Monday 17 June – We are back at sea! Heading for Fiji.

I see from my last blog that I said I would be back writing in May! We are back later than Rowan would have hoped. So you can imagine how overjoyed he is to finally be back on board PolePole. This has meant it has been a bit hectic the last few weeks, getting the repairs and maintenance done in the boatyard and then waiting for a weather window. We are in the middle of New Zealand’s winter, which means stormy weather systems passing by every 5 days. It is one of the more challenging sailing passages, so we are being very cautious, we’ve joined a local ‘Sailing to Fiji’ rally, and have a weather router helping us daily and throughout the passage, plus two crew. Most of the boats in the rally have departed already, with 3 boats setting off today with us, in this tiny window, which is very reassuring.

PolePole finally leaving Whangarei – photo of Tim’s who saw us off

A lot has happened since I last wrote. Rowan went to Denver a few days after arriving in NZ, he had to go and do some sorting out at Nakedwines. A day after arriving in Denver he got a call to say his dad was dying, so he rushed out to South Africa, and never came back to the boat. I stayed on in NZ for a couple of weeks, packing up the boat for our 6 months away. It was great having Rowan’s cousins nearby to join them for the weekends. I then flew directly to Johannesburg and met Han at the airport who had packed up the last of her belongings in Botswana. By this stage Rowan’s dad had made a bit of a recovery, and Rowan had caught Covid so couldn’t see him anyway! Han and I drove 5 hours to the Drakensburg (Mountain range) and joined Beowulf (my nephew) and his family for a couple of lovely days before going to Muden, to see my sisters on the farm I grew up on. Rowan in the meantime with a bit of time on his hands, decided to get his throat sorted out. The operation he had done in the UK over the summer had failed completely and it seemed an ideal time to get it sorted, especially as his schoolfriend GP who had diagnosed his Zenker’s Diverticulum, said there was a great surgeon in East London (SA!). Within a couple of days he was booked in for surgery, so Han and I quickly flew down to East London. Arriving just in time to take Rowan to the hospital. I watched him being wheeled into theatre, the surgeon said I should return in a couple of hours, which I did only to find that he hadn’t had the operation. Turns out the surgeon was extremely cautious of doing the corrective surgery. Impressively he had been in contact with the country’s top throat specialist at a big hospital in Cape Town. The surgeon had wanted a second surgeon to operate with him, and this surgeon had been called away for an emergency, plus the precise stapler he wanted for the stitching was not available. He said he could have gone ahead with the surgery but with two things not quite right he decided to abort the operation. I think he was quite right as this time they were going to do a fairly large incision through his neck to get to the offending pocket, fairly tricky operation as there are a lot of vocal chords and muscle to avoid. Instead he put Rowan under and did a thorough camera inspection to see what had happened to the staples from his surgery in the UK. All very worthwhile but disappointing for poor Rowan who had to wait another two days before we repeated the procedure. This time the additional surgeon was there and they had the right stapler! It all went well and according to plan. Rowan spent one night in ICU which made him determined to get out as soon as possible. A chap two beds down died during the night and it obviously caused a lot of commotion. The surgeon was fantastic as he recommended not having a nasal feed into his stomach (like they had done in the UK), but just liquids for two days and then very smooth pureed food until it had healed. It all worked like a dream and Rowan was home a day later, feeling so much better, even if he had to have a rather gory drainage bottle hanging from his neck.

Luke and Phoebe arrived shortly afterwards. Noah (Han’s boyfriend) arrived directly from Tajikistan (where he had been filming for the BBC) and Dani (Phoebe’s boyfriend) arriving a couple of days later from Hungary, all joined us for some merry Christmas celebrations. Sadly Rowan’s dad landed up dying on Christmas day, but he had a wonderful sendoff with all the grandchildren around to say goodbye. It was a lovely gathering of family. Shortly after Christmas Han and Noah headed back to the UK to start their new life in Bristol, and the rest of us flew down to Cape Town where we enjoyed a couple of weeks. Luke’s girlfriend Milly joined us there, which was great getting to know her. We had fun doing some of the touristy things, including an incredible one and a half hour helicopter trip around the the tip of the Cape, flying over the sea we saw some giant bait balls – huge round balls of hundreds of big fish escaping from predators. We went back through the winelands, touching down at a vineyard called Rustenburg where my brother once worked. We descended through some incredible mountain gorges, which was pretty hairy, reassuringly the pilot had obviously done it a few times! The pilot was an old school friend of Rowan’s, who owns the business.

