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Departing NZ - April 2001Well, it has been a busy 6 months for us. We sailed back to New Zealand early last cruising season to attend Jody and Brady's wedding (Jeff's sister/brother-in-law). The wedding was wonderful. We got to see lots of our family and meet our new family (mostly from the east coast.) We stayed in Los Angeles from the end of October until mid-January so that we could enjoy the holidays. It is our favorite time to be home because friends and family are off work and the kids - grandkids, nieces, nephews - are not in school. We arrived back in New Zealand in mid January. Los Angeles
Even though it seemed like it would be a long time
in Los Angeles, it passed quite quickly. One of things that really kept
us busy was getting our product, the Watch Commander, off the ground.
Check out www.SailSafely.com when you
get a chance. We had a lot to learn and do to get it off the ground.
We got the circuit boards designed and tested, ordered all sorts of samples
for packaging, identified parts and suppliers, getting a website up, etc.
Designing the circuit and making it work turned out to be the easy part.
Once we returned to NZ, we had to find some local suppliers for circuit
boards, some parts, face plates, etc. We built 25 units and sold them
before we even got to ship any units to our commitments in the US. We
had to reorder parts to build more and it wasn't until April that we caught up
and got stuff shipped to the US.
While we were designing/debugging and running a
factory inside Sea Witch, we also were getting the boat ready for this season.
We deferred so much work last season - basically, we fixed almost nothing
during the cruising season - that we had almost no time to go touring in NZ.
Oh well. We'll just have to come back here. The boat runs
from the next dock to TiriTiri Island, a bird sanctuary and home to most
of the remaining 200 Takahaes - large flightless birds that aren't scared of
their predators; you don't have to wonder why there are only 200 left.
We did manage to have some fun here. 19
cruisers hit the go cart track for Alan on Heartsong's birthday. It was
amazing to see how aggressive adults can get when turned loose like that.
No thought was given to running a close friend off the track or slamming into
him to get by in a turn. A similar size group descended on the bowling
alley. And, we all tried not to miss Tuesday nights a the movies; that's
discount night and cruisers will always try and save a buck when they can.
Ready to Depart
We're ready to leave. We've enjoyed NZ so
much. After two seasons here it feels like we're leaving home again.
We've sold our car and are getting ready to head to Opua and wait for a
weather window to head north. This season, our plans are to stop in
Minerva Reef ( a reef that barely breaks the ocean surface 750 nm north of
NZ), then Tonga for a few weeks. We're meeting friends there that are
chartering a boat and have another friend staying with us. We'll head
for Fiji around the middle of June and probably spend a month or so there.
(We did the southern half last season.) From Fiji, we'll head west to
Vanuatu and probably spend the bulk of our season there. Then, some time
in New Caledonia before we head for Australia in December.
We plan on visiting Los Angeles for Christmas if
we can work it out. Beyond that, "we have no plans and we're
sticking to them". We will need to decide this season which way to
go to get Sea Witch back to the US. Unless we stop somewhere for work,
we'll probably need to be back in the US in 2-3 years. The Watch Commander
will pay for a few toys but will never make us rich. So...
We've been trying to decide whether to head west
or east to get back. Still kicking around lots of ideas. West
would mean either Africa or the Red Sea/Med. East would be more of the
Pacific Islands. Tough choices but somebody has to do it. Oh well.
Misc things that didn't fit anywhere:
We both upgraded our ham licenses to Extra class
and have become Volunteer Examiners. We helped with one ham test and are
running another in Opua. We've now also helped with 85 pactor
installations for Sailmail or Winlink (non-boater friends: this is the radio
email link most of us use) and spent some time working with ZL1MA (the ham
station in NZ) to get lots of weather bulletins up and available to cruisers.
We're also working on rewriting the weather map software that many of the
boats use. So, we've got some fun projects to keep us busy. And,
there is still plenty to do on the boat. This season, we plan
on doing more maintenance during the season so that the off-season is not so
overwhelming.
We'll try and send out a few newsletters this
season. When we get time, we'll get some of our newsletters and
dig-pictures up on our website. We've also shot and produced a 50 minute
underwater video that is getting some good reviews. We'll probably make
that available through the web "someday".
OK. So we've written. It is your turn now.
Keep in touch...jpc & gail
Jeff & Gail Casher
Sea Witch
Departing New Zealand
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