Clyde

Most news currently revolves around Tracer

She has been moved down to Wellington – my mate John, who owns After Midnight, gave me a hand and we brought her down a few weeks ago. Then she sat on Craig’s mooring on the breakwater for a couple of weeks. Now, following a couple of dives to put down some mooring chains on a new mooring, she’s on the commodore’s old mooring. The trip down was uneventful; the boat sails very well, and we timed our run nicely so that the Karori Rip wasn’t a factor. A piece of jib track got bent as the bolts ripped out of a rotten section of roof but that was pretty much on the cards all along.

On the bringing-her-back-up-to-prime-condition front, some of the deck hardware has been removed, the winches have been stripped and half-serviced, and a quantity of marine ply, teak, paint, and two-part epoxy glue has been purchased. This has been an eye opener; it turns out that BOAT stands for Bring On Another Thousand. Also the jobs are more numerous than I’d at first thought, and they’re proving harder to do than I’d expected as none of the wood is straight and none of the bolts have moved for the last 40 years. Still I refuse to be daunted and I have $250 of Burnsco (a chandlery) vouchers which I got for winning ‘employee of the month’ which will purchase about half a new cleat. At some point I’m going to have to start cutting into the cabin roof. I’m a bit scared of doing that to be honest but it’s going to have to be done at some point and the sooner the old bits come out the sooner the new ones can start to go in…

About the only spare day which hasn’t been spent on the boat was last Saturday. Stuart is getting married in July so for his stag do we went up to Kapiti and did a quad bike trail ride. It was excellent; some proper off-road mud-bogging and it’s amazing what the quads will put up with – you can take them places a landrover would look twice at. As well as the quads we had a crack at clay shooting, archery, and air pistol shooting. I’d never fired a shotgun before but managed to hit about half the clays. It’s not that hard really.

In other news, the Super 14 rugby season has finished, the  Hurricanes losing in the semi-final to the Waikato Chiefs. We’ve done a few pub quizzes, with varied results – the best being 4th out of 20 or so last week.

Work continues busy, which is a good thing. I am trying to reduce my involvement in database matters and get back into client facing projects, with some success.

There’s a lot of talk of the swine flu epedemic. I’ve laid in stocks of supplies in case we come down with it. Not much else to be done, really!

Tracer

Oops. I’ve bought a boat.

My boss’s father has sold me a 26-foot Raven sloop, called Tracer. She has a GRP hull, a plywood top which needs a lick of paint, a 10hp diesel engine, a variety of sails, a blue dodger, and a battlestick.

She’s at Mana at the moment; I’m going to try to get her a mooring at the Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club. They’ve got a really nice basin in the middle of Wellington. I plan to leave her in the water for a month, work out all the jobs I want to do on her, then pull her out for the winter and do them.

Commodore

Went for a sail on Saturday with Craig, John, and a frenchman called Regis, on John’s 28 footer After Midnight. Racing 29 other boats. Course was around the harbour, pretty much. We got a good start and led our group most of the way round, with one of the others (longer than us) getting ahead of us on the second to last leg.

With handicap taken into account we got second place overall. Sadly there’s only a trophy for first place though, but we did get drinks bought for us by the commodore of the club.

Venom

Took the ferry across the harbour and went to Taronga Zoo. It’s an excellent zoo and contains a wide variety of native Australian creatures, all of which can kill you. These include 11 varieties of appallingly poisonous snake, the worst of them being the Fierce Snake, named no doubt for its placid demeanour, and the most venomous subspecies of the most venomous sort of spider, plus a variety of other spiders of varying degrees of ferocity and toxicity. Apparently there’s also an octopus which is poisonous enough to kill 40 horses, should it ever need to, but I didn’t see one of those. I also didn’t see a platypus, despite there being about four hundred platypus enclosures and a variety of plaques saying things like “we’ve bred over a million platypusses in captivity in this pond”. The extraordinary fecundity of these animals is matched, apparently, only by their reluctance to show themselves.

There’s a lot of breeding at the zoo in general, actually. They’ve just had a baby pygmy hippo, which is like a hippo, but smaller. I also saw a couple of tortoises at it like knives, and an elephant with a semi-on, which was about what you’d expect.

We did see Tasmanian Devils, which are apparently in a lot of trouble. They’re so fierce that whenever they see each other they have a fight. Which would be fine, apartf from the fact that they’re suffering from an incurable and highly contagious cancer of the face, which they keep giving each other when they bite each other. If they don’t learn to get along they’re going to be extinct in the wild within 30 years.

We also had our photo taken with a koala, which tried to climb onto my shoulder. They’ve got long claws. They also do absolutely bugger all as they eat only eucalyptus leaves, which provide enough energy to… digest the eucalyptus leaves, and have a nap.

In the evening we found a pub called the Lord Nelson which as I’m sure you can imagine had me in raptures. Then we went for an italian meal at a restaurant with Amor somewhere in the name. Like everything else in Sydney it cost about a billion pounds but was very pleasant although we did discover afterwards that it was opposite a shop selling nothing but buttons, which took the shine off of things a bit for JJ.

