We are not the best of travelers.

It took us 4 days to go the 800 km (about 500 miles) from Gulf Harbour to Wellington, where we took the ferry to get to the south island. There were so many things to do and see in the bottom of the north island! We must have been in our “adventure park” mode, because we did all the thrill-seeking things we never take the time or money to do. Before we left, I said to Jim, “Are you excited about our trip?” He said, “Well, we always go to these really cool places, then we don’t spend the money to enjoy them.” So, I put him in charge of our entertainment budget. Gulp. There were several $300-400 days before things calmed down.

We went to a town called Rotorua, and it’s close neighbor, Taupo. They offered every death-defying sport imaginable. Jim and Molly and Jessie enjoyed “Free-Fall Extreme”, which is a big padded platform, with a 12-cylinder diesel shooting air up into the middle of it, and a net over the whole thing. You put on these coveralls that catch the stream of air, and fling yourself onto it. The air blows you up to the top of the net, and it is supposed to be like free-falling from an airplane. Eighty bucks for a 4-minute ride. Each. They all loved it. You’ll see pictures eventually.

The next day, we went on a jet boat up the Waikato River, out of Taupo. The boat goes about 70 miles per hour in 3 cm of water. It flies right next to rock walls, and over rapids. The driver loved doing 180-degree turns. It was a half hour of wet, thrilling fun. We watched some people bungee jump into a river, and decided that wasn’t for us.

The rest of the north island was pretty barren and had a lot of construction. We were glad to get to Wellington just in time to hop on the 3-hour ferry that took us across Cook Strait to Picton, on the south island. Amazingly, our friends on the yacht, Azul , were on the same ferry, going to the town of Nelson to check it out for a place to move their boat. It was great fun to hang out with them on the ride across the Strait. The islands we saw from the ferry reminded us of the Canadian San Juans. In fact, the very arm that took us to Picton was called Queen Charlotte Sound.

It seems we are in constant pursuit of food. We have not had good luck with the restaurants of New Zealand. The food is never what we expect, and the surprises haven’t been pleasant. What we have found to be fun are Holiday Parks, where you rent a piece of ground to pitch your tent, or rent a small cabin. They have common-area kitchens, bathrooms (called ablution areas) and laundry rooms. They often have a pool or playground for kids. These places are inexpensive and well-organized. We have found some charming old ones that look straight out of the 1950s. We did not bring any cooking supplies, so it has been a challenge to buy for dinner, and breakfast and lunch the next day. Some of the camping areas have an outdoor grill or gas stainless stove-top. We have had steaks, chicken, fried potatoes for dinner, and breakfast is usually hard-boiled eggs, yogurt, and a toasted bagel, and lunch has been a wrap of some kind with fruit. I have been missing green vegetables; we will need to add a salad every once in a while. We can’t carry much fresh food, so it seems like we are always on the lookout for a grocery store. The Holiday Parks are usually out of town, on a beach or some scenic spot, so we drive around and find a park, set up the tent, then go into town and grocery shop. It feels very European to be cooking and eating dinner at 9:00 at night.

We spent one rainy day in Nelson, and went to an exhibit of Leonardo Da Vinci’s inventions. There were drawings and reproductions of the machines that he designed. It is amazing how many of his ideas have become useful today; hang gliders, ball bearings, the bicycle. There was a simple bridge that he designed made out of logs. The museum had a set of smaller pieces of wood sitting on the floor by the bridge, and you could try to re-create the bridge. Molly and Jessie stepped right in and started figuring it out. Quite a few of the hundred people in the room stopped to watch while they put the bridge together. I was thinking, at age thirteen, would I have had the ability or the self-confidence to puzzle out a problem in front of so many strangers? I don’t think so. It didn’t take them long to work it out, and took turns crossing over the bridge they had just made. Thank goodness they have Jim for a dad; he’s got enough talent and confidence to fill several rooms!

