing to help. We all lead highly stressful lives in one way or another and sometimes we just need to be reminded that there is a world out there. That outside of that meeting you were in, that difficult class you took or that politician that annoyed you on the internet, there’s an ocean and stars and trees and flowers and dirt.
I’m not saying going outside will fix everything. If it did I would spend much more time out there than I do. Treating mental health is much more complex than that. It may involve talking with people or in some cases, like mine, medication.
That’s why I get so mad when I see those stupid memes about how hugging a tree is better than medication. You know the ones – I’m not giving them the airtime of reposting. There is a great response by the wonderful mental health advocacy website The Mighty that I will share though:
So kudos to the NZ Mental Health Foundation for encouraging people to think about their brains as well as their bodies.
I know I bang on about it a lot but mental health support in this country needs so much more support than it gets. I am so glad it has finally become a political issue. It affects so many of us and we need to stand up for ourselves and each other and push it where we can.
In the meantime, if you have anything to spare, I highly suggest sending it the Mental Health Foundation’s way. They need all the support they can get.
As always, 50% of the profits from Starboard physical book sales are going to them so if you want something to read and a warm fuzzy feeling feel free to push the button below ($10 sale is still on)
Note: The super funky image at the top of this blog is called Rain and wind. It’s by jaci XIII, and was created for the Kreative People Challenge 59 CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
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!
This is one of those blogs where I publicly announce I am going to do a thing so it forces me to do the thing.
The thing I’m referring to is another book, which I am in the process of writing (and now I have told all of you so I can’t back out).
I think it will just be an e-book this time. Though when I say ‘just’ an e-book, please don’t take that the wrong way.
Ebooks are great, I’ve read some brilliant ones. I’m talking more length really. I suspect I won’t have the material for a paperback as this story covers a shorter period of time. It’s more of a taster. I don’t think the process of writing and finishing it isn’t going to be any easier than it was for Starboard though!
Sorry sailors, but this time it’s not about boats – but it is about travelling.
I found that, next to the sailing and the crazy, quite a few Starboard readers picked it up because they were interested in travel writing. So this time I thought I’d give that a go.
This is going to be a story about travelling to the United States. A story about alligators, firearms, cowboys and an island that is home to more than 500 cats.
It is also a story about travelling there at a particularly unnerving point in time.
When we left the country’s president had just started lobbing bombs at Syria. While we were there North Korea’s leader was (mercifully unsuccessfully) launching missiles in our general direction and making all sorts of nuclear threats- it really was a fabulous time to be over there with an anxiety disorder!
Despite all the background excitement we had some fantastic, memorable, hilarious experiences, met some wonderful people and had many of our preconceptions challenged (in both good and bad ways).
I’m going to tell you right now, I’m really nervous about writing about the US. There is so much history, culture and shared experience that I have not lived through and can’t possibly truly understand.
As a western tourist I am fully aware I am writing from a place of privilege. There are some heartbreaking things happening over there right now and I am writing about a holiday – but I hope I will be able to do some of the places and people we saw some justice.
Like Starboard, this can only scratch the surface. I wrote that book after living in the South Pacific for just a few months. In this case it was mere weeks. There is absolutely no way you can get your head around a country in that period of time.
It was a fantastic adventure though, and I am looking forward to sharing it with all of you.
My working title is Gators, guns and keeping calm – and, because I now know you need a tagline explaining what the book is about (thanks Starboard publishers!) – an anxious Kiwi’s guide to the United States of America
Though it’s early days yet and in a month’s time I might decide I hate it and go with something entirely different. Any better suggestions much appreciated – feel free to leave them in the comments 🙂
The trip was initially just going to be to Hawaii for Paddy’s 50th birthday (Hawaii Five-O styles) but then I discovered Tom Petty was going to be doing a tour in the states at the time we were going to be over there.
Since Petty to Paddy is like Bowie for me this absolutely had to happen. We worked out Texas was the best timed and placed concert, so I bought us tickets to his show in Dallas.
We thought Hawaii and Dallas would be an interesting enough combo, but then we got talking to travel agent friend and suddenly the trip grew.
So thanks to her the book now covers the following destinations: Hawaii – Waikiki, Maui and Lanaii (the island of 500 cats), San Francisco, Texas – Houston and Dallas and (the place I have wanted to visit forever) New Orleans.
Here’s some sample pictures to whet your appetite (and an entire album of cats for the cat people). I’m hoping if I go for e-book format I might be able to include a few more photos that I could with Starboard, but I’m not entirely sure how that sort of thing works. I’ll have to do my homework!
Disclaimer: I know there will be people reading this who don’t think medication for mental health is a good idea. That is your prerogative. I have tried living both with and without it and have come to an informed decision that I would rather be a functioning human being on cray cray pills than the wretched creature I am without. Please don’t send me articles about side effects and studies saying they will turn me into an evil alien cyborg. Trust me, I have read them. This is not a blueprint for everybody. It’s what works for me. Please respect my decision.