We then headed to the wine country to stay at a famous old wine estate called Boschendal, where Phoebe is planning to get married next year. Phoebe and Dani had endless meetings set up with the wedding planner, choosing locations, menus, flowers, photographers etc! We stayed at a glamping campsite up the side of a mountain with a pretty lake in the middle of never ending rows of vines. Rowan headed back to Denver after a couple of days, and I stayed on with Phoebe and Dani for a few more days before heading back to England.

I had a couple of weeks in Mettingham sorting out loads and catching up with everyone before joining Rowan in Denver for a couple of weeks. A very strange existence down town in a big apartment, where everyone seemed to own a dog. I had fun exploring the city while Rowan was working, the hub of the city is at the confluence of two rivers and a lot of the banks are incorporated into parks and have footpaths either side of the river, giving miles of walking trails. Sadly it is another American city overwhelmed by drugs and homeless people.

Rowan and I returned to the UK for Easter, Rowan had two weeks back during which we did a lot of catching up with friends and the kids, which was all great fun. It was lovely to have a Spring back at Mettingham – it is over 4 years since we have seen the daffodils and spring flowers. I stayed on in England, visiting Luke in Putney, my sister Jane in Oxford and Han in Bristol. It was fun getting to know Bristol and it’s suburbs, viewing houses with Han who is desperately looking for a house to buy. She has had two offers fall through which is really disappointing for her. Noah was away filming in Mongolia. Phoebs and Dani had returned to New York.

I finally packed up two enormously heavy bags and joined Rowan in Denver. By now he had rented a lovely old house in an area close enough to walk into the Downtown area. We got a lot of walking in and had a fun week end away at an amazing genuine old cabin in the Rocky Mountain National park. It belonged to a South African guy, who is a friend of friends, really fun to be off the tourist path and experience real cabin life. It was a very quaint rustic log cabin, with an incredible old electric stove, and a beaver dam at the end of the garden. Most of the roads in the park were open but some were still closed by snow. The hiking trails we did were just opening up, we did a lot of trudging through snow, so it was pretty chilly and slippy. Mid May Rowan had done his handover with his new head of America, and we flew to Auckland.

PolePole had done very well sitting in the marina in Whangarei for nearly 7 months. We had two chilly nights on board before taking her to the boatyard where she was hauled out the water by a huge digger with a hydraulic trailer. All quite nerve wracking wondering if the props and engines were going to work properly as we knew from other boats that her bottom would be covered in barnacles. She rose out of the water, exposing an extensive coral garden, with at least five eels dropping out! A few of the yachties live in their boats while in the yard, using a step ladder to get up to the cabin, but it was too treacherous for us. You can’t use the loos or any water on board, no grey water is allowed in the yard and we have no grey water holding tanks, which meant you have to use the yard facilities, which were pretty decent but a real effort in the cold and rain. So we opted to go to a B&B for a couple of nights before heading to Auckland where we caught us with Rowan’s extended family, and then flew to the South Island.

Rowan so happy to be back on board PolePole

Motoring to the boatyard, we had to get the bridge lifted

One legged salute from the Oyster Catchers as we passed by

The trailer and digger to take us out the water

Out the water

Our barnacle incrusted rudder

The coral garden

One of the eels that dropped out of PolePole’s bottom

Parked into position between other Cats

Using PolePole as a garage, gives you an idea of scale. Our rickety step ladder access to the cockpit

We had a fun week in a friend’s camper van exploring the top of the South Island. We visited some of the initial Naked wine makers, Bill and Claudia from Small and Small, hosted a big dinner for us with a lot of the other winemakers in Marlborough which was great fun. I opted to sleep in the house for the night as it was pretty chilly in the campervan. We spent a couple of nights on the fjord like coastline, but the weather was not very kind to us, with a lot of rain. We decided to head inland to Nelson’s Lakes where the weather was better and we had some good walks. At the end of our week we flew to Wellington, where we had dinner with Rowan’s niece Kirsty and her husband Tinus, who have recently emigrated from South Africa. We hired a car and drove back north to Whangarei, stopping off at my God parents in Hawk’s Bay, great Kenyan friends of my parents, who hosted a great dinner with a couple of their kids who now live in NZ. We stopped off in Auckland to try and find various boat things, but did not have much luck. One of the things we wanted to do is replace the washing machine which is still under the boat’s warranty. It can only run when we are dead still, which is pretty hopeless on a boat. Sadly it is not to be, firstly the existing machine was built in and cant fit through the door to get it out and secondly there appeared to be no marine washing machines for sale. I guess they are ordered in and not common stock. We will have to make do!

