Season Two Begins
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Thu 26 Feb 2009 21:30
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Well, sort of.
We are both back in New Zealand after a marvelous
three months at home. Mostly marvelous that is if you don't
count the endless days of gray or the fact that Syracuse experienced the
snowiest December in recent history while we were there. But what's a
couple of feet of snow on the ground when there are more important things to do
like help your bother-in-law install a furnace or see and party
with Don's Mom and as many former co-workers, new
retirees, friends or members of the giant 34-person Bell family as
possible?
So here we are back in New Zealand. The past
three months are now a blur of fun and faces and the next eight are just
starting to come into focus. Don has been here since the end of
January, which gave him enough time to do all the hard work before I waltzed in
a week ago. Since then we spent four days sailing with John and Sue on
Storyteller around Auckland and are now packing for a month-long land tour
of the South Island.
Land tour you ask? Yup, land tour. A
good portion of the New Zealand coast is not necessarily boat-touring-friendly
(lots of open coastline and not enough cozy harbors).
Therefore we will be touring all of the South Island by land. And so
Season Two begins. Here's the plan:
Starting tomorrow, we'll meet Sue and John
(Storyteller) and their friends Annette and Tony in the Marlborough Sounds area
(northeast coast of the South Island) and spend a week at Annette and Tony's
'bach'. The bach is what we would call a cottage or a camp. This one
is only accessible by water and not accessible by internet or cell phone.
Not so different from sailing across the open sea really.
After we leave the bach, my parents will fly in and
join us for the rest of our South Island land tour.
In late March we'll say good-bye to my parents and
return to Harmonie in Whangarei on the North Island where we'll spend a few
weeks getting ourselves and the boat ready for another round of the South
Pacific.
Once we and the boat are in peak form, we'll leave
Whangarei and meander along the North Island coast for a couple of weeks, ending
up back in Opua (site of our New Zealand landing back in
October).
In early May - weather permitting - we'll sail with
Michael and Jackie on Lady Kay and Sue and John on the new Storyteller (more on
this later) 1400ish miles northeast to Tonga.
From there, we'll retrace last year's steps - at a
much slower pace - and island hop through Tonga, Fiji, Vanuatu and New
Caledonia.
We'll sail to Australia from New Caledonia in
September, find a nice place to haul the boat, and travel home again for a
couple of months (late October through December).
Season Two will end in Australia.
That's the plan anyway. Subject to change
based on a single or multiple whims originating from the captain and/or crew at
any given time.
More in a week or so after we return to
civilization from our stay in the water-accessible-only bach.
Cheers from the land of summer.
Anne
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