Criminals

In an attempt to better understand the Australian psyche we went to the convict museum, housed in the old convict barracks. The convict barracks were built by some of the first convicts to arrive; after building it they lived in it while doing other convict things. It was all very interesting and I am pleased to report that none of my ancestors were deported here. Actually, that’s self evident, because if they had been then I’d be Australian, which I’m not.

After that we went to a maritime museum and looked over a frigate, a submarine, and a replica of James Cook’s ship the Endeavour. The Endeavour was, apparently, a refitted collier and has about 4′ of clearance between decks. Comfort abounds.

And after that we met up with Pete-the-disgrace, and drank beer in a Bavarian bierkellar until we couldn’t drink any more beer.

Sydney

Got up at 3am and flew to Sydney. Last time I went on a plane I had about half the hours PiC that I have now. No nerves at all. If you don’t like flying, learn to fly.

We arrived at about 8am local (the aussies are 2 hours behind: insert joke about aussies being a bit backward), and got the double decker train to the hotel. Just like the ones in Holland, which I’d forgotten about. Hotel is fine, we can see a corner of the bridge and a very large hole in the gound containing five diggers from the window. Fortunately it’s a bank holiday so they’re not diggering.

Met Andy and Serena for lunch: fish and chips down by the harbour. Or octopus and chips in my case. Spent the afternoon mooching around the botanical gardens. Animal count: huge spiders, huge bats, egrets which hang around the cafe making a nuisance of themselves, eels, parakeets, mcaws, people getting married, and lesbians. Looked at the opera house, then got a ferry to Darling Harbour and had a few drinks. Failed to go to the world’s biggest imax, and spent and hour wandering around town looking for a bar which wasn’t closed due to it being good friday before flaking out around 10pm.

The bridge isn’t what you’d expect. It’s not as delicate-looking as it is in photographs. It’s sort of heavy, and brooding, and dark grey, and has lots of fiddly wires and bracing struts and things when you get close to it. I suspect it’s always photographed from a long way off. Also the arch sort of stops before it joins the towers, making the whole thing look as if it was built in pieces which don’t quite fit together.

The opera house, despite everyone saying it’s a lot smaller than you think it’s going to be, isn’t. It’s big, and impressive, and looks different from every angle, and there’s only one of it. I liked it a lot. Bit of a shame the shells are perched on top of a concrete blockhouse but from the waist up it’s beyond reproach.

Initial impressions: aussies aren’t as friendly as kiwis. Wherever you go in Sydney the opera house and bridge keep popping out from behind buildings. Sydney has no nightlife on bank holidays.

Dragon

I seem to have omitted to post anything about the Dragon Boat, which is remiss. So I’ll make up for it.

Andy-the-tri’s girlfriend Maria is head of PE at Sacred Heart Catholic Girls’ School, in the Hutt. Every year they enter a couple of teams in the Dragon Boat festival. Maria asked me if I’d like to learn to sweep. The sweep is the helmsman.

So I’ve been spending a couple of hours a week for the last few weeks learning to stand up in the back of a large unstable canoe, with nothing but a long wooden oar which isn’t fixed to anything for support, steering up and down the harbour in varying weathers, while a coach shouts TIMING at twenty schoolgirls who are paddling the boat and throwing spray back over me. At first I wasn’t convinced but I’m starting to get into it now. Grand final on sunday, and that’s it for the year.

Through the Dragon Boats I’ve met another mate of Maria’s, the brilliantly-named Craig Slack, who is a multi-water-sportsman. He’s doing up a wooden 46-footer at the moment, and sails on a 30-footer called After Midnight in various race series. I went out and did a twilight race with him the other week. I’d never done any racing before. Very enjoyable, I wasn’t a total bufoon, and we didn’t come last.

All of a sudden I’ve nearly got the 25 hours Pilot In Command I need for Qualified Glider Pilot. I’ll be taking Andy and Serena for joyrides at the weekend, so that should carry me over the line. I’ll have to do a checkflight before I get issued with the ticket, but that shouldn’t be too much of a trauma.

Had a good flight in weak wave the other week; hour and a half; went to Otaki three times. Got bored in the end and tried to get the PW5 to spin to lose height. It doesn’t. It does, however, fly a wingover quite nicely if you ask it to.

My birthday at the end of the month. By a happy coincidence it’s also the night of a major deployment at work, so I’ll be celebrating by staying in the office until about 11pm.

Cabinet

A busy few weeks again. JJ’s colleague Marcus, who used to work for New Zealand Cricket, got us free tickets for the 20/20 against India on Friday, which we won on the last ball. A hugely exciting match. There’s an ODI next week so we’ll go to that as well.

Beer festival in Waitangi Park yesterday in the pouring rain. We didn’t let that deter us though and had an excellent afternoon’s sampling hiding under a tent. We met someone from Zambia and I managed to slip down a muddy bank. Then we went to Marcus and Deb’s for dinner and a few rounds of Buzz. Head hurts a bit this morning.

