The warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up – flaked up, with rose-water snow. — Herman Melville
For this blogpost Diana asked for some words about “the reality of time,” which seems rather an ambitious metaphysical topic for a blog about two people goofing off on their sailboat in beautiful places. But here goes.
Time? What time? As sailors “living the dream” obviously, we don’t ever have a “schedule.” We do whatever we like, whenever we like, for as long as we like. With a few caveats.
First there are a few not insignificant constraints imposed by Nature — forces in the natural world beyond our control (so all forces of nature), stuff like sea state, wind, cyclones, storms, calms, ocean currents, physical laws governing displacement hull speed, gravity (this is a big one), the sun (and the massively destructive force of UV), the evil spirit that inhabits machinery, salt (never to be underestimated), electrolysis, whatever it is exactly that makes rust, and also biological forces like the stuff that grows on Allora’s bottom no matter how much expensive, toxic paint we apply, and Covid 19.
Then there are a few, also not insignificant constraints imposed by Governments — most importantly border formalities, and arbitrary human designations of authority abstractly represented as nationalities.
Then there is the stuff absolutely everyone contends with, sailor or no, like the second law of thermodynamics and Space and Time, or spacetime, or whatever this stuff we all swim about in is properly called.
We calculated that we were two months worth of Time behind “schedule” for most of 2021 and well into 2022 when all of the above mentioned irresistible forces collided with the expiration of our New Zealand visitor’s visas (extended at least four times because of Covid) on June 30, 2022. (And also, Winter, that ominous and unpleasant climate event of the mid and high latitudes which seems to come up much more frequently than a reasonable, fun-loving sailor might like).
We had a mighty to-do list, and spent most of the months of May and June feeling fairly overwhelmed as we tried to play catch up.
As to the metaphysical question of Time, perhaps it is philosophically or scientifically possible to question its objective existence (not that those are arguments I could ever hope to follow), but when all these forces converge, time can definitely feel in short supply, cramped, and very real indeed. We tried to remind ourselves, during rare moments of pause, that time, whatever it is, doesn’t really contract or expand. There’s always just today and what’s happening right now. Right? All of this busy-ness is just so we can sit around and procrastinate later, and find ourselves once again, about two months of time behind.~MS
Hauling Allora out of the water for the first time since Whangarei (Northern North Island) in 2019. Her ‘bottom’ looked pretty darn good after all that movement in Fiordland’s cold waters. After just 2 months in the tropics, you would have an aquatic biome! One of the perks of being in these latitudes!Time to hit an actual supermarket!!! Love the translations: grab some ‘te Reo Māori’ with groceries!Whenever we go to the store together, Marcus will sneak an item into the cart which might seem out of keeping with my typical purchasing pattern. It works best (in his mwahaha scheme) when I don’t see it till checkout and then have to say that I decided against it! This was an especially good one!Here, I asked Marcus to look like he was inspecting the prop, hence his non-actor expression! The metallic parts of your boat need to be insulated with zinc anodes to prevent their corrosion, so all the silver bits are the zincs and they will need to be replaced after we clean and paint the prop.A few Outbound owners had some issues with the original Sikaflex batch of caulking around the cabin windows. Ours weren’t as bad as some of our sister boats, but after 7 years, they are needing our attention. We’ll be doing a huge overhaul of their installation in Australia, but meanwhile, I got a lesson from the yard owner on the proper way to execute a solid ‘stop gap’ measure.Being up on stands with nothing but concrete below, I had to be extra mindful not to ROLL off!Would be waaaay handier to be a sprite when it comes to boat work. Our evolution hasn’t been to work on boat engines with ease.Definitely time to buy this replacement set. Yeah, corrosion is REAL!The high point of the flurry and frenzy of boat work was our cherished time in Blenheim, (just a half hour away), with these two beautiful humans, our eldest, Haley and her partner, Liam.A bit of New Hampshire or northern Michigan’s seasonal palette!While we were in Fiordland, my mom moved from Southern to Northern California. Siblings rocked that into reality while I just cheered on with words. It can be really hard to be so far away when big life events happen, as they do.Shiny new prop, painted with PropSpeed and adorned with new zincs, ready to spin (when we have no wind) its way to Fiji soon!The Tirohanga hiking track, quite nearby our Airbnb in Picton. Sweet day.Oops, selfie 101, make room for everybody?!Hiking joys!
