We saw some crazy boating manoeuvres over our summer holidays in the Marlborough Sounds. It seems that many people really have no idea what they are doing when they get behind the wheel of their boat and set out for adventures on the water! However even if you cockily think you are an expert, accidents…
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…
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 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…
It was a privilege to have met Laura Dekker today at the launch of her book ‘One Girl, One Dream’ Laura was born on a yacht in Whangarei to her Dutch parents who had been sailing the world. Her mother was a street performer and her father was a boat builder. They eventually moved back…
My current yacht – Wildwood is a Young 88. She was built in 1985 and is one of about 140 boats made in this design. Wildwood is one of about five wooden boats that were built and the rest are made in fibreglass. Here is a bit of history about the Young 88 I have…
Astrolabe Sailing 