Time for a Friday pic...or two.

[John B]

Yesss , haven't done any for a while but of course at this time of the year in NZ , spring is arriving and thoughts turn to boating.I might be rehashing old ground.. can't remember. I'm sitting here late Fri afternoon and mentally preparing for the penultimate onslaught of the kids soccer tomorrow:rolleyes:

So back a few months,we returned from our Christmas cruise a bit early because I'd spotted something nasty on the net in the form of a Tropical Cyclone lurking up above Nth Queensland ,Australia. One of the models showed it trending down onto us although our usual met service missed the boat as it were, and predicted less than a day of high winds.
So we shot back from Gt Barrier a bit early and anchored at the Coppermine at Kawau Island.
Lovely day.
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid200/p9a8fd6ff408db89c487f1b5b30dfe38b/f0767995.jpg
Pretty shallow and with unusually clear water for NZ. This is my " who knows what evil lurks with the hearts of men " shadow cast on the bottom shot.
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid200/p80da69023a2521f13665be9348919f87/f0767976.jpg
Lerrvelly day it was too.
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid200/p2e0c44efbcb3dddc6a0f3df6eed41ea9/f0767958.jpg
We debated as to whether the met service was right ( stay)or not( go).. decided they weren't and left that afternoon for a last stop an hour away from home for the night.
a nice wee sail of 3 hours or so .
Leaving Kawau
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid200/p3916974e208691b6ddcb064f9013d39b/f052a2b4.jpg
on the last gybe up to Drunks bay
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid200/pc5849bf3babefc93eef3aeaf6d0bb59f/f052a2b6.jpg
and a last foursies on the beach in at drunks.( I definitely have used this pic before...)
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid200/p5937cbb3948e5f01359d4de5eb526f16/f0767931.jpg
It blew say 20 the next day but went 70 the day after, when we were tucked up all showered and happy at home.

[igatenby]

Great photos John. Have a nice weekend.

I'm sitting here late Fri afternoon and mentally preparing for the penultimate onslaught of the kids soccer tomorrow

Geez mate the season is but young. Our elder boy captains the Under18 1st Division team - Premiers and Champions this year - and tomorrow is another practice game before the Champions of Champions tournament starts. Its off to Albury on the 24th - a 7 hour coach trip away for the first game in that comp. If they don't get knocked out, that comp goes through October ........

[bamamick]

runs. Your parents sort of dread you making the team because if you do and you advance it can add another month of hauling and carting all the way to Pennsylvania (if you're really good). I made an all-star team that made it to the Dixie Youth World Series in Memphis when I was a kid but had to drop off the roster because my dad just couldn't get me to the practices. That was a bummer.

I don't think that people without kids really understand all of the poop that you go through to get them to the point to where they can drive themselves around. I have spent thousands of hours at soccer practice and games. Then there was volleyball, basketball, band, swimming, gymnastics,sailing, and on and on and on. Mother's and Father's Day should come more than once a year, imo.

Oh yeah, nice pictures JohnB (how's that for an almost thread hijack?).

Mickey Lake

[John B]

Nahh Mickey.. thats how they're meant to go ...
Ian.. 7 hours.. thats Australia for you :D

for us:One big girl has finished netball, the boy has finished soccer and the wee girl... who got selected for an all girls rep team has her last club game tomorrow but still has the nationals to go to in about 2 weeks.
2 parents going three directions for three months.. geez. Time to change modes soon though, pull up the carpets and call it summer.
Still have to haul the boat and antifoul but its going to be a quick lick this year... she can be a bit frumpy this season cos I'm a goin sailing.

[bamamick]

You know, that brings up another point: I don't think that I have ever seen this asked; what months do your kids go to school? Our kids go from August to May. Traditionally there were two reasons for this. The first is that school buildings were too darn hot for anyone to pay attention come May. The second is that the potato crop was ready to be harvested in the middle of May and Baldwin County was one of the largest potato producing areas in the United States when I was a kid.

So, do your kids have a long holiday around Christmas and the New Year's?

John, did you ever find out about the Dragon with the broken rig? Is it for sale? I look forward to your cruises as I do every year. Marvelous photos and wonderful descriptions of where and how everything goes. I really would love to see your beautiful country.