Right, now that that’s out of the way;
I have been on my little blue (sometimes green, sometimes purple and blue) happy pills off and on for 20 years. I found something that made me able to function and achieve in the world and eventually I stuck with it.
Last year my old faithfuls stopped working.
It didn’t happen suddenly. In fact it took me quite a while to actually work out what was going on.
I’d have little ‘episodes’ completely out of the blue. I would be happily going about my day, then have a screaming anxiety attack. My jaw would start aching, then I would realise I had been clenching my teeth for an entire day. I would feel really low and lethargic for no apparent reason or I would be overcome by unaccountable rage.
It wasn’t until I started experiencing OCD symptoms again that I realised something was really up. It was just the preliminary stuff – having to stop myself from repeatedly checking whether the door was locked or the iron was on, counting, having to repeat certain phrases a certain amount of times or something bad would happen – but i knew if I didn’t do something about it things were only going to get worse.
Even then, it wasn’t until I talked with a friend who had been through something similar, that I worked out what might be going on.
Like everything, there are differing opinions about this, but for some people – my friend included – once you reach a certain age (in my case *cough* mid-30s) the meds can stop working as well. The colloquial term is ‘Prozac poop out’
It certainly doesn’t happen to everyone, but I was pretty sure it was happening to me. I was put on fluoxetine when I was 15 years old and there are many different drugs out there now, so I figured it might be time to give something new a try.
My GP wasn’t keen to change my prescription without an expert opinion, so off I went to an incredibly good (and incredibly expensive) head doctor. It’s crazy (‘scuse pun) that you have to spend so much to access decent mental health care in this country and so wrong for people on lower incomes – but that’s another rant for another day.
Brain doc said fluox shouldn’t conk out but agreed that something wasn’t working in my case and thought something different might be better for me in a lot of ways.
Enter sertraline (more commonly known as Zoloft) my new kid on the block.
I won’t lie to you, I was pretty scared. Changing something that has kept you sane for decades is bloody frightening. I remembered what it was like in the black days when I was really bad and I was so afraid of going back there. But what I was doing wasn’t working anymore.
I did the switch over the holidays so it wouldn’t affect my work in any way and I’m glad I did because the first couple of weeks were pretty awful.
I stopped the fluox completely and started with small but increasing doses of sertraline until I got up to what we thought would be a therapeutic level. There was a period of time, when one drug was leaving my system and the other just entering it, that i was definitely undermedicated. I was twitchy as all hell and would start hyperventilating and crying while making dinner for no apparent reason. I was determined to stick with it though, and eventually it passed.
After the first couple of weeks I did begin to notice a rather surprising side effect. I had energy again. I guess because I had been on the fluox for so long I hadn’t really noticed that my normal was pretty much a permanent state of drowsiness. It had become worse over the past couple of years but it had always been there.
I was on quite a high dose of fluoxetine for my OCD and one of it’s known side effects is that it comes with extra added sleepy. Considering how permanently wired I was when I started taking it this was a welcome side-effect. It meant I could sleep and make it through life without bouncing off the walls. Some people don’t like taking it because it makes them vacant and foggy in their mind, but I never had that. I was still myself and I could function without screaming.
What it did mean though was that, in the later years of taking it, I didn’t realise that fantasising about going home and going to sleep at 3pm every day was not normal. That sneaking off for a nap at any possible moment at any time of the day wasn’t something that everybody did. If I got home from work before Paddy did I would crawl into bed and try to sneak some z’s before he got home. He told me later there were a lot of times where he thought ‘where’s Anna? Oh, she’s asleep.’
Over the past few weeks I have felt more awake and alive than I have in a long time. I’ve achieved so many things over the past few weeks that I have been putting off all year and I’m getting back into writing again. It feels amazing.
One of my friends asked if I felt ripped off that I hadn’t done this earlier, but I don’t really. I needed to calm my mind and body down when I was really sick. After years of terrible insomnia it was a blessing. It’s only really been the past few years that it has been a problem, and even then I didn’t realise that it was. I achieved some pretty awesome things during that time. I sailed and scuba dived, I wrote a book. I don’t feel ripped off, but I do feel better than I have in a long time now.
The only other side-effect I have noticed is insomnia, but that is definitely easing up now. And the funny thing is, I didn’t get anxious about not sleeping. Previously not being able to sleep would wind me up like a corkscrew until I had to knock myself out with drugs. I don’t feel like that now. I just read a book until I eventually conk out, and when I do I stay asleep, which is a new and exciting thing for me.
It’s still early days, but so far I have been having very few anxiety symptoms and I’m not getting the breakout OCD stuff anymore.
I feel awake and alive and happy – so roll on 2017!
PS – shameless product placement.
50% of proceeds for Which Way is Starboard Again? now go to the New Zealand Mental Health Foundation. Just click here or drop me a line at whichwayisstarboardagain@gmail.com
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.
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