HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014

Pohutukawa Tree flower -- the Christmas tree of northern New Zealand

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Picara!

We wish the best to all our friends and hope for a joyful and peaceful 2014 for you all.

We spent a busy holiday season in the boatyard at Opua, New Zealand. We had a quiet and happy Christmas with lots of calls and “skyping” to friends and family, a little socializing here in the yard, a much-appreciated nap and a huge perogie dinner to top it all off!

It has been over a year since we’ve updated the blog, with no good excuse to offer for our laziness. After the previous years of travel, we were feeling that so much time spent in one place wasn’t producing enough blog-worthy material. But as I’ve gone through the last years’ photos it has been hard to select just a few to share. We've been 'nose to the grindstone' after rejoining the working world here, but have also managed to do a bit of exploring locally and have been lucky to have visitors travel across the globe to see us. So what follows is a backwards journey through our last year here.

Picara floats again!!

Christmas2012/January 2013

Christmas dinner in Tassie

Christmas 2012 was spent in Tasmania with a big portion of Mike’s family – his sister Lindsay and her family live in Devonport and run a busy and very yummy café there called Playfish. Mike’s parents flew over from Canada for the holidays. His brother-in-law Q is a most amazing chef and fattened us up daily!

Lindz and Q's cafe in Devonport.

We had a memorable afternoon with the family and Lindsay and Q's friends picking blueberries from the best patch in all of Australia – possibly the world - in a top secret location that is guarded by a big black man-eating snake.

Hard not to eat them all on the spot!

Picking blueberries is thirsty work.

Summer 2013

Otaio Bay, Urupukapuka Island, BOI

In February our work visa applications for NZ were approved and we got down to work and started to settle in to our new surroundings – it is about 2 hours from our mooring in Opua harbour to the island parks of the Bay of Islands.

Little boat: "room at the mark!"

There is an active racing scene in Opua including a fortnightly ‘ladies race.’  The Lion is an ex-Whitbread round-the-world race boat that now runs as a day charter vessel and Marni managed to get on board when they took a crew of ladies out one evening for the race --- so now I know that I probably wouldn’t qualify to work the big coffee grinder winches on the Americas Cup boats. It is really hard work just raising the sails!

Rainbow Warrior memorial

Fall 2014

In March Marni’s folks, Norm and Myrna, flew from Canada for a visit. One of our first sightseeing stops was the Rainbow Warrior memorial at Matauri Bay – this commemorates the 1985 sinking of a greenpeace ship in Auckland harbour by the French; Greenpeace and New Zealand had been protesting French nuclear testing in the Tuamotus. The ship’s hull was moved to the Cavalli Islands, north of the Bay of Islands, where it is a popular dive site.

 “Tane Mahuta,” the largest Kauri tree left in NZ. Even though we are from the land of huge trees in BC, the huge Kauris are very impressive.

A family picnic at the most northern spot in New Zealand – Cape Reinga. In the background is Cape Maria Van Diemen and beyond that the Tasman Sea.

We took a little road trip to the Coromandel with Norm and Myrna and loved seeing what we call the “ubiquitous Kiwi campas,” often set up permanently and used as holiday “baches” (cabins).

Here we are with our avalanche shovels at Hot Water Beach on the Coromandel, waiting in vain for the tide to go out far enough to dig our own little natural hot pool in the sand – the place was jammed with tourists and being overly polite Canadians we couldn’t bring ourselves to crash someone else’s pool!

Hard to say goodbye, but it was a great visit! 

Winter 2013

Our valiant little Davidson dinghy held together amazingly well during the Pacific Crossing but was starting to come to pieces until Mike rebuilt her in April, replacing all the old broken and waterlogged mahogany with epoxy-coated yellow and red cedar and even a wee bit of kauri for the breasthook. Not just pretty but much lighter too.

One of those ‘living the dream’ reality check moments…. On the way to work, hauling water on the way back… and why don’t we have a rainwater catchment system yet??

We met some salty circumnavigating friends in Tonga who invited us to their off-the-grid paradise near Whangarei one weekend – and they just happened to have this massive telescope hanging in their rafters. For the first time we saw the rings of Saturn and the oceans of the moon! Thanks Holger and Roz!

Winter weekend in the Bay of Islands – hardly another soul out there and really not cold at all by Canadian standards.

Mike and the crew of Suleika before they left for Fiji.
We miss them!

