After leaving the boat in Napier, I worked on an apple orchard - crappy! Then a road trip with friends from Toronto to see lots of cool Lord of the Rings related stuff including the third movie at the Embassy theatre in Wellington, where the premiere was! Then back on the boat for a lovely Christmas with the Alvei crew. Then another roadtrip this time with Dirk, Fritjof and Jennie. We hiked through glaciers, bathed in a freezing cold lake, saw a colony of seals, and celebrated New Years with a few thousand people in Queenstown! Good fun! Unfortunately, due to [View Full Entry]

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I can't help posting a few more pics. This is the crew and their tattoos! [View Full Entry]

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The past three weeks of sailing were incredible! Veronica and I left the Alvei today and watching it sail off without us was like watching our house and family drift away. But the money has run out and it's time to work. I'll miss everything about sailing, including getting up at 4:00am for watch, eating Fritjof's "kerosene pie" (this was a veggie pie gone very wrong), the dolphins that swim along side the boat (at night they are just glowing outlines because of the bioluminescence in the water), listening to Jared (the first mate) tell stories about his tattoos and his [View Full Entry]

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Such a beautiful place - I'm starting to entertain thoughts of moving to New Zealand permanently! We arrived here on the 23rd and I had to stay on the boat the first day for anchor watch. The second day a bunch of us went ashore and hitched a ride into "town" from someone, maybe he was a postman(?). He was a crazy driver though! All the roads here wind around the mountains, they don't have guardrails and they're only a lane and a half wide! He went zipping around the turns without a care in the world and I almost had [View Full Entry]

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Alvei is a 40m long ship built in 1920s originally as a fishing boat and the captain rebuilt it into a sailing ship in the 80s adding three masts, the main being 30m tall. There are currently 12 crew members (room for 18) and our duties include steering, lookout, sail handling, anchor watch when we are in harbour, cooking, cleaning, and maintenance like painting, tarring. It's a bit like a commune, we all pitch in to make sure things run smoothly. [View Full Entry]

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I stayed in Auckland for three days (which is too long really b/c it's not that special - it's kinda like North American cities but with some mild differences). I met some really nice people there - Mike and Adrienne from Wyoming, Jenny from Montana, and Veronica from Munich, Germany. The five of us hit it off so well and we were all tired of Auckland pretty fast so we decided to head North together to a cool little town called Paihia. It's really beautiful little town but there wasn't a lot of work so we decided to head further North [View Full Entry]

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A short 4 day stop on the way to New Zealand. Myke travelled all the way to LA to do the All Tomorrow's Parties festival with me in Long Beach! Best festival ever!!!! Lots of really great bands were there like Modest Mouse, Built to Spill, Danielson Famile (a christian band), Sonic Youth and Iggy Pop! The festival is still in its growing stages so there weren't mil [View Full Entry]

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