Enough fun, back to work for Allora’s crew … Where’s Waldo?Fiordland brought us immeasurable joy, but also massive condensation issues. We took apart the entire boat to do a vinegar wash down to offset the inevitable mold. Also, time to ditch some stuff on the boat which wasn’t getting enough use to justify the space it occupied.Liam and Haley’s Mom’s Day Lilies added the only bit of sweetness on a boat filled with cleaning products and clutter.We rented a cargo van from the hardware store (unusual, but the only way I could find one) and cruised down to Christchurch from Picton (5 hours south) for a quick set of days to see friends and clear out our small storage space.We finally met Sasha, the luckiest kiddo, to have lovely Saree as his mama. She fed us well every dreamy Farmer’s Market Saturday in Lyttelton! Truly special connection.Another set of wonderfuls: Virginia and Brian opened their Lyttelton home to us for our stay and Herbie (on the left) came to dinner, too! We met Herbie and Maria (not pictured, she was in Germany) also at the Farmer’s market – she’s an artist and seamstress extraordinaire and kept me warmly clothed for each of the two winter’s we were in Aotearoa. Later, we did intuitive painting classes with Maria and met Virginia! Friends introducing friends … in this way, we’re reminded that the world is small and we all seek connection.No use waiting for a sunny day to ‘splash’ Allora back in the water!Can hardly see them, but sea lions waved flappily as if to say bye as we left the inner breakwater of Waikawa Marina.We moved just around the corner, from Waikawa Marina to the Picton Marina and took an in water berth for the last projects.With NZ’s borders open to Aussies, Liam’s folks, Gerard and Jenni, came for the first visit since Covid! We had met them in Dec. of 2019 before all the whole thing had begun.It was a sunny, yet quite brisk day on the water. Sadly, no wind, but we took them on a 3 hour tour of Queen Charlotte Sound.Happy Mama! These guys brought a beautiful picnic lunch for us to enjoy in ‘Bay of Many Coves.’Spinning yarns, Captain?!It just doesn’t look as chilly as it was?! This Ferry runs between Picton and Wellington, across the Cook Strait.Family.Had a total BLAST with Haley as we went all Jackson Pollock and giggled our way through an afternoon of flying paint! HOW did we never do this for a kid’s party?!You know the boat jobs must be nearing completion when hurling paint becomes a priority! Thank you, Haley, for manifesting this vision! I will always remember these antics and our time in Blenheim.Jobs done, we knew this was going to be tough. Letting water and distance come between us brought tears. There was no extra wiggle time for Allora to make her way up to the North Island before our visas were set to expire. Ahh, bureaucracy 🙁
It was a bit spooky sailing out of Milford at midnight without a moon. We had our inbound tracks on the chartplotter to follow, but it’s pretty amazing how disorienting darkness can be, even for feeling whether to turn to port or starboard to follow a line. Also with the steep granite walls, we didn’t feel 100% confident in our GPS. Diana went to the bow, and I stepped away from the helm to try to orient myself every few minutes, as we moved cautiously down the fiord. Though the GPS did seem to have a decent idea about where we were, it was also reassuring to have radar confirming the distance to the rock walls on either side. But what helped me relax most at the helm, was when Diana shouted that the dolphins had come to escort us out. I leaned over the rail and could just see and hear them splashing off our port headed for the bow. It was hard not to feel like they’d showed up intentionally to reassure us.
South Island of NZ and our sailing track. We spent 3 months in that lower SW corner and then dashed up the whole island on the west side in 3 days!
One of the many challenges of the passage from Milford up around Cape Farewell into the Cook Strait, is that there is only one place you might possibly stop, but that requires negotiating a river bar entrance at Westport (just north of Cape Foulwind!), which is safe only in decent weather. Otherwise, it’s a solid three day run (if you keep your speed up), which just barely fits into the cycle of weather shifting from South to North. The weather window that presented itself to us seemed pretty typical, catching the end of a southerly, motoring and motor-sailing through variable winds in a race to meet the Cape with relatively light winds rather than the usual NW or SE gale.Leaving sooner, we’d have had more wind to sail with, but we’d risk arriving too early for the switch of winds at Cape Farewell.
Diana took the first watch just after 2 AM after we cleared the hazards on the north side of the entrance to Milford and could head more directly north. “Really cold, icy hands,” she wrote in the margins of the logbook. “Overcast skies heading further out to clear Arawua Point/Big Bay Bluff.” Just after sunrise on my watch, I got a glimpse of the mountains south of Mt Aspiring, which reminded me of Wyatt’s 100 mile run the length Aspiring National Park. I wondered if he could have seen the Tasman Sea from any of those lofty ridge lines he traversed?
NZ’s wild west.Hard to sail away from that remarkable corner of the universe. Allora always seems up to the task, even if we’re a bit reluctant.I’m afraid we have a stowaway!He looks about as eager as I did for this passage.His ‘foulies’ are cooler than ours!There are mountains in them thar clouds!Sunrises and sunsets don’t go unnoticed out here.
Also in the logbook, I see a lot of scribbles in these notes about fuel rates, and estimates of actual fuel burned for miles ‘made good.’ Allora carries 190 gallons full which is more than enough for the distance as long as the weather is reasonably cooperative, but it makes a difference if you’re burning 1.5 gallons/hour or pushing the engine and burning 2.5 gallons/hour. The extra gallon doesn’t double your speed. People better at the maths would probably be able to calculate exactly what fuel rate is most efficient. I settled upon 1.6 or 1.7 as an nice compromise of efficiency, speed (to make our date at Cape Farewell) and comfort.
