When Dean and I first met, I bought him a card with a huge door on the front, ajar. At the very bottom of the door was a tiny, terrified kitten, poking it’s head out into the world. That’s how I feel right now. Inside the card said, “the best things in life are outside of your comfort zone”. This is how I’m trying to feel right now. I can’t believe I’ve left my furbaby again, my family and friends, university routines, and our lovely marina community.
Of course this is just nerves and I have a full perspective of where we are going and what we intend to do there. I keep looking at images from Suva, or Ovalau and I’m already there. I’m looking forward to us experiencing the Pacific in a different way this time, outside of the perception of the paradise dream and assumptions about traditional lives. I know it’s not going to be easy, but I also know that this can bring great things.
I had a conversation with an Canadian woman yesterday about travelling. She spoke a lot about travelling through places like India and how difficult it is to cope with beggars and poverty. I said that I thought that this was one of the aspects of being privileged and being able to afford to travel, and that if you chuck in the capitalist-human efforts of climate change, we must all continue to challenge our connections to people. Silence. Must get better and delivering things.
It’s been quite a journey so far. We sailed from Mana to Auckland, up the West Coast. We stayed in Auckland for a few days and caught up with family and friends, then headed back up to Opua. The choice to go up the West Coast was inspired. The argument goes that if you go up the West Coast there is nowhere to hide if it all turns belly up. But, with weather prediction software being as good as it is, and this coastal weather being a lot more settled and predictable than the terror East, we figured the changes of things turning belly up and being in extreme weather, were slim. Also, our last trip up the East Coast in 2015 was a total nightmare. I almost enjoyed the sailing this time (ssshhhh).
Highlights so far: having our crew member Ian back on Pebbles – you are fabulous Ian, thank you so much for supporting us in your lovely way and for being such an interesting person; seeing Mt Taranaki and Cape Reinga; meeting Noah for the first time (my Dad’s Godson); sitting in the library at Auckland University and thinking “wow, I’m here”; catching four fish on the way up, some of which is still in our freezer (tuna and mahimahi). Lowlights: missing Zena like crazy; sailing boredom with occasional terror; breakages/things going wrong on the boat include main sail, head sail, gennaker, batteries, anchor light, furler, fridge lid, dinghy. WTF? And realising (again) that the sailing community, while amazing, can be very sexist: on the regular VHF cruisers net the other morning some funny (not) man decided to auction up his wife in the buy-sell-swap section. Some men pitched in with funny (not) comments so I pitched in with “sexisim went out in the 80s guys”. Silence. Realising that NOT being out of your comfort zone feels bloody fabulous!
Click on the photos below to read the captions. Next time I’ll work out how to get them in chronological order.
Steve, our crew and marina neighbour, is arriving today. Can’t wait. We hope to leave on Monday. I will post a photo of our last image of New Zealand then, otherwise, Fiji here we come!
Sailing is Not Scary 