Meeting up with Rowan’s cousin’s children Shannon and Olivia either side of Rowan. His aunt Ria in the middle, Libby is next to me, Shannon’s partner

A wonderful seafood lunch with English Sammy, who used to work for Rowan in Norwich, she lent us the campervan

The sailing boats at Nelson making Rowan jealous

Meeting up with winemakers in Blenheim

Gorgeous autumn vineyards

Rainy weather in the Marlborough Sounds

The tree ferns are magnificent

A flirtatious little fantail, who I thought had a crush on Rowan

A scenic coastal path we walked along in between showers

Our camp site right on the water’s edge

A colourful creeper

Picturesque Queen Charlotte Drive, looking over to Havelock

One of the many scenic Sounds

Nelson’s Lakes National Park

Wonderful natural bush

Blue skies and no wind

We did a lovely long walk around the lake

Dramatic mountains

Wild countryside driving back to Nelson

As we headed back to Whangarei we noticed Google was taking us on a weird detour off the main road, highway 1, so we ignored it and continued for half an hour only to find the road closed, we had obviously not noticed the Road Closure signs too. This meant doing an incredible 70km detour in land on dirt roads, quite exciting and scenic! We finally returned to our new Airbnb pad called Bush Escape, just out of town, a little self catering cottage built under the main house which was built on wooden stilts. We were really tucked into the thick bush with wonderful bird life and enjoyed being serenaded by the Tui birds. These nectar eating birds have two voice boxes, so they can make two sounds at the same time, which means they can make remarkable melodious warbles, bell like sounds, and big mimics of other birds, and sounds in the environment, including humans apparently.

Walking at Tutukaka with Hilary, an old East London friend of Rowan’s

Stunning cliff walk

Stunning coast line

Glorious beaches when the sun is out

Rowan with his cousin Carol and her husband Tim

Exploring around Whangarei over the week end, a pedestrian wooden bridge to the other side of the estuary or a 40 mile around trip in the car

Gorgeous beach, a pity about the weather!

Wonderful shell littered beach

South African aloes out in bloom everywhere – so many South African plants here, plus an enormous amount of South Africans

We had ten days of getting the boat ready, the yard hired an enormous crane to lift out our dagger boards so that they could be repaired from our little crash into a coral head in the San Blas Islands, a fault with the coat was also discovered on one of them, so had to be scraped back and new filler and gel coat applied. The crane registers the weight of the load and our dagger boards each weighed in at 400 lbs. They are huge unwieldy beasts, quite nerve wracking getting them in and out. There was a long list of jobs to be done, including a lot of warranty work. Our davits holding up the dinghy had to be taken off and repainted, they are aluminium and had corroded badly where they had touched metal screws and bolts. Our anchor chain had to be removed and re-galvanised it was so rusty. All the sails were taken off for repairs to tears and chafe. Plus Rowan had a fuel polishing system put in, so that we can clean the diesel before it goes into the engines. In the remoter areas we are heading to, the fuel can be a bit dodgy. There was a lot of work going on, and the boat was teaming with various workers, while I stocked up and loaded the boat with provisions for the next six months. We had a deadline to work to as you have to book your slot to go back into the water. This can only be done at high tide when there is enough water in the creek to get back to the main channel, which means only a couple of boats can be splashed a day. We realised we were going to miss our first slot and delayed a week, which didn’t seem an issue as the weather was foul and no window could be seen for our departure.

My favourite thing in the boat yard, the Pukeko (Swamp hen), they have strange claw like feet that they use for rooting around the grass and then they pick out the little tit bits from their feet. Poor things are not much liked by the locals, but I thought they were fascinating and had stunning plumage. Apparently they are one of the few birds to use communal nests.

The crane getting our huge curved dagger boards back onto PolePole

The nerve wracking point of slotting these heavy beasts back into the boat. One of the jobs done was putting some soft guides into the holes where the dagger boards slot into, we are hoping this reduces the noise of them banging about

Tim visiting us in workman chaos

Finally last Friday, most of the work was done and our slot to splash was booked in. We left our Airbnb and arrived in the boatyard in pouring rain, we got absolutely soaked. For a while it looked like they were going to cancel our splash as the weather was so bad and it is risky to do in too much wind. Miraculously the weather passed and the sun came out at Midday, just in time for us to enter the water again. It was incredible watching the digger driver manoeuvring our big beast through the yard to the slip way, with literally a couple of feet on either side to spare. It all went smoothly and we were quickly back out in the channel heading back down the estuary to Marsden Cove, the marina where we cleared into NZ.