We had rain. We had current steadily set against us. We had dolphins streak by in the night leaving comet trails in the bioluminescence. We fussed about the wind, almost-but-not-quite-enough to sail, ever creeping up on the nose. We almost lost a batten in the mainsail. Then later, Otto, our autopilot made a sudden decision to turn hard to starboard out of nowhere. The switch for the high pressure pump on the watermaker heated up and set off the smoke alarm (naturally at night-while I was off watch). We saw no other boats besides the occasional fishing boat working closer to shore. We caught a glimpse of Aoraki (Mt Cook) at sunset, and at Cape Foulwind a couple of seal lions waved as we passed by.
And my lil’ camera could not capture how stunning this scene was!
On the last night, as seems to be a theme lately, Diana drew the toughest watch of the passage. There was just no way to completely avoid a patch of heavy winds slated to meet us as we approached the Cape, straight on the nose. We tried to time it for the least possible, but Poseidon wasn’t going to let us off feeling too clever. For her whole watch, Allora slammed into 20 knots on the bow clawing her way up the last bit of coast to Cape Farewell. Finally, after calling Farewell Maritime radio to try to find out whether it was generally considered advisable to cut the corner at Kahurangi shoals (which they weren’t really able to commit to), we decided it probably wasn’t, so we slogged on. Diana went off watch and very soon after, we were able to fall off the wind. Just five degrees made a big difference. Pretty soon we were motor-sailing and by Diana’s last sunrise watch she was able to shut the engine off and sail along Farewell Spit, an amazing 25km sandbank off the northwestern corner of the South Island at the opening of Cook Strait. The winds were light but sweet. Finally! ~MS
We had to ‘hot bunk’ which (sounds better than it is), means sharing the same berth in shifts because the boat is heeling too much in one direction to utilize the other side. I left Marcus a chocolate on his pillow to further sweeten his off watch experience!Gotta love modern times – ship captains of yore didn’t used to provide their first mates with latte’s as a wake up! Feeling grateful …First light on the last day of our passage.Oh hello dawn, we see you!The same sunrise unfurling.Allora and her crew get some sweet, smooth motion before finally rounding Farewell Spit and finding an anchorage.Allora seems to keep a steady pace, but her crew at this point can feel like horses heading back to the barn, anxious to just GET THERE! It’s definitely a lesson in savoring what IS!Before we even tucked into Abel Tasman, my phone started ‘bleeping’ frantically, the first Wifi messages in nearly 3 months came flooding in. I have to say, both sides of the phone equation are awesome – putting it away, disconnected from the world and then THIS! Siblings reunited for the first time in 3 years! Love in pixels!And Grandma Elizabeth sandwiches are always delicious!Marcus’ reaction when I shared these pics.Bark Bay, our first anchorage in Abel Tasman. We contemplated getting Namo off our foredeck and exploring that little sweet beach, but instead, we just sat on deck and savored the stillness.This gull landed as we were just feet away on deck.Grey skeletal remains of wilding pines (invasive conifers in NZ).
Our logbook for the run from George to Bligh says, ‘expecting 4 meter seas, so ‘battening down the hatches on Allora.’ This pic doesn’t begin to show the waves, but we are getting pretty used to these quick hops being worthy of our full attention!
This northern fiord zigzags around 18 kilometers inland to the head at Wild Natives River (surely on a list to be renamed?)Sizable slip. Some of these are so dramatic you can just imagine the sound and drama of the actual moment when it let go.
The very steep demarkation between mud bank and deep water.We finally found a spot to anchor in the middle in 80′ of water, so we had all our 330′ of rode out and were ‘free swinging’ without any lines to shore.
On our one full day in Bligh, Marcus took Namo up the Wild Natives River and hiked up with just enough time (with the tide) to fish one nice pool, landing two fish.‘Marcus’ Pool,’ Wild Natives River.I stayed back on Allora and did one of my ‘flash’ mosaics. Here and there along our 7 year journey, I’ve tucked these offerings, almost ‘dialogues with nature,’ into various locations. Here, I share some close ups, mainly because that’s all I got up to in Bligh, but I will save the full images for another post!
As much as we choose to be present for what IS, we are starting to really look at forward at the weather for our tough West Coast passage from Milford to Abel Tasman.I’m thankful for Lightroom so I can prep some of these blogs before finally getting back into Wifi zone.
Bye Bligh!I feel like I can SEE the richness of this journey in Marcus’ expression!
For this blogpost Diana asked for some words about “the reality of time,” which seems rather an ambitious metaphysical topic for a blog about two people goofing off on their sailboat in beautiful places. But here goes. 