Mickey Lake

[igatenby]

I really would love to see your beautiful country.

Speaking of running kids around .... Di is taking Rick on a Band tour of the South Island of NZ in a month's time, and my daughter leaves for 4 months working in a hospital in China in a week - but she's doing that one on her own (sort of .... my money)

Ian

[bamamick]

My youngest is on track to graduate from college at 19! She has spoken repeatedly of doing a tour in the Peace Corps. Proud and worried at the same time. She is just so young, but those sorts of things are made for the young, are they not?

If she does go into the Peace Corps she'll come back and go to grad school. Maybe the law? I have a friend who just returned from six weeks in Shanghai, and of course my friend Donnie was with the US Sailing team in Qingdao. Don't really know very much about modern China. They both seemed to like it pretty well, though. I certainly hope that it's everything that your daughter could wish it to be.

You should go with your wife and son, eh :)?

Mickey Lake

[John B]

The main holiday of the year is christmas hols Mickey.
4 terms of school interspersed with 2 week holidays for the kids through the year and then a six week ( I think ) school holiday starting late dec. Business wise we shut up shop around 21.. 22 december approx and there are statutory holidays between christmas and New year. I personally don't take holidays through the year it seems ,and I take off for a month or 5 weeks from christmas. Most business' get fired up from about mid jan on.
Then there's a series of 'long' weekends and easter through feb to april thereabouts. We'll sneak off on friday night and get back a sunday or monday night depending.

[rbgarr]

Speaking of Kiwis and cyclones, or hurricanes as they are called in the Atlantic (why the difference?), I met some voyagers the other day when helping a friend gas up his boat.

I dropped my wife off at a yard sale at a local rest home's field where she set up a table to sell off various unneeded items (she cleared $300!) and went of to a see a friend nearby. He has a Rozinante, a 32' Wasque powerboat and a nice woodshop. I'm making a couple of models, so brought some raw wood to shape up in case it looked like we'd have time to do it, but our first hope was to go sailing. Very foggy and no wind at all, so he asked if I'd help him gas up the boat. His wife is about to go in for back surgery and he has only one arm, so anything I can do to help is fine by me. We unmoored, motored out around the point through a ledgy tickle and tied up at the nearby lobster pound.

A sizeable (48') white ketch was fueling up there so we grabbed a bite to eat in the shack and struck up a conversation with the owners of the ketch. They were from Auckland, had been out a year and were heading off that day to England. We talked about Hurricane Florence for a while and how it was making its way NE between Bermuda and Nova Scotia. They were watching it and planned to just jog along until it had blown itself out. Very nice folks and an interesting custom wood boat. Very high-sided, and it must have had more room below than any 48' I've seen: huge beam and cabins with a fairly small but comfortable center cockpit. While we were talking they were busily scrubbing the decks and stern scoop with the fresh water hose and eager to clear the dock space, so we didn't go aboard. They hadn't seen much of the Maine coast unfortunately and we were about to ask where they'd been when the pound manager asked them if the cleaning agent they were using had bleach in it. Fortunately it didn't, because the bleach runoff could have killed the lobsters caged under the floating dock right at the stern of their boat. They then paid up and cast off while we started to gas up ourselves.

Meanwhile, the fog had burned off and a nice breeze filled in. On our return to the mooring we swung through Round Pond harbor. We saw a Beetle cat, a Wianno Senior, VITESSA (an NGH Buzzard's Bay 25 ketch), and a nice Alpha dory getting under way. I'd seen her on her trailer once but this was the first I'd seen her sail. We saw an eagle and a lovely Rhodes sloop on the way back to the moorage at my friend's house. We both wanted to go sailing then, but he had to get his wife to a friend's house for a visit before she'd be laid up after her surgery.

I didn't get as much done that day as I'd hoped, but it was interesting nonetheless.

The tide rise here has been dramatically affected by that storm. The top of the tide is occurring about an hour later than the charts say it should, is quite a bit higher and stays up longer. It's fascinating to my physical oceanographer neighbor and he's been quite excited to see it.