Advertisement
Published: October 15th 2008
Royal Akarana Yacht Club
This is the sailing club we've joinedHello all!
Well, it's been a while since our last blog but we have been busy...
Ross has been happily settling into a routine at work (I'm actually jealous!), and I've been setting up home and going to job interviews. Thankfully I have now got a job and I start working for Auckland council on the 20th October.
I'm sure Ross would want me to start by telling you all how we're getting on with our sailing so I'll indulge him a bit. Obviously in the UK we did a lot of dinghy sailing, what else are Sunday's/Wednesday evenings for? Unfortunately over here we discovered that this would not be as easy to continue as we thought..
1. Most clubs expect you to keep your boat at home and trail it to the club every week, when you see a pic of our house later you'll see why storage at home would be a bit difficult, and how annoying would trailing and rigging every time you want to sail be?
2. The choice of boats. The only boats with large fleets are the 'P' class (think adult oppy - mostly wooden), Starling (a cross between a comet
and a solo - mostly wooden) and Laser, and of course there are high performance skiffs - but not much in between!. Other classes have small numbers and there don't seem to be very competitive fleets.
So we've gone for a mix of Flying fifteen sailing (we've joined Royal Akarana Yacht club where there's a decent sized competitive fleet racing on the odd Sunday, plus they have a club boat which we're trying out) and yachting at Ponsonby Cruising club who do racing fortnightly on Tuesday and every Friday evening. We've got into the yachting scene by turning up randomly at a yacht club and discovering that a very nice bloke needed crew for his boat. I won't go into lots of yacht descriptions for fear of boring you but it's medium sized and we've been racing with 10 on board (through three of us were weight over the side!). I can hear the sniggering now about yacht clubs and blazers and needless to say both of these clubs are as relaxed as Leigh and Lowton, sort of L&L on sea really! Sailing is in the Hauraki Gulf for both clubs which is between where we live and the
island (volcano) of Rangitoto.
Right, enough of sailing and onto houses! We've rented a lovely fairly recently built (80's?) 3 bed semi. It's laid out with:
- Top floor (level with the road) having our bedroom, small dressing area and en-suite, and a study/3rd bedroom
- Middle floor - 2nd bedroom, bathroom, open plan living/dining/kitchen with two sets of patio doors leading out onto a patio (we bought some pots last week - including a paradise plant which is popular here, and some herbs - so it looks more homely now)
- Basement - Internal access garage (with automatic doors, very lazy!)
At the side is the drive which goes from road level down at approx 45 degrees to the basement behind the house (nice 90 degree corner in there too). It's interesting to drive up but we are getting used to it, the only problem is if any cars come down the road as we don't have a flat bit at the top to stop on!).
It's in a seaside suburb called St.Heliers which means we're only 10 mins walk from local shops (including a nice butchers, fish shop, restaurants/cafe's, bars, hairdressers, butchers etc) and
25min walk (or a quick cycle) to a cinema and more restaurants than you can shake a stick (including Movenpick... I really must find an excuse to have an ice cream there!) in Mission Bay.
Houses here are bizarre by UK standards, single glazing is the norm (no old sash windows though, lovely aluminium frames..) and there's no central heating. At this point you're probably thinking, 'gosh it must be warm!', it's not that warm I can tell you! When we arrived it was freezing! There's no insulation in houses either and they're mostly built of very thin wood (good for the earthquakes I suppose and more available than brick). Things are changing and new houses need to be insulated. They're very funny here about the environment, recycling is very actively encouraged and the energy companies produce mostly renewable electricity, but heating is by little electric heaters in each room.... Very odd. Don't worry, we have invested in some!
The temparature is really warming up, today it was 18 degrees and sunny, we were sailing at the weekend in shorts and tshirt. But this time of year is a bit variable, things get better from January supposedly, there
are lots of storms that sweep across dropping 20+mm of rain in an hour or so and then everything goes back to normal. Last Tuesday night's sailing was cancelled because the wind strength was over 30mph (goodness knows what the gusts were, it was difficult to walk!).
Transport wise we've also bought a car (a little honda jazz) and pedal bikes. It's a flat cycle all the way round to central Auckland - once you get down our very steep hill - on a very scenic coast road. Having cycled there fairly leisurely last week it takes about 30-40 mins each way, but I was dawdling and looking at the view (plus there was a fair bit of wind against me, both ways of course! Auckland is quite like Edinburgh in that it always seems to be windy)...
The reason it's a steep hill down from our house is that we live on a volcano. Don't worry, it's extinct. For more info look here: http://www.gns.cri.nz/what/earthact/volcanoes/nzvolcanoes/aucklandprint.htm for a doom and gloom report or here: http://www.qualityplanning.org.nz/pubs/Planning-for-an-Eruption-from-the-Auckland-Volcanic-Field.pdf for a more balanced view. All Aucklanders are advised to have an emergency kit, I know this as it was disaster awareness week last
Sunset over Auckland
View from the end of the road yesterday evening - a beautiful sunset. week (there are other hazards like earthquakes etc. too so I should get one together soon!).
The people we meet here continue to be very friendly and accomodating. We were at a bbq last week with one of Ross' colleagues and his family, they're also the people who've lent us the camping chairs so that we have somewhere to sit. They're German and like everyone else we've come across who's emigrated they also went for a while without their container goods... This means that everyone is more than willing to share spare furniture, which has been great! We also nipped round to our relocation consultant's house (who's now a friend - house hunting is definitely a bonding experience...) for dinner with her family, and we've been out for coffee with the neighbours and had them round for drinks. So we're doing our bit to be social butterflys. I'm looking forward to starting work next week as it'll make meeting people a bit easier.
BBQs are very popular... Like Australia it's the thing to do on xmas day and any other excuse, they even cook on bbqs just for normal meals for a fair portion of the year. Needless
Auckland by Day
The view of the CBD from the end of the road, you can clearly see the sky tower. to say they are mainly the gas as opposed to charcoal variety and are the sort you wheel around with side trays and lids. We're going to have to buy one soon or we'll be social outcasts! Why else would anyone go round to your house?
Our container is hopefully turning up next week (we then have a while to wait while it clears customs but it will at least be in the country!) which will be nice. We've been living on camping chairs and a new mattress (the best mattress we have ever had... It's one of those not roll together pocket spring things, it's incredibly comfy, and I can be really clumsy on my side and Ross' drinks don't get spilt! It's wonderful!) for the last 2 and a half weeks and it'll be very nice to get our sofas back! We have now got our laptop (as it was in our airfreight which we got hold of two weeks ago) which has been good for keeping in touch over skype. We've bought some cooking items as we couldn't live off restaurant meals again! I think the posh pans we decided to buy would be approved of
Our house!
Plus me all dressed up for an interview... by both our parents!
I've rashly signed up for a women's triathlon centred around Mission Bay in January... It's only a short one though, for more details see here: http://www.tri.co.nz/default.asp?PageID=477. I got a bit carried away after a good cycling trip, it should be good fun though, it sounds as though some people walk the swim as it's really shallow and the majority walk as opposed to running so I should be ok!
Well, I think that's it for this instalment. If you'd like our address/phone/skype details and we haven't shared them with you yet do let us know.
Have a wonderful few weeks until our next instalment!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.065s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 12; qc: 47; dbt: 0.0386s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
