I am so lucky to live in one of the most beautiful countries in the world, but sometimes us locals can start to take our stunning surroundings for granted. One example of this is the Tranzalpine Express, one of the most scenic train journeys in the world right on my doorstep. Every morning on my…
Crossing the Auckland Harbour bridge in our taxi, seeing the ocean glittering below and the horizon pierced by hundreds of masts escaping the confines of their berths and heading out to sea for an Easter adventure. It is easy to see why Auckland has the nick-name “City of Sails”, and we were about to join them.…
Have you ever been at a function and you walk around having polite boring conversations with strangers about the weather, until you FINALLY find the one person in the room who has a boat? You breathe a sigh of relief, and spend the rest of the night chatting to them sharing stories of adventures on…
It is a huge honour to be invited to speak at the Women Who Sail Australia annual conference – The Gathering in April 2018. I joined the Women Who Sail Facebook group back in early 2014, and discovered an incredible network of female sailors all over the world. Then I joined the Women Who Sail…
There is something extremely wild and rugged about big waves crashing up a windswept beach. The force and power of the swell as it silently rolls towards the land before curling its top and sending white water smashing and crashing, then fizzing like champagne as it rushes up the sand, greedily grabbing little shells with…
I am back to studying! I really need to sit my Ocean Yachtmaster Exam and I am going through a MOUNTAIN of paper with my study notes on there and putting them up on the blog. That way I get to save them, you get to read them, and I get to chuck out a…
A flotilla of leaves floats downstream On the inky black water of the Otakaro How serenely they sail out of the past And in to their future Behind me (A poem on the Oxford Tce steps of the Otakaro Avon River) If you substitute the word ‘leaves’ in the top line for ‘sailors’ then this…
Over the years I have had a number of different notebooks, documents and spreadsheets for recording all sorts of various things boating related and I recently decided to collate them all together in to one super handy spreadsheet that you can use too! I have left all the detail boxes blank so that you can…
Ahhh the dream of sailing off in to the sunset is so appealing to me. Your yacht home located right on the water, commanding views that land dwellers pay millions of dollars for. And when you get tired of one spot, you simply weigh the anchor and head off somewhere new. But being so mobile creates…
They say that women forget the pain of labour and so that is why they go back and have more children. I think the same applies about Labour weekend. For the last however many years I can remember, we have been subjecting ourselves to all kinds of adventures and in the process getting blisters, gammy…
Astrolabe Sailing 