2011-09-01 Whew!!! No damage 
Hip hip Hooray!! Irene came and went. Lots of rain and a fair amount of wind but no damage to Amanzi.
Of course, there’s Katia!! 
Another tropical cyclone brewing off the west coast of Africa and threatening to develop into another Hurricane. she’s now halfway between Africa and the Caribbean.
See her from space
2011-09-02 A new chapter
Today I start a new chapter in my life. Why? Well it was my last day at work and from here onwards it’s all one way toward our cruise. Actually, its not my very last day ever! I am not retiring just yet. Only taking a shortish sabbatical, really. We’ll be back next year in April/May and work through the northern hemisphere hurricane season before returning to the Bahamas/Caribbean.
There’s still much to do, so I don’t really have time for this blog, but what the heck????
So what’s to do? Finish packing up the house; arrange change of address with a thousand places – welllll, maybe I exaggerate, just a little bit really; travel to visit the family in the South Island; attend Shannon’s engagement party and then help her through her hip surgery; then return home, finalise with the movers to shift our stuff into storage; then fly out to the USA. Looking at that little list may make you think that there’s not a lot to do but each item entails a dozen others before or after to enable completion! Ah well, as I love to say, focus on the solution and the problem will take care of itself!
2011-09-04 Packing for Spring (or Winter)
Anything about the next photo that makes you think we are packing up the house:
The rest of the house looks pretty much the same.
and then outside our lounge we have the first stirrings of spring – note the dwarf maple leaf tree which is still dormant:
So, spring is in the air but our adventure is taking us into winter – albeit a very pleasant, mild, sunny warm, hot Bahamian winter:)
2011-09-05 100% pass mark achieved :):)
Wow, Mary and I both deserve a pat on the back!! We did our Marine Radio Operator’s Exam today and both passed with 100% each Now we can use our radio (VHF and marine SSB) legally!
2011-09-08 How to complicate you life 101
As if there’s not enough on our plate at the moment – what with packing up the house, travelling down to visit the kids in the South island (1800km road and ferry trip), organise movers, return home to complete the packing, pack what we need for our adventure, hand over the house to the new owners, shift out, and then fly out to the US, we go and complicate things a bit!
How? Simple really. Just go out and buy another property as an investment. So that’s what we did!!! Found a nice little 3-bed-roomed unit (single level apartment) about 400m from a popular seaside holiday beach. Looked at the financials – checked out well. Submitted an offer. received a counter offer. acceptable!! So, accept the counter offer – seems I’ve done this before with the purchase of our boat.
Now organise a building inspection (to be done next Monday), arrange finance (done!), organise with lawyer for transfer of Title!
Fortunately, we have a great rental agent and she already has prospective tenants lined up!!
As I said, talk of complicating our lives!! But we love it
2011-09-15 Road trip, Visit 2 grandsons
Where to begin?
Started with a road trip from Auckland to Gore (+/- 1700 km). the trip included a 3 hour ferry trip across the notorious Cook straight which was pretty calm fortunately. Coming into Picton via the Marlborough Sounds was very picturesque and pretty.
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Had a great visit with Leanne, Shannon, Luther and Zeke in Gore. This will be the last time we see them until they (apart from her husband Shannon) meet us in the Bahamas!!! The Admiral will certainly miss her grandsons, but so will I mind you, even though we only get to see them every few months due to the distances.
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Next stop Timaru for an engagement party!!
2011-09-16 Engagement party
We then headed North again to Timaru for our youngest daughter, Shannon’s engagement party. Yes it is quite confusing having a daughter and a son-in-law both called Shannon!! Anyway, Shannon and her fiance, Dan, make a really handsome couple!
(There are more than 10 photos – use the arrow keys)
Next stop Christchurch to visit Dominique and Daryl and Shaun.
Plus spend time with Shannon during her recuperation from her hip surgery.
2011-09-20 Post-op recovery
Well Shannon has had her hip surgery and after some rocky post op moments – mainly nausea from the analgesia – she was discharged a couple of days ago and is doing really well.
Still many things to think of: Return to Auckland, Finish the last of packing (oops, have to get some more boxes – I think we’re up to one thousand three hundred and seventy six point three two six five ) Move some stuff into our own storage garage, Wait for the movers, Store the car, and then stay with good friends for a few days before flying out.
Then, when we get to the USA, there’s still heaps to do – but more of this later
2011-09-23 Sailboat SOLD!!!
Yay!! Decided to do something different in a last minute effort to sell our sailboat, Sanctuary. It’s been listed for sale for a number of months now and while we’ve had a few interested parties, there have been no real serious nibbles.
So, I decided to drop the price drastically and put it on auction on Trademe (NZ equivalent of Ebay).
Fortunately, a buyer came along and bid on the auction reaching the reserve price which I had also set very low.
Upshot is that the boat is sold I think the buyer has scored a real bargain with this fantastic keelboat which I have owned for the last 11 years.
While I didn’t get anywhere near the boat’s full value, I am nevertheless contented that I won’t have to worry about her while we are on our travels.
So, Win-Win situation all around
2011-09-27 Moving out!!
Well, the movers are here and have started loading the truck for all our stuff to go into storage. Just 2 guys for a 5-bedroomed, 4 living area home of furniture! Hope they have strong backs!!
Doing a count of all the boxes, I stopped at six hundred and ten thousand five hundred and twenty nine Only kidding but it’s amazing how much stuff we still seem to have even after all the kids are long gone and we’ve steadily been cleaning out over the last few months. I guess we were not as ruthless as we should have been.
After this, we stay over with friends, Trudi and Michael – fellow boaties, collect our cat from the cattery tomorrow and fly her down to really good friends, Graham and Moira, who live in the South Island and have very kindly offered to have her.
Then, on Thursday we fly out
2011-09-29 D-Day
Everything’s done – house vacated, utilites cancelled and now just looking forward to meeting our new Lady, Amanzi on Monday.
Next stop – USA!! – for a short visit with Robert and Christine.