I had high hopes of being able to have school every day, but –surprise!- that hasn’t happened. The girls have managed to do their reading, but math is a little difficult in the car. We fit in oral spelling tests while driving. It seems odd that we are on vacation from our “cruising vacation”. Where does the fun end?

We are near Abel Tasman National Park, which we will explore tomorrow. It is supposed to be a beautiful place, with all sorts of trails and birds and flowers. There are no indigenous mammals in New Zealand. The only mammal here is the possum, which people kill with great abandon, since they are ruining the bird population here. Stores sell possum scarves, gloves, and slippers, with a tag that says, “Support our ecological efforts – buy possum!”

Right now, we are in a tiny little motel on the beach – the room is Seventies-style. I got to explain that to Molly and Jessie – how we all thought Burnt Orange, Harvest Gold and Avocado Green were the coolest thing in that era. The beach is lovely, and we had fun playing Frisbee and collecting even more shells.

We don’t know how far south we will go, since it has been almost 10 days and we’ve only covered about 1,000 miles. Although internet has been sporadic at best, we will try to keep you posted! ~ Jeanna

Can summer be over already?

It’s pouring down rain here in New Zealand, and we are supposed to leave on our big road trip in a couple of days!  Our camping trip.  As in, sleeping on the ground, in a small tent.  Thank heavens for MasterCard…

Jim came back from Seattle, bursting with “big city” energy.  He said that after about 5 minutes in the office, he felt like he had never left.  Although it was bitterly cold in Seattle, he said the boat show was excellent, and the recession evidently has not affected the boating public.  He brought back some exciting boat parts that he is installing; a 220-volt hot water heating element, a Reverso oil change pump, and LED replacement bulbs for all the running lights. 

Jim brought a new kite for Molly and Jessie (or was it for him?).  It is parachute-shaped, and about 4 feet long.  It is controlled by a bar that you hold onto.  It is great fun to fly; you don’t need much wind, and there is no running involved.  The kite just picks itself up and starts dipping and jiving through the air.  Yesterday, I believe we found the kite’s wind limit.  It was blowing about 20 knots, and Jim could not hold onto the bar anymore without the kite dragging him to the ground, face first.  He let go of the bar, and the kite plunged into the water surrounding the point where we were standing.  Jessie and I kept our eyes on the kite, while Jim ran to the boat, started up the dinghy and, just like Zorro, came flying into view to rescue the water-logged kite.  I think if Molly or Jessie would have been holding on to that kite, they would have been in the water, too!

On Valentine’s Day, we went to Waiwera Thermal Resort with our friends on the yacht, Azul.  The resort has about 10 different pools, filled with natural hot springs water coming from deep underground.  The pools vary in temperature from about 80 to 110 degrees. There is a “movie” pool in a dark building, where you can lounge in the pool and watch a movie.  There were about 10 water slides; dark, twisty, and scary, that dropped you into several of the pools.  Two of the slides were braided together, so you rolled and thumped along with your partner.  After a morning of water slides, my body felt like I had been playing tackle football, and it was so nice to go into the warm, relaxing “grown-up” pool.

I have noticed that Molly and Jessie seem a little desperate to put down roots.  They long to be with their friends, and they have become very attached to the youth group of a church that we have been going to.  The ‘pull” to their own kind is very strong.  The message I get is that it is time to get back home and let them socialize with friends their own age.  I have met cruising kids who have been out here for 6 years and longer, and they are very shy.  They seem overly attached to their parents, and don’t seem to know how to play well with others.  I think the two years Molly and Jessie will have spent “out of the norm” is just about right.

We will probably have internet sometimes during our road trip, so we will try to keep you posted on what the south island is like.  Let’s hope it is dry!    ~Jeanna

Question of the Week

Here is the answer to last week’s question:
You would be on the Island of Niue, in the Southern Cook Islands.

See if you can find the correct answer to this question!  We will continue to post questions along with the answer to the previous question.  Have fun!

What three major events happened on July Fourth, 1826?

