Christmas time is summertime here in New Zealand, and with the kids being on summer school holidays and the statutory holidays over Christmas & New Year, this time of the year means you can take a few weeks break without using up all your annual leave. As such, pretty much the whole country goes on…
We have just had a wonderful holiday on board Wildwood in the Marlborough Sounds. We had fantastic weather and lots of fun times with our great friends. However all good things come to an end, the holidays were almost over and we now have a year of work (interspersed with lots of adventures) ahead of…
As Wildy is currently up in the Sounds patiently waiting for us to head up for the Christmas holidays, our friend Willie asked if we would like to take his wife Vonda’s boat out for a sail in the Wednesday night twilight race. Andrew and I jumped at the chance to get out on the…
Sailors are a superstitious bunch. In fact I think if you followed all the various different sailing superstitions, then it would be quite hard to actually sail anywhere any time! Perhaps it is easier for sailors to blame bad weather, breakages or losing a race on bad luck borne out of some superstitious behavior, than…
It seems that creating a more minimalistic lifestyle is all the rage these days. Even people who aren’t planning on living on a boat are seeing the benefits of downsizing, getting rid of the clutter in their lives, purchasing experiences instead of material things. Everywhere I look there are articles about how to spring clean…
This time last week we were somewhere off the Kaikoura Peninsula sailing from Lyttelton to Waikawa. I wrote about our Passage Plan last week. The weather was good, so us and some other boats – Natural Magic, Flying Machine and Jive Talkin were ready for our 180 nautical mile voyage north for the holidays. The…
We are currently preparing Wildwood for our delivery trip North. We are taking her up the East Coast of the South Island of New Zealand from Lyttelton Harbour – where we live – to Waikawa Marina, which is nestled in the heart of the Marlborough Sounds. Our aim is to take her up early December…
We have just had a fabulous weekend away in the beautiful Marlborough Sounds with some great friends on our annual dive trip. For the last five years we have chartered a launch called Rhapsody Star. She is a big tub – the design is called a Cuddles 35. She sleeps eight people and putts along…
A friend of mine has just bought a new diving wetsuit online. She thought it looked a little small but decided to try it on to check it out. She was away, alone, at her holiday home a couple of hours away from all her friends. So she took off all her clothes, put the…
New Zealand is such a wonderful place for cruising, so when I was approached by Look Insurance Services to choose my favourite cruising destinations in the world – I had trouble narrowing it down to just one! Many international cruisers visit New Zealand. It is a great place to hide out from the South Pacific tropical cyclone…
Astrolabe Sailing 