Manzanillo to Vancouver

There has been a bit of water under my keel since my last correspondance. I hope this fills the gap.

After the Galapagos we made a quick trip across to Manzanillo, Mexico. It was an opportunity to change out some crew and get some fuel. I was dragged off the boat protesting for a dinner with a few crew. The restaurant was nice, the tequila afterwards not so nice. Conveniently there was a roadside fiesta that waylaid us on our way back home. Mexicans seem to be quite fond of fiestas. The Mexicans in Manzanillo seem to be quite fond of LED light strips underneath cars as well. We departed for Vancouver the very next day.

It was a long voyage north hugging the coast of North America. We had very large seas but it was relatively comfortable. I did not go outside at all. Nobody jumped over board. Our head Chef lightened things up by throwing increasingly dangerous amounts of chillies he sourced in Manzanillo into every dish. There was no escaping the chillies  I did enjoy his spicy carbonora, spicy pesto gnocchi and spicy pumpkin soup.

I have to say the final cruise into Vancouver was astoundingly beautiful. Vancouver is a very pretty and very accommodating city. Our ship is berthed on the north shore which is a short ferry ride into the City. After ten days at sea we made a quick trip to the local pub. The Rusy Gull was chosen for one reason only. Its distance. The commercial seaman on board were disappointed with its cleanliness, full heads of teeth and lack of immediate danger. I was quite amused to find Steinlager on the menu and Australian rules football on the television. It was Anzac day.

My rotation partner decided not to come back to work. Being Canadian I thought he would have lept at the chance to work in his own country. He did not. This was a bit frightening as I was due to go home on the 12 of May. It turns out AVIT’s are a rare breed. Luckily our Chief Engineer is a rarer breed and found a stirling candidate who needed to be evacuated from the Middle East. Sound familiar? It should because it is exactly how they found me.

With a replacement found I did begin to breathe a bit easier and threw myself into experiencing Vancouver. On a sparkling sunday I caught the Seabus into town. I then rode the sky train to the middle of somewhere called Broadway and cantered about experiencing suburbia in Canada. My experience was middling in that I did not end up where I wanted to be. When I got back to downtown Vancouver I was taken by the sim city like precision which has left the Commerical district missing all street level retail. Clearly my dead reckoning was a bit out.

The following Saturday was a bit special as Armin Van Buuren played at the convention centre. Way back in 2010 my Wife and I got to see Armin trott out his new album Mirage for the first time. The universe provided me with the opportunity to see Armin play his new album for the second time. We couldn’t not move the boat to Los Angeles at three day notice. It was here I discovered the curious effects Jaagermeiseter has on ones personality. One of our crew members is very fond of Jagermeister, she does not leave the vessel with out a bottle. It is almost medicinal. So after consuming an undisclosed amount of Jaagermeister I found myself yelling very loudly during Armins concert. Certainly louder than I have ever yelled at a dance party before.

Listen carefully you can hear me yelling

It is fair to say I was a bit yelled out the following week. I did however make a remarkable recovery in time to pick up my replacement from the Airport. If I have a solitary complaint about Vancouver it is the roads going to and from the Airport. It took us over an hour to travel one arduous ten kilometer stretch. I am not sure where all the cars are going that are on this road. I am pretty sure there is a lemming like offramp which goes straight to hell because it is an most un heavenly journey.

On Friday we had a small gathering to celebrate the end of the week and the group of engineers departing. To provide a suitable floating venue we commandeered the adjoining barge. If I do have some advice to party promoters who want to put on a boat party it is this. Barges are cheaper, infinitely more bespoke and rustic than any boat you will ever charter.

We had a fine party with some of the shipyard workers and some guests of the crew. It was my monthly chance to dust off the CDJ’s we purchased for the boat last year. It was to have been a lead into to another famous DJ who happened to be playing in Vancouver, Arty. The core crew that left the North Shore were in fine spirits. The 55th Crew Member Jaagermeiseter made the trip with us.