I Started Playing Guitar…

about five months ago!  I began in Tonga when I met a Belgian girl from another boat that plays beautiful Spanish flamenco guitar.  She gave me some of her sheet music and I started practicing on Dad’s Ovation. 

An Ovation is a really nice brand of guitar; Dad’s has a round fiberglass back, steel strings, and a thin neck that is perfect for people with small hands.  I am now very spoiled, because an Ovation is a quality guitar with an excellent sound. 

The first song I tried was a Spanish waltz from the sheet music I got.  It’s a nice song, and pretty easy to play.  The good thing is that it sounds complicated and advanced, so people think that it is a difficult song.  I thought that it was going to be difficult for me to work out that song, because I had not read sheet music since a year ago in piano lessons.  The process seemed complicated, first I had to find the notes in the music, then I had to find out where it was on the guitar, and then I had to decide how I would position my hands on the fret board.  I taught myself that song in about three hours so I guess it was not as hard as I thought it was going to be.  After that it took another couple of days to memorize it.  I had to memorize it because I could not read the notes as fast as the song is played.  Even now, when I actually look at the music for that song, I do not read the notes as “a” through “g”; each note or group of notes represents a position on the neck of the guitar for me and I read it that way.

The other two songs I got are called “Mazurka” and “Sertaneja”.  Sertaneja is a duet, so for a long time I would only play the easy top part; later, when Molly borrowed a piano from some of our friends, she worked out the bottom part on the piano and we played it together. 

In Tonga there is a restaurant called La Paella that had a “jam night”; anyone who wanted to could come and play or listen to music.  That was the first time I played guitar for an audience besides my family.  I played the one song I had in my repertoire at the time, the Spanish waltz.  Aquarium Café held an open-mike night for cruisers and I played the waltz there too.  That was my second performance.  The audience cheered wildly, which boosted my confidence.  By the time that Aquarium Café hosted its second open-mike night, I had added the top part of “Sertaneja”, part of “Mazurka”, and “Windy and Warm”, a song that dad taught me, to my repertoire; I played those too. 

When we got to New Zealand, we met some kids from a boat called Azul, from England.  At the time we met, there were 13-year old twins and a 15-year old brother.  The twins, a boy and a girl named Daniel and Anderson, turned 14 soon after.  That spoiled our fun slightly, because we wanted to say we had found 13-year old twins like us!  What made up for that, though, is that Anderson and Josh, the older brother, plays the piano and Daniel plays the guitar.  We have a lot of fun with them!

I got some guitar tabs from Daniel and soon I had a couple more songs that I could play from memory.  We also had a lot of fun looking through the music stores and admiring all of the guitars while Anderson, Josh, and Molly were looking longingly at pianos that lit up when you played them.

For those of you that do not play the guitar, guitar tabs are another format for reading music.  They are a lot easier to read while playing the guitar, because they have six lines that represent the six strings of the guitar.

When Daniel got a really nice new nylon string guitar for Christmas, I got to borrow his old one.  I am having a lot of fun playing that one now.  There is a big difference in playing a nylon-string guitar and a steel-string like Dad’s Ovation, but they are both fun to play.  Dad is also very glad that I am not hogging his guitar now!   

I have found a great site on the internet for printing out guitar tabs; the address is www.chordie.com.  It is hard to find free sheet music on the internet, so now I am using tabs; they are a lot easier to read.  I am working on a couple of new songs that I printed off of that web site.  Those songs are “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”, “Blackbird”, and “Classical Gas”.  I know, the last song sounds strange, but it is a very nice song.

I converted the Spanish waltz into tabs for anyone who reads tabs.  I have also included that and the sheet music in the media gallery.  The sheet music is a bit scribbled on, because it is a copy of borrowed sheet music.  A a later date I might put the tabs for “Sertaneja” and “Mazurka” in the media gallery also.  I hope any musician will have fun playing these songs!    ~ Jessie

 Question of the Week

See if you can find the correct answer to the question!  We will continue to post questions along with the answer to the previous question!  Have fun!

