Trying to get our sailing act together.

If I were a dog, my tail would have been wagging wildly at the sight of our faithful vessel gently floating in the dock at Gulf Harbour, Auckland. Methinks she’s due for some serious pampering now. But first, we did a waltz around the kitchen, stocked her fridge and freezer with all the goodies we could think of, replenished her bilges with Waiotea wine, hosted a charming Belgian Kiwi, and ended the day by gloriously stretching out on our 18 cm thick doubly padded queen mattress, which felt king-size after two months in a camper van.

On April 4th, it was raining cats and dogs during haul-out, as if O2 were a beached whale whose skin needed to be kept cool and wet, and shielded from the sun to survive her time out of the water. We, on the other hand, needed shelter from the downpour while cleaning her hulls and prepping her belly and bottom for touch-ups on the many small scars she had collected over 63 months of ocean travel.

By April 10th, our muscles were giving out one after another, with extra tolls—or should I say tariffs—taken on our backs, necks, and shoulders. They were screaming for relief.
The anti-fouling prep work was exhausting: it started with a pressure wash, followed by a manual soap scrub, then sanding out the scratches before we could apply the primer, only to sand again before rolling on the tiecoat, and yes, sanding once more. Relief finally came in the form of effortlessly rolling on the shiny new black topcoat, Hempel Silic One. Twice. As long as it doesn’t peel away effortlessly once it’s in the water, it’s all good. Also, the entire antifouling process took place during a blessed weekend of blue skies, with a local radio station that almost had us dancing in the boatyard, if it weren’t for the sore muscles. Our favorite Auckland station, The Sound, was blasting good old eighties hits, calling it “The Soundtrack of Our Lives”, and that it truly was. With O2 sparkling in the sun, passing Kiwis voiced their appreciation for the result of our hard work: “Nice boat you’ve got there. Good job.” Gotta love those Kiwis.

On April 15th, we were supposed to splash and head to the dock just in time to safely duck tropical cyclone Tam which had been announced to come raging in from Fiji. But one of the engines was still missing a crucial part, the cooling matrix of the heat exchanger, so instead of splashing back into the water, extra blocks were added to keep O2 from taking to the skies. Fortunately, as the cyclone slowly moved south toward New Zealand and thus over colder waters, it was downgraded to a tropical storm, still an unusually powerful one, for that matter. For three days now, sustained winds of 30 knots have howled over the land, with gusts up to 62 (!!!) knots. At times, O2 moves and shudders as if she is in a berth on the water, even though she is standing on the hard, held down by four massive concrete blocks. Power lines are smashed down by falling trees and there is chaos on the road . It is no joke, and we certainly aren’t laughing. The government keeps broadcasting warnings of orange level weather situations, coastal flooding, and severe storm conditions, urging everyone to stay put. Which we do, more or less.

But this afternoon, as the wind was still howling and still is, we finally ventured outside to get that haircut we’d booked a week earlier. That’s how we met Rangimārie. We were “standing on the side of the road, rain falling on our shoes,” waiting for the bus when she pulled over and offered us a ride, first to the pharmacy, then to the boatyard. During the short drive, she told us she was a Māori woman, happily married to a man from Utah for the past 42 years.

We talked about the dire state the world is in and agreed: there’s no place like New Zealand. When we said our heartfelt goodbyes, she gave us her phone number, urging us to call her if we needed anything at all while still being in the neighbourhood. ‘Peace be with you’, she said. And that’s also what her name, Rangimārie, means. Man, Aotearoa has really gotten under our skin.

Happy Easter everybody.