PolePole on the move

Squeezing through the boatyard with what felt like inches to spare

The big digger easing us down the slipway

Finally in blue skies, into the water she goes

Felt like being in the Panama Canal again with line handlers either side, guiding us back out the creek

Trusty Kevin controlling the hydraulics, a precision work of art

the trailer removed we are on our own in the water

One very happy RG!

An hours motor down the estuary to Marsden Cove Marina

This is where we waited for the window for departure, which became clear from our weather router, it would be Monday. It meant a manic weekend of rigging up all our sails and lots of cleaning of the boat. Getting our jib back on proved tricky as our mouse line got stuck at the top of the mast. There was nothing for it but for me to go up to the very top and feed it through. Thankfully it was a sunny beautifully clam day which made it a lot easier. With our headphones on we managed to get it all sorted. Sadly the next morning Rowan realised we had done something wrong and needed to get it down again, Rowan never managed to secure the mouse line and that line flew out the top of the mast. Now we had the much more difficult task of threading a mouse line back down through the middle of the mast. I had a strop and insisted we needed help, preferably a rigger, but being a Sunday nobody was answering their phones. Some young guys had come around to meet us as they are using the same window as us and are in the same rally group, so we asked them if they could help, which of course they did with youthful enthusiasm. The one guy was a sparky (electrician) so very good at hooking things out, and the other guy was very happy to go up the mast. So we dropped our lead weights on fishing line from the top of the mast down the inside of the mast and finally got it hooked out. It all went smoothly from there on and we were back on track. Sunday lunch time the boat was still in complete chaos. I had to take the hire car back to the airport 40 minutes away and get a taxi back, plus do a panic buy of more wholemeal bread flour! It was nearly dark by the time I got back, in the drizzling rain I was out there pressure washing green gunge off the boat as it would be a long time before we would be attached to water mains again. With a soapy bath PolePole was slowly getting to look ready for departure. Rowan’s mountains of gear was being squirrelled away around the boat, in his new containers so that it is all better organised!

Marsden cove marina, just look at the weather system passing by

Very cute, noisy, amorous seabirds opposite us in the marina

Finally Monday arrived our departure was set, with customs clearance booked and our two crew members arriving at 9am. I had set my alarm for 6am as I hadn’t been able to get into the cabins to clean and get them ready for the crew. When they arrived I was still making their beds. Phil and CJ are Kiwi friends of Rowan’s two cousins, both are keen sailors and up for an adventure which is a great relief to me that we have company on this tricky passage. On the dot of 10am we were in front of customs signing out. The three officials had been sent up from Auckland, at least there were 3 boats checking out, and somehow we were first in line. Then a quick stop at the fuel dock which is alongside the slipway, in our rush we had forgotten how low we had the dagger boards and as we entered the fuel dock there was a nasty little scraping! We are not talking about it! Hopefully as we were going so slowly, we have not done any damage to our damn dagger boards.

Clearing out with customs

The crew, CJ on left and Phil on right, photos taken by Tim, Rowan’s cousin’s husband

Cast off

Leaving the marina

Filling up with fuel

Passing by the extraordinary rock formations at the Whangarei Heads

Phil at the helm

CJ with the Heads behind

Leaving NZ behind

Then we were off, hoisting the sails for the first time, always a little unnerving as we had done the rigging, getting the big beast of a main sail back on. With some minor hitches and sorting out, we were finally sailing out the estuary passed the dramatic headland, out to sea by midday. The young guys who helped us, were on a catamaran called ‘Ski’ were not far behind us. It started getting pretty bumpy, which we knew about, was predicted to last a couple of days. Our major thing we had to do was get the water maker going, we couldn’t get it going in the marina, or in the estuary as the water is too dirty. The filters have been sitting in pickling liquid for the past 6+ months that we have been away. Sadly we couldn’t get it going, Rowan and crew spent a couple of hours head down in the engine room. This and the choppy waves meant that Rowan and CJ got rather seasick. Leaving just Phil and I to eat supper of the most delicious crayfish that Phil had caught. It was a pretty rough night, I did a very long initial shift to cover Rowan’s as well. It was a knackering long day, but we were on our way at last.