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If you have heard of Auckland (hands up) you will probably have also have heard of its byline, The City of Sails, well although this reputation was gained during the days of NZ as the host of the America’s Cup, it continues to be a rather appropriate title, especially considering we have spent almost every weekend since we arrived heading down to Westhaven (Auckland’s massive marina down buy the harbor bridge) to go sailing.
It all started with some lessons from a lady called Penny Whiting, a bit of a local legend who takes sailing classes on her 47ft Endless Summer. I have been sailing before (Belgium to Norway in the Tall Ships race on yacht and some dingy stuff at school) but basically forgotten everything in the four years since I had been out last. Tom despite being born and raised in Portsmouth is one but landlubber, so we (or rather Penny) set out to fulfill his destiny as a salty-sea-dog.
Penny’s approach to teaching is very hands-on so very soon we were out on the water pulling ropes (sorry, sheets) left (i mean port) right (starboard..) and centre (. Even if no one was exactly sure to
begin with what the hell was going on, being involved in everything from rigging up the sails to steering the boat quickly makes you pay attention and you begin to pick things up quite quickly. As well as sailing around the Waitemata Harbour we also did classes on navigation, knots, safety and everything that the budding yachts person needs to know, even splicing, which I can’t wait to test out for real when I find myself in urgent need of a big loop in the end of a piece of rope.
One of our classmates Jack must have gathered from our oh-so-very-subtle hints that we had kind of caught the sailing bug but unfortunately were yachtless, and more importantly devoid of yachty type friends and he invited us out on his parents new yacht, hooray! So with Susan and Simon and Jack we spent Easter Monday cruising around harbor before laying anchor at Rangitoto for a picnic.
The classes where scheduled to take place over three weekends however because we had some terrible weather (naturally, tee hee hee, Tom has been telling me off for being too negative about the weather but its true) Penny took our class
out for an extra sail after Easter so we could practice and of course relearn everything that we had forgotten and it really helped. After the course ended we were left with one minor problem, how to put our new found skills into action? Despite our ill-fated ‘couch-surfing’ experiment (ok, we were stuck with an ozzy house guest who rather overstayed his welcome as I am sure Lucy will remember) we decided to enlist the help of the internet and a site called crew.nz.org. Not knowing where to find sailors in real life to badger into taking us out sailing we posted adverts in cyberspace and uncovered one of the best kept secrets of sailing, that there are LOADS of people out there who want, nay, NEED crew and will happily take you out on their boats, AND more often than not they will feed/water you/take you out of a beer afterwards. That has been my experience anyway and within a couple of days of posting the advert I was setting off alone to meet strange men I had met on the internet... ok it sounds wrong but it worked out a treat.
The first race that I took
part in was on a yacht called Champosa (an IOR 50 for those of you who are interested) in a weekly event called a Rum Race organized by the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron. These are racing where sail boats of all sizes race against each other around the harbor - although positions are very much determined by handicaps. It wasn’t until we had left the harbor and someone handed me a Heineken that I realized that basically it is a good opportunity for those who are lucky enough to finish work early on a Friday (racing starts at 4pm) to get out on the water and have a good time whilst racing up and down the harbor. And the rum? Thats the prize of course.
Early Saturday morning I woke up in the middle of a thunder storm, feeling a little delicate from all the rum and had to rush back to Westhaven to crew on an Elliot 1050 called Second Nature for an annual race called the Hauraki Trifecta, which this year was to take place around the island of waiheke. When I had spoken to Simon (the cheeky looking chap on the right of the crew
photo) about the race he had said it was going to be a long one, and indeed it was, almost nine hours. The most important role for a novice yachty on a team with an experienced crew is basically as a (ahem) ‘ballast technician’, ok, someone who moves from side to side of the boat and sits along the rail trying to get it to sit flat in the water as possible. Not the most glamorous job in the world but a whole heap of fun, especially when you are sailing into the wind and the boat is keeling over like mad and it is raining cats and dogs, love it! It was a fantastic day, I met loads of interesting people, saw my first wild penguins (small brown fluffy ones) and once it had stopped raining the scenery was incredible and the sunset beautiful. Oh and the rum was good to and the home made egg and bacon pie was a real winner. The race was a real one-off (the races are usually nowhere near that long) and is particularly interesting as boats race in teams of three as well as individually.
We were placed 7th overall individually and
our team came first. Not a bad start to the world of yacht racing I think.
I must have made an ok job of throwing my weight around as not only have I been rum-racing it each Friday since but also I was invited back to Second Nature for the first race of the Winter Series last Saturday. This time Tom was also out, on a boat called Trouper. Although there is nothing like a bit of healthy competition, we were in different classes so were able to wave at each other as we came out of the Marina. The highlights of the race for me were that it was about 50 times more exciting than the Trifecta with loads of course and sail changes, oh and when another yacht made an illegal move and forced us out of the way as we were going around one of the bouys, that was pretty exciting, oh and when we realized that we were looking at the course sheet from the previous year and had missed out one of the race points, whoops... It didn’t really matter though as were sailing well and it was all good fun. Drinks in the
yacht club afterwards were on Simon who took responsibility for this small mishap, better luck in the next race in two weeks time I am sure.
So thats it, the latest chapter of the adventure, from here on to be known as ‘A Life on the Ocean Wave’ .
Lots of love to everyone. Liz
Ps. And before you ask when you look at those pictures, no, it isn’t possible to look windswept and interesting whilst sailing, only windswept.
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danielle
non-member comment
looks fab!
looks like your having an amazing time!makes you sound interesting...'i sail in my spare time'!!im glad everything going well for you guys, although i'm missing u loads!im off to Turkey next sunday on my all inclusive with the girls from uni, so hope its good. then begin July going to thailand and malaysia with fi, sam , and sam c for 7 weeks i think. we are gonna book this week. hope i have as much fun as you are having xxxxx