After weeks working on the boat on the hard the sail from Dunedin to Oamaru was a delight. It was great to be sailing again, and, miracle of miracles, both the hydrovane and head seemed to work — most un-boat like. On this trip we stayed in about 100m of water so had no trouble…

As previously noted, a focus of our time in the Sounds was the need to get our standing rigging replaced. We had sourced a couple of quotes from different companies, and these were so different in terms of time, cost, and work needed that it became quite an exercise to decide which firm we should…

Marlborough Sounds sits at the top right hand corner of the South Island. Queen Charlotte Sound is the easternmost of the sounds. The area, renowned for its natural beauty and its numerous anchorages, is something of a boating Mecca. This means that there are businesses here that cater for boats, and one of the things…

We left Lyttleton early on the 7th of October heading to Port Underwood, a sheltered area that would allow us to wait for suitable weather to get through the notorious Cook Strait and into the Marlborough Sounds. The weather was flukey in the morning, with sails up, sails down, sails up, and eventually two reefs…

We left Akaroa in weather that wasn’t ideal for our sailing plans, but was, once again, the best window available to us. As we left the protection of the harbour the wind settled into what often seems its favourite position, ‘on the nose.’ Wind from directly in front of the boat is disliked by all…

Finally, a weather window appeared that allowed us to leave Oamaru and head to Akaroa. The window wasn’t great with light variable winds that threatened a good deal of motoring, but it was the best we’d seen and the best predicted to come. We left Oamaru on Friday 22nd September at about 10:30 am in…

The longed for day finally arrived and the house we had been building for about two and half years was finished, in our possession, and ready to be rented out. By this time we were living aboard in Deborah Bay, having given up our live aboard status at the Otago Yacht Club when we left…

Cara and I had met Dave and Jackie when visiting Oamaru in 2021. They were living aboard their Hanse 370e Hansel having been trapped by the Covid lockdowns. Dave was from Melbourne Australia, Jackie a Kiwi, but as the boat was registered in Australia the tax man decreed that they had to leave or import…

At the time of writing this blog our trip to Stewart Island is some eight months in the past. Cara and I had started the process of building a house in 2021 and, despite using a national company that advertises itself as “NZ’s most trusted builder”, the process had gone well and truly pear-shaped. Constant…