23 July 2011 – Admiral (First Mate) reporting for duty
Well I guess it’s high time that I put pen to paper – or fingers to keyboard! And yes of course the Captain’s been egging me on - I hope this is not laying the ground rules for our trip!!!!
So glass of red wine in hand, let me begin!
It’s feels like it’s been a really long journey to get to this point and suddenly time is moving at breakneck speed. It’s been a very hectic few weeks, from looking for a boat, making the offer on the boat, waiting for the surveys, to coming to a final decision and organising insurance. We’re on the last legs of that now and it’s all looking good. Now we just need to finalise a name for her. I know we’ve had a couple of years to decide on this but of course, as per usual, it’s coming down to a last minute decision. Gosh could anything be more difficult?
“How easy will it be to say over the radio? How will it be pronounced? What does it mean? Should we use a name that shows that we’re Kiwis or should we use something that shows our roots are still in Africa. What about taking a bit of each grandchild’s name? The problem with that is there’s a new grandchild on the way and we are not privy to possible names or indeed the sex!” But I think we’re sorted now and to use Lance’s trick, all I’m going to say now is “Watch this space!”
In between all the boat stuff, which Lance has mainly be handling, I’ve been doing all the house stuff. It feels like we’ve been getting it ready for the market for months and yet I can still see more little things that we could do – but really will anyone notice?
Then there were the passport renewals, investigating visas, as well as looking at various flight options to the US. Of course work still has to continue as normal too - it all has to be fitted in before we go. Then there’ll be the final family round up down in the south island, including our youngest daughter having to go through a hip operation in September. So it’ll be full on right to departure day!
But so far, touch wood, everything is falling into place and I’m looking forward to our great adventure…….
I can’t quite believe I said that!!!! 
1 October 2011
After the amazing rush of the last few weeks, I can hardly believe that we are now relaxing in California with my brother, Robert and his wife Christina.
As you know we did most of the packing before driving down to the south island to visit our family in early September. We spent a very enjoyable few days in Gore with Leanne, Shan, Luther and Zeke before heading up to Timaru where we enjoyed Shannon and Dan’s engagement party and a wonderful Sunday morning that we spent with some very dear friends, Moira and Graham.
(Thank you so much Moira and Graham for taking our 12 year old cat Shiva in – I hope she is settling in just fine and has not been chasing any of your chooks!)
Next stop was Kirwee with Dominique, Daryl and Shaun and we based ourselves there for a couple of weeks while Shannon had her hip operation in Christchurch. Thankfully that all seems to have gone really well and she is already off her crutches and is itching to be out and about.
We had loads of family fun there with Leanne and the boys coming up for the last weekend. The boys had a pre-school disco on the Friday night and we had a baby shower for Dominique on the Saturday - only 5 weeks left to go. Let’s hope she has now packed her bag for the hospital!
It is very sad though to see Christchurch in its post earthquake state. From the TV and the other media, it’s really hard to grasp the scale of the devastation and only hope that all will eventually come right and everyone can go back to their normal lives.
People are really enterprising though – just on the next corner from the hospital, sitting on an empty site where obviously a building was demolished, there was a Thai take out - cooking and serving everything out of a caravan! And it was very good too.
Once back in Auckland it was a mad scramble to get the rest of the house packed up and into storage – but we did it and after what seemed like a never ending list of “Things to Do” we evenutally boarded the plane on Thursday afternoon bound for the USA. Thanks Trudi and Michael for the last couple of days and getting us to the airport on time. Many thanks too to Brenda and Pete for the airport send-off! I hope you all enjoyed the rugby on Friday night.
The fly out over Auckland was amazing and we had lovely views over the city, the harbour bridge and up the east coast bays.
And it’s been sunny and warm here – although the evenings are cooler with autumn definitely taking hold. We’ve spent quite a bit of time relaxing and doing some last minute shopping.
Last night we went to an Open Mic session at a local coffee shop where Robert and Christina performed. They do this every Friday and it certainly looks like a lot of fun and a really good idea. Then today we visited Christina’s parents, Ria and Willie, in a town about an hour away from here - it was really good to see them again.
We’re having some issues with cellphones at the moment – we discovered that to use our iphones here was going to cost NZ$1 for each text so we decided that we should rather migrate on to the US networks. We had brought my old Samsung phone with us so we bought a sim card for it from one provider and bought a cheap phone from another provider. But we’re having trouble getting texts through to NZ using the NZ phone and the new sim card, so we’ve now borrowed another US phone to put the sim card into. But still no luck. Lance seems to be having similar issues with the new phone. So a visit back to the appropriate stores mught be on the agenda for tomorrow.
Hopefully we get it all sorted soon as we leave tomorrow night for Baltimore.
5 October 2011 – Womens Only Boat Handling Course
I’ve just spent a wonderful two days doing a “womans only boat handling course” out on the harbour in Baltimore. I was on a very luxurious, very big, 55ft launch!
When we first saw our own boat on Monday afternoon she seemed so much bigger than I expected – but after being on this huge boat I’m sure Amanzi will now seem quite cosy and manageable!
Anyway the course itself was excellent – there were 7 of us on board along with two very experienced lady captains. We seemed to cover everything ie safety, radio techniques, engine room checks, starting the engines, driving the boat, reversing the boat, coming up alongside the dock etc. It was amazing and I have learned so much. I’m now raring to go!!!!!
I’ve made some wonderful new friends and we definitely plan to stay in touch. We ended off the day with a graduation cocktail party.
Tomorrow – the Trawler Fest!
7 October 2011 – Crabs!
Think Maryland – think crabs! Crabs seem to feature on every menu here and last night, after a comprehensive run down on the boat’s systems with her previous owners, Hugh and John, we enjoyed a lovely dinner with them at a local restaurant.
Lance had crab cakes (sort of like fritters but rounder) and I had soft crabs. These are crabs that are caught after they have just lost their hard shell, but before their new shell goes hard. I was a bit taken aback at first but the way to eat them is to eat the whole crab!
Both dishes were excellent. Thank you Hugh and John.
