Many of you will have seen my posts relating to the Ocean Yachtmaster course I am doing. Coastguard Boating Education is the NZ equivalent to the British RYA courses. I have already done many of their courses and found them really useful and interesting. About five years ago I purchased the Ocean Yachtmaster home study…
So, you are sailing off to a lovely tropical island… great! But what are you going to eat on the trip? Especially when you can’t just nip down to the supermarket and grab some extra supplies – (Not that I do that anyway – I hate supermarket shopping – the un-steerable trolleys, the dawdling people,…
Being a boat lover, you just can’t have too many boats around the house. They remind you what you are missing out on living between four walls and a roof, instead of bobbing around on the water where you rightly should be. I like staying in hotels, especially when you head to the loo and…
******** Warning! This post is for the ladies only….******* Yes thats right guys, you can just delete this email, look away, click the little X in the corner. Look away now…
I recently did a first aid course, where the main thing I learnt was how to dial 111. (or 911 or 999 – for goodness sake why can’t the world agree on one emergency number!?!) We didn’t even get to bandage anyone up. Just dial 111 and give the person a plaster, we were told……
If you haven’t yet been involved in either being towed or towing someone, then you are either very lucky or your time is about to come! Being towed is not cool. Aside from the obvious humiliation, Wildwood does not like being towed, she slews around all over the place in a most uncomfortable fashion. As…
“And don’t look like a muppet…!” These were the encouraging words that Craig had given us that kept ringing in our ears as we were floating about in a big rib attempting to wrestle with a massive “Mr Blobby” buoy for the Young 88 South Island Champs. Not sure that I had ever seen Miss Piggy in…
Whether you are planning on buying a yacht and sailing off in to the sunset, or if you have no intention of doing that but you do plan to retire at some stage – then this post is for you! Saving for your retirement is a hot topic here in New Zealand. At the ripe…
Here in New Zealand we are constantly being reminded about the dangers of skin cancer and the importance of getting your moles checked. New Zealand and Australia have the highest rates of melanoma in the world. As sailors who spend a lot of time outside and in the sun, we are particularly vulnerable, I booked myself…
A grab bag goes hand in hand with our life raft – in the category of things you need to have that cost lots of money and take up space but you hope you never have to use. This is the bag that you grab when your boat is sinking or on fire, just as…
Astrolabe Sailing 