One of the winter projects for Picara was switching out our original yew-wood tiller, a craftsman-built piece of uncommon and phallic beauty, for a new wheel and pedestal. We swapped with our friends on Suleika who preferred a tiller on their newly purchased Joubert aluminum bilge-keeler. It is nice to know that Picara's jaunty driving-stick is in good hands! And we enjoy the easy driving with the new wheel and especially the magnetic compass mounted on the binnacle.

 

Due to the difficulties of magnetism in the steel 

cockpit we previously used an electromagnetic compass in combination with GPS and backup hand-held compass for navigation, but we do love the new set-up! We had squally weather but no problems for Picara’s first mini voyage with her new wheel – a mile or so up the Waikare inlet side of Opua harbour.

Mike has been working for local boatbuilder Craig McInnis at CMC design. In June the company started working on a huge project, the restoration of the Lady Crossley, a 50-foot kauri-planked motor yacht first launched in 1948. The boat was quite well-preserved, but the old solid-planked teak cabin sides were starting to crack and separate and the old girl was generally in need of some TLC. The team added kauri ply on the inside of the cabin and 8-mil solid teak epoxied to the outside. The pilothouse and saloon windows needed a complete rebuild, as did the sliding cabin doors.

"Shag on the Rocks!" - "Really? Those barnacles are sharp."

For Mike’s birthday we splurged on a weekend ‘bach’ rental in Taupo Bay, about an hour and a half’s drive north of Opua. It is a popular surf spot but as most locals wouldn’t consider getting in the water during the winter (balmy by Canadian standards at 15-degrees Celsius), the place was pretty much deserted. There hasn’t been nearly as much surfing time as he’d hoped this year, despite lots of great surf spots nearby, but at least he had a good one on his b’day!

By August the Lady Crossley job was progressing nicely and Mike was dreaming about window frames every night. Here the Kauri frames of the pilothouse windows are nearing completion and waiting for their outer layer of teak.

An afternoon nap on one of the hills of Urupukapuka Island in the Bay of Islands  - we had the island to ourselves if you don’t count the dozens of sheep and spring lambs that we passed on our walk.

Spring 2013

Canadian invasion – we were stoked that our friends Serge, Sheila and Naomi came for a visit! Here we are at the lookout on Roberton Island, BOI.

Fresh shellfish! NZ is famous for its yummy green-lipped mussels and after we forced S&S to collect them on a rising tide on treacherous wave-swept rocks they were put to work de-bearding them….

And of course we wouldn’t let Serge out of the galley until he’d made fresh pasta to go along with the seafood feast. Later he heroically dove for scallops in 20 feet of water with no wetsuit!!

Our last weekend with S&S – car camping at Matauri Bay, a visit to Cape Reinga and some quality sand-surfing on the Te Paki sand dunes. We sure do miss those guys!

By mid-November the crunch was on for the Lady Crossley project. Mike had to get all of the teak work finished on the  cabin sides in time for the hardworking varnishing crew to start making his woodwork shine.

December 2013 - "Busy As!"

A big day – launching the Lady Crossley. She looked gorgeous and so did the owners and their family and friends who dressed up in 1940s period outfits for the party.

Some of the crew chilling out at the launch party; Mike, Tony, Nina, Ruth and 'captain' Craig.Mike loved working with these guys on this dream project! 

Varnish bling on Mike’s handiwork. 

No rest for the wicked – the day after the Lady Crossley launched, Picara hauled out of the water for a few licks of paint – we had painted her topsides in Mexico but pinched a few too many pennies when buying the paint and it didn’t stand up to the rigours of a cruising sailboat. His co-workers very kindly leant us some scaffolding and 240-volt tools for the job – Thanks Tony and Craig, you made our lives much easier!

Friends Holger and Roz were also working in the yard on a friend's 99-year-old wooden boat and helped us out a lot with professional painters' advice and yummy meals of home-raised beef. And fellow Canadian cruiser Chris of SV Ladybug gave us a great Christmas present -- several hours of help prepping the prop for it's new 'peller clean' coating.

Split personality paint job

Finally! This time we bought a 2-part industrial paint often used on commercial vessels, so it should wear a lot better than the one-part gray paint we used last time. We are also trying out a semi-ablative bottom paint rather than regular ablative. Now we just need to get the cabin and decks up to the same standard…. but that will have to wait until later in the summer. Next up: a visit from buddies Donald and Camilla and some R&R on the water!!