We made our way into the nearest Irish bar. Irish bars always amuse me. People are forever telling me you will never have a bad night at an Irish bar. I have had some positively average evenings at ones. This particular Irish bar had a cover charge and an ATM that was on holiday. It turned out we all had a great night at the Irish bar. Arty was not allowed into Canada so his gig was cancelled which probably was a good thing. I do remember yelling a lot at the Irish bar about how I was in an Irish bar. I phantomed out of the Irish bar before it was too late and caught a limo home. Thats right, after about 12am all of the Taxis vanish in Vancouver leaving limousines the only viable travel option. Earlier in the week I had chuckled at half a dozen crew catching a limo home. Riding in a limousine by yourself is a very sobering option.

The next morning Scott had the audacity to complain about his jetlag. I am not sure how Jetlag works in Scotland but the people you have flown to should not have the same ill effects. It was about now I let go with a Fruedien slip. “These four day hangovers(handovers) are not healthy”. Thankfully I was able to get on a plane on Sunday for New Zealand.

New Zealand is great. I am reunited with my Wife, Family and Friends. I have a new dog who is quickly becoming a favourite. My adopted cat Ollie has been wisely absent.

It is good to be home.

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Dat Galapagos

It is a good thing that I did get some time ashore in the Galapagos. Otherwise my impressions of it would have been horribly distorted.

One of my core responsibilities is managing our internet connection. Given the sparse population of the Galapagos the solitary Satellite which looks after the region is oversubscribed and under resourced. We have over 50 crew, can have up to 24 guests and a myriad of devices which utilise the internet. We pay a yearly salary every month to have 5mbps of internet worldwide. For our time in the Galapagos our connection fluctuated between 2mbps and .5mbps. Clearly this is why the area has remained in a perpetual time warp. After 4 days of phone calls, cursing, fretting and stressing I abandoned all hope of us having a good internet connection. Consequently I relaxed and began to look outside.

Visiting the Galapagos is an interesting proposition. There is a solitary flight from Ecuador each day.To take a private yacht through the Galapagos you must pay a few hundred thousands dollars for a weeks permit. To visit the National park regions you must have a guide on board in addition to your agent. If you want to use your helicopter you must sign up to do some missions. The region is rightfully well protected and the humans that choose to live here are a very proud people. The population is steadily increasing although it is limited to small regions of less than 5% of the landmass.

So for one week I took very occasional photos and did a little day dreaming. It wasn’t until our last night with the guests that I got to see the video that our onboard Videographer had taken that I began to see some of the incredible wildlife this region is famous for. I was quite startled at the amount of animals above and below the water. They are fearless of humans. Not in a tame sense but in the sense that they have no fear or reason to have fear. What an amazing idea.

The very next day our Captain had arranged some excursions for us to take part in. He is an ex Cruise ship Captain and is very used to organising things for people to do. It turns out corralling 50 crew off a boat to take part in Diving, Fishing and Walking tours is worse than a few thousand Cruise ship passengers. Having not left the boat in a meaningful sense for a month I decided to go on the walking tour.

We made a very chatty tender ride into the port and boarded a bus with our Guide for the day. He immediately raised a few eyebrows by telling us he was a Naturalist and pined for the days when Galapagians used to walk around topless. It turns out he had not spoken English for over a year and was merely expressing his fondness for nature. It was this enthusiasm for flora and fauna that started to rub off on us all. Especially me, remember If I had not taken an excursion the only this I could have spoken about knowingly about the Galapagos region is its terrible internet.

The roads of Galapagos are largely dirt, jungle lined and uninhibited. I took a lot of photos out the side of the bus. These photos highlight the populated and farmed regions of the San Cristobel.

roadside grass
power pole
Posts mean it is farmed. Obviously.
After an hour of driving and the practiced banter of a career tour guide we made it to a Giant Tortoise reserve. I was very excited. Giant Tortoise it turns out are very noble and interesting animals.