The answer to last week’s question is: To convert degrees Centigrade to degrees Fahrenheit, double the Centigrade number, deduct ten percent of that, and add 32 degrees.  

Have fun with this week’s question!

If Ruby Slippers was at 19 degrees 4’ 48” South latitude and 169 degrees 55’ 32” West longitude, which island would we be on?

We have been exploring the North Island,

just like good tourists should. New Zealanders are an interesting bunch. They have created a tourist Mecca with a small-town feel. Anyone who might have an interesting rock or tree in their backyard, it seems, has put a fence around it and called it a museum. For a “slight fee”, you can see New Zealand’s largest or oldest or most colorful.

We got our money’s worth at Sheep World, as we spent the entire day there. We learned more about sheep than we ever thought we wanted to know. There are many different types of sheep, bred for a variety of reasons; wool, meat, pets. There was an entertaining herding dog/sheep show. The herding dogs are a mix of Border Collie and Greyhound – fast, smart and short-haired to survive the hot weather. It was amazing to watch them gather those sheep and bring them to the boss. Molly and Jessie both got to help “sort” sheep, using a variety of gates that separate the sheep according to a color painted on their heads. There were also deer, rabbits, alpacas, goats, pigs, possum and pond-eels at Sheep World. Guess the name would have been too long if they listed everything.

The 168th anniversary of the founding of Auckland was last week. Lots of on-the-water activities – tall ships, a regatta up to the Bay of Islands, and maritime festivals. Molly and Jessie and I laid low during the weekend – I didn’t want to drive with all the rest of New Zealand on the roads. If Jim were here, I’m sure we would have been in the thick of things. Life is a lot more laid-back with Jim in Seattle, but not nearly as exciting. He tends to stir things up and get us moving!

We went to a great Saturday market in Matakana. Terribly expensive, but full of people and music and home-grown veggies. Nectarines are in season right now – so sweet! Jim is amused by the signs around here. We saw Stubb’s Village Butcher Shoppe, and of course, the town of Manly – Manly Barber Shop, Manly Beach, Manly Ice Cream. I liked the ominous road sign, Cemetery (NO EXIT).

We went to the Maritime Museum in Auckland – a very impressive display of all things water-related. There was a lot of information about the America’s Cup race, and about the “discovery” of New Zealand by Capt. James Cook. The Maori Indians were already here, of course, much like the Columbus story of America. There was a short movie about the Polynesians, and how they navigated through the waters of the South Pacific, with no instruments. They read the stars, learned about the prevailing winds, and read the waves and currents. They even used whales as their guideposts.

Sir Edmund Hillary is New Zealand’s biggest celebrity; he died a week or so ago, and we saw his funeral on a big screen set up by the Museum. He was a great adventurer, and the first man to climb Mt. Everest. He died peacefully, at age 87.

We girls drove south toward Auckland to Bayswater Marina, where our friends on AZUL are moored. We all went to Shakespeare in the Park and saw the play, King Lear. It was a worthy effort, although pretty low-budget. I admire those actors for memorizing 3 hours of Shakespeare. It was a little disconcerting, however, to hear that lovely English prose in a nasal New Zealand accent. We spent a couple of days studying King Lear before-hand, so we would be able to follow along. The five teenagers in our group seemed to “get” the play just fine, and enjoyed the whole experience.

While Jim is in freezing-cold Seattle, we have been enjoying the sun and the friendly locals. We’ve gotten a little bit of boat work done; the topsides will be waxed by the time you get home – honest, Jim! Check out the new pictures in the Media Gallery! ~Jeanna

Question of the Week
This is the answer to last week’s question:

Centrifugal force pushes an object away from a central point, and centripetal force is the opposite if that.

Here is another question for you. Have fun!

What is the formula for changing degrees Centigrade to degrees Fahrenheit?