The carpentry project has been succesful so far; the first bedside cabinet has been completed apart from some ‘finessing’ of the door, and I haven’t managed to cut my hand off or anything yet.

We had a mostly unexpected visit from Paul Gamlin, who I used to work with about five years ago, the other weekend. Had a couple of pints, took them to the rugby, and met them for breakfast the following day at the traditional maranui surf club. They’re thinking about moving to NZ; we’ll see how good our sales job was.

Kirsten moves into her new flat (five minutes down the road from us) this weekend, and Jenny comes back out from the UK on Wednesday. The old clan is gathering again. Belgian Ruth + boyfriend arrive in a few days too, but just for a visit.

We’ve had to get new work permits, as our working holiday visas were running out and our residency is still somewhere in the pipeline. For me, this entailed getting a new passport, as that was running out too. $330.  But it does have a microchip and a load of wires in it.

Running to work continues. I’ve taken about 5 minutes off my time, and on a good day it’s quicker than getting the bus. What with all of the going out in the last few days the diet has taken a right hammering; back on it next week!

On the flying front; not as much as I would like. The Kawhatau camp was excellent, and I got in about 3 hours. However the weather hasn’t been kind since, and I wasted a day sitting around at Kaitoke before discovering that I don’t fit into either of their gliders. Very annoying.

We’ve booked flights to the UK for JJ’s mum’s wedding. July 17th to August 17th. Right in the middle of the kiwi winter, so that’s good timing.

Upholstery

I appear to be turning into my grandfather. A few days ago I re-upholstered the kitchen chairs. Easier than you’d think. I’m now trying to source a nice piece of veneer to redo the kitchen table with. Harder than you’d think. The timber yard doesn’t stock it. Apparently somewhere called Laminex in Petone might do.

Going back to work after the break wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. A few days back in harness and it’s back to the same routines. Still working on process improvement activites; hopefully there’s light at the end of the current tunnel and I’ll be onto something new in a month or so.

The cat has settled in and his guts have improved – he’s not farting fishy liquid all over the floor, sofas, etc any more. And he’s stopped, for the most part, waking us up in the night by miaowing. Instead, he wakes us up in the night by attacking our feet as we sleep.

In the last week we’ve been to a few of the free concerts in the botanical gardens. A couple of jazz ones, the woolshed sessions, and a woman who plays improbable instruments made out of black and decker workmates, etc, who was shite. It’s a lovely setting though, and they deck the park out with lights and ribbons and bubble-blowing machines. It’s pretty magical. We’ve picnicked every evening we’ve been, to a greater or lesser degree of elaborate-ness.

I’ve gone on a health kick. Muesli, salad, and no fat. Basically the GI diet. I’d like to get under the 100 kg mark, which shouldn’t be too hard. Ran into work two days this week. Half-killed me the first day. Wasn’t so bad the second, although I did get a vast blister. JJ’s running with me and being very tolerant, although I’m sure I’m holding her back.

Kirsten arrives today to spend a few days with us. She’s spreading herself around all of her mates until she moves into the place she’s going to share with Jenny, when Jenny comes back in March. They’ll be about five minutes down the road from us, in Northland.

I did my radio practical last weekend. That’s another box ticked. I just need another ten hours of solo, and a flight test, and I get my QGP. I should crack through most of that solo time next weekend at Kawhatau. It would be good to get my QGP knocked off this season and focus on soaring next season. I’m running out of summer if I’m going to attempt my 50k, too…

Golf

My olds and my grandmother’ chipped in’ (‘chipped in’ – d’you get it? D’you get it? ahaha!) towards a set of golf clubs for christmas, which I have duly purchased. Wilson cavity-backed irons, for those who are interested. Good for the ‘higher handicap’ player. I’ve treated myself to new spikes and other paraphinalia to go with them. Results so far have been dreadful, with the best round being 26 over. Andy reckons I have a reverse pivot, so that explains that, clearly. Hopefully things will improve with a bit of practice and I’ll get back down to about 18.

In other news, we had a quiet-ish christmas, with Diane, Kai, Jon, and Fredcat. In addition to my clubs, I got a special water bag to take flying, a vase in the shape of three guns, an indoor helicopter, and various t-shirts, toys, and other treats. A good haul.

We had ten for dinner on new years day, for the traditional steak pie, dinner for one, and party games. A good evening, and a new variant of charades called ‘the bucket game’ learned. Everyone writes a few names of people (celebrities, characters, etc) on pieces of paper which go into a bucket. Then there are three rounds. First round, people take it in turns to describe to their team, against the clock, who the people on the bits of paper are, using only three words. Second round, same pieces of paper but miming, third round, describing using one word. It works surprisingly well and I enjoyed it heaps.

I’m still off work this week, and JJ has gone back. So to fill a couple of days I’m planning to head to Taupo for some flying. Was going to be Fielding, but they don’t fly during the week, so that’s out. Jon is off work as well so may tag along. Oh, and today I’m off to the cricket with Richard from work. West Indies vs. the Black Caps. I know nothing about cricket at all, which should add to the fun.