Like many things you never forget your first giant Tortoise. They are incredible.

Me and my first Giant Tortoise.
It wasn’t all about Giant Tortoise. Soon we were looking at endemic moss, lizards, birds, trees and flowers. Endemic means only found in one place. If you put endemic in front of things they suddenly become very interesting.

endemic bird
endemic lizard
Even baby Giant Tortoise made an appearance. We were informed about the very successful breeding program.

Our next excursion took us up a small mountain to the Galapagos regions only freshwater lake.

I am thinking the lake was a dormant volcanoe.
There were a lot of birds flying around this lake. It turns out the fresh water allows the two different species of Frigate birds to clean themselves in freshwater. They are a sea bird that can not clean themselves in salt water.

A scientific study that examined genetic and morphological variation in Magnificent Frigatebirds found both expected, and also highly unexpected results: firstly—as predicted by the flight capacity of the species—the authors found signatures of high gene flow across most of the distribution range. This included evidence of recent gene flow among Pacific and Atlantic localities, likely across the Isthmus of Panama. This geological formation is a strong barrier to movement in most tropicalseabirds. However, the same study also found that the Magnificent Frigatebird on the Galápagos Islands is genetically and morphologically distinct. Based on this study, the Galápagos population has not been exchanging any genes with their mainland counterparts for several hundred thousand years.[3]
Thanks wikipedia. I learned that in the flesh.

First and only time I ever took a photo of a flying bird.

By now our hardy group of adventurers were wavering. You have to remember we had just finished a charter and the first thing yachties generally do after a charter is either drink or sleep or both. We made our way back to town. Our guide impressed upon us the problems of modernisation and how corruption is slowing making its way into life in the Galapagos. I couldn’t help wondering as we walked down that hill path, where the few hundred thousand dollars my owner had paid would be going.

Obviously there is a lot more to the Galapagos than you think. I think the profound impact it had on me was to stir a real interest in flora and fauna. Maybe there is a bit of naturalist in us all.

I am sitting on a lot of video footage, underwater and helicopter. I will upload this at a later date.

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Panamania

We traversed the Panama Canal yesterday. It took us about 12 hours and we are now anchored off Panama City. In the duopoly of Canals I have voyaged through the Panama canal is infinitely more interesting that the ridiculous Suez canal.

For starters my friends the Dolphins turned up for an impromptue party as we came into our anchorage on the northern side.

The Canal itself is bordered by rich looking jungle. In parts it looked when I would expect the Amazon to look like. I did not see any tribes or jaguars.

We came upon a loch at about 2:30pm. At this point we were connected to a series of four small diesel locomotives which held us in place whilst the water was dramatically lowered,

We are now in the Pacific Ocean and that is comforting. The skyline of Panama city is very impressive.

Workwise we took on about 200 kilos of equipment which will need to be installed before our next trip. Luckily a threee man calvary is arriving today. I have briefed the crew on how much happier I am when I have geeks about. I think they are in a surprise.

Our next journey promises to an exceptional one. With our destination being a very famous place where an Aquarian came up with an earth shattering theory. Thats a pretty good clue. But I didn’t say where we were going. Did I?

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A Weekend Up North

When I had a job which involved travelling around New Zealand I always used to tell people I was from up north. Up north describes a great deal of New Zealand but the real up north is actually found in Northland.

For my last weekend we drove up to my in-laws to stay in at their new place and attached bed and breakfast. The first thing you realise when you take the drive up north is how desolate and natural the landscapes are. There are pockets of civilization but largely the dotted houses feel only a few years away from being enveloped by the numerous stands of bush.

It was in such a spot that we finally stopped in beautiful Kaikohe. My wife had prepared me as best she should but I was very impressed with what we found.

