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Published: January 11th 2009
Slowhand Crew
No, not a group of rappers, just some sailors feeling a little chilly after too long in the water. From the left, Annalisa, Rob, Michelle, and Ross.Happy New Year everyone!
We hope you've had a lovely time over the holidays - and apologies to those who didn't appreciate getting a sunny xmas card... hehehehe..
It's a while since we've been in touch but I won't bore you with the mundane details! We finally got our container of goods late in October so the house looks much more lived in - plus we bought bedroom furniture in the sales so we're no longer on the floor, yippee!
Work wise, well, it's work... Do I need to say much more?
And on the sailing front we've pretty much stopped sailing at Royal Akarana in Flying Fifteens as with the yachting we've been doing we haven't had time!
Right, onto holidays! This edition is something of a picturefest, as we thought it was more interesting than listening to me waffle on. Well, I'll try to waffle less anyway...
Firstly we spent our first night aboard 'Slowhand', the yacht we've been sailing from Ponsonby. Michelle and Rob (one of the sons of the Muir and Janet who own the boat - more about them later) kindly invited us to go on a Saturday cruise over
to one of the small islands in the Hauraki Gulf, Motuihi Island. After arriving in the late afternoon we had a lovely swim (it was December so really quite warm during the day - if a little chilly in the water!) followed by food and an explore of the island. See photos taken at sunset form the boat - it got a bit chilly but the view was good! After sleeping on the boat (or at least resting the eyes, I was woken by every tiny slap of wave on the hull!) we had a morning swim before breakfast (just to check that we were right when we thought the sea hadn't warmed up yet...) and then a leisurely sail back - what a way to spend a weekend! I can highly recommend it.
As the weather continued to hotten up we ventured out for a walk in the Waitakare region, and to go and have a nosy at a dam Ross had been working near! We were joined by Sarah, one of our friends, and had a lovely picnic by the dam. It still amazes me how noisy New Zealand walks are, the insects are so loud! Though
Cruising home
It's a tough life in weather like this. Sun beating down, beers in the fridge. the noise is interesting Sarah did not appreciate a big beetle that decided to get up close and personal to her during lunch... Can't say I blame her! The short walk we went on typifies the New Zealand attitude to an organised walking path, by the dam was a picnic area with undercover seating to save you from any hot sun or rain (including plastic side sheets to shelter you from any wind), and there was a bricked area to put your BBQ on (as after all, what else would you be taking on a walk?). It's very amusing, all along the beaches and things there are special places to put your BBQ, and on campsites they have ones set up for you to use for a small fee, how could one live without a BBQ for a day?
And then, in no time at all, it was xmas! How did that happen! The weather conspired to make us feel more at home on xmas eve (it was cold and drizzly in the morning) but it was mainly warm and sunny for the rest of the time. Our friends and neighbours Sarah and Jason joined us for a BBQ
Waitakere Ranges
The headwaters above the Upper Nihotupu Dam. on xmas day, though Sarah managed to get called out just as we just as we got the food nearly cooked (she's a nurse in a coronary ward) - talk about very bad timing for someone to have a heart attack! We managed to eat it all though... Only joking, we did save some.... And we did of course have far too much food and tons of chocolate to get through!
On boxing day we tried another kiwi classic, an alocohol fuelled BBQ followed by a visit to the 20-20 cricket game at Eden Park. Admittadly, I'm not an avid cricket fan but it was good fun - especially when we were doing mexican waves round the stadium or someone hit the ball well enough to get a 6. We were sat in the terraces (aka the cheap seats) which meant we got a good tan (ie. we were in full sun!) and got to see the excitement of people getting thrown out for bad behaviour, mainly throwing plastic bottles during mexican waves. Everyone in the terrace stands up, points at the person and chants 'you f*ed up!!!' until they're escorted out! People are a little more liberal with
Tui in the bush
A quintessentially New Zealand scene - a Tui in a tree fern, complete with Auckland in the background. bad language here, you often here people swear on the radio. Oh yes, and the cricket was good too! It was a draw, but the West Indies won in extra time.
For New Year we went away for five days to the Coromandel. This was another attempt at being true Aucklanders, as no-one from Auckland stays there over the holidays. Everyone from Auckland migrates out to the Coromandel and Bay of Islands, the place is deserted from the week of xmas through to about the 12th January. It's quite common for people to take most of their holiday at this time of year, it's normal for companies to completely shut down for 2-3 weeks (great unless you haven't been in the country long and therefore haven't accrued much holiday!).
We stayed in a place called Whitianga (pron. fit-e-anga or wit-e-anga depending on how you feel, I think the politically correct pronunciation is the first one but people use either interchangeably - like all place names here beginning 'wh', very confusing!) on a very full camp site. Some people had managed to get a huge canvas frame tent, car, and fishing boat on trailer onto their pitch, others had
Christmas Eve
Celebrating in style and pretending it's cold outside. Our only Kiwi neighbour (Paul) said just before this, "Doesn't it feel like Christmas, lovely and warm". No. been more organised and had a tent site which appeared to have their whole family staying on it and then another site with boat and cars. Amazing, I don't think I've ever seen so many people sharing a fairly small space!
The weather was very hot - it's started to become a lot more reliably warm and sunny now (except today - see more later..) - it reached 27 degrees on one day, and with high humidity you could really feel it. So we went off to the beach, starting off with our bodyboards on Matarangi beach (fairly strange place as it seems to consist only of holiday homes, but it had a gorgeous long and shallow shelving beach, great for a scaredy cat like me), and then moving onto some beaches that you can only get to by gravel road, Otama and Opito beaches. Of course there were still people towing their fishing boats along the narrow steep gravel roads to launch from those beaches. The bays themselves were quite sheltered and very beautiful - and of course had an obligatory tractor, suitably decorated with tinsel, to get the boats in and out with - but there were
OUT!
Oh, no, they dropped it again. New Zealand prove they're fit to take on the world at 20-20 cricket. Just so long as the opposition isn't from the West Indies, India, England, South Africa... jellyfish at Opito! Yuck!
Janet and Muir, the owners of the yacht we've been sailing, also have a bach (holiday home) up in Whitianga so we met them a couple of times while we were up there. It's near the beach which is nice, and having not brought our BBQ it meant we could still go out for one with them. So we spent plenty of time with them and Sarah and Jason. We rarely left the coast, prefering to concentrate on activites that let you jump in the water at regular intervals to cool off - so kayaking, windsurfing, and bodyboarding were all we really did!
New years eve was celebrated in style in a Whitianga pub that could have been taken out of the set of a wild west film; fortunately the live music was actually pretty good, so we partied through into the night, before returning to our campsite. Not long after, we discovered the reason why it's a bad idea to camp on New Years Eve. You might go to bed late expecting a nice lie in, but the sun on the tent makes short work of that ambition. So we emerged gasping for
breath from our own personal sauna at 8am, and spent most of new years day recovering!
Our holiday season ended a little earlier than most Aucklanders - we both had to be back on the 5th January - and Heather decided to mark the start of a new year of hard work with a little exercise. She took part in a special 'girls only' triathalon this Sunday down at Mission Bay, just along the road from our house. Fortunately the weather had cooled down, just in time for the weekend, after a blisteringly hot working week. We're now both recovering - Heather from the excercise, me just from having to be up at 6:15 on a Sunday to see the start! She finished 121st out of 643 finishers, so is very pleased with herself.
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Matt
non-member comment
Sunshine!
Looks great - I do fancy a bit of that winter summer. I love the big tree! Looks like you guys are having a good time down south. keep on having fun. Matt