This is about as good as it gets
Trees
 Sunshine
and an old favourite
We were lucky enough to stay in an attached Bed and Breakfast that I can not flail limbs enthusiastically enough about. I hope that the marketing campaign has a web presence soon enough so I can link it.
The next day we were lucky enough to attend a once in a life time event the Rawene races. Having not been to any horse races before this was surely the best possible event in the universe.
It is a largely organic, freewheeling wild west event. With a lively announcer who took time out from announcing to win an over 50’s race

 Race. Saddles optional.
There was fantastic food.

We had a cheeky drink on our way home and enjoyed the mighty Hokianga.

There was some excellent art going down in Kaikohe town in an effort to make it more awesome than it already is.

 It was great to reacquaint myself with the pack of dogs.

Some old
and some new.
I had an entirely fabulous time up north and I look forward to being up north very soon.

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Sweet home, sweet.

Just as important as the multitudes of Kiwis following my blog are the numerous and notable fans I have collected on my travels. Sadly most of them have never been to New Zealand. Sadly many of them never will. Even more sad have been some of my tourist pitches of New Zealand. Last year when describing the New Zealand way of life to an English man.

‘Kiwis, we don’t give a shit about heaps of shit’

I may have been drunk.

Still this will not stop me from writing a bit about my time back home. Maybe some will venture down to our special little place in the future.

I arrived back home on a Friday morning. After conquering border formalities I greeted my Wife and we made our way to her apartment in the city. I had a delicious plate of bacon and eggs and I slowly unwound before we moved house. For the weak of heart I do not recommend moving house after 30 hours of travelling. It is probably the worst thing you can do. Still we accomplished it and I do like our new abode.

Being re domesticated in New Zealand has been excellent. We are staying with Annas brother who like me has a limited schedule during the week. Much of our week is spent finding things to do and hanging about. We are staying in Onehunga which feels like the country after the city. People are very friendly and it is surprisingly quiet given that we live on a main road.

It is here that I must start delving into photographs because I have had such a relaxing time I have not written as much as I would have liked.

I went fishing a couple of times on the west coast of New Zealand near to where I was bought up. I went with my father and we went very early in the morning. There is a very real beauty on the Kaipara harbour when the sun is rising and setting.

My fathers boat may be in a different state to the ships I am used to but I can safely say we caught more fish in our two outings that I have seen caught on board the vessels I now call my home.

Just as I was settling into life at home we boarded a plane and flew to Sydney for the weekend. We stayed with my Sister who I had not seen for many years. My Sister lives in a lifestyle bubbled enclave called Newtown. The bubble was rightly named because we stayed in the bubble for Friday and Saturday and could not leave.

I was lucky enough to be treated to a beautiful birthday dinner by my Sister and partner. We did a cocktail crawl on our way home. There were a few distinct reminders of what having a larger population affords. The first was window shopping at the Newtown gargoyle shop.

It is the first time I have seen a shop largely dedicated to Gargoyles. I did spy a couple of Dragons and you can see Buddha in the photo but Gargoyles were by and large the main attraction.

We watched some truly tragic 80’s music videos when we got home. There is a channel pumping them out and the peak confusion hours are on a Friday night /Saturday morning.

The truly revolting thing is that this is more appetising than 99% of the absolute shit you hear and see on modern *Music* television

Another was on Sunday when we left Newtown to visit an old friend east. We ended up in Bondi Junction, shopping. I had to queue to use a changing room. This was a first for me ever.

Sydney rain.

I am startled to say the most rain I saw in my whole trip home was in Australia. The New Zealand summer has been truly superb. On the Sunday night we ventured out again to see Above and Beyond. There was a huge crowd of people as many as I have seen for a dance party. Again the large crowd allowed me to experience something I have not experienced before. A lovely Australian threw a bottle at our taxi, nobody was hurt. My time home allowed an excellent revenge opportunity more about that later.

 Above and Beyond were amazing. I saw a Unicorn. Enough said.

We had an early flight back to New Zealand. This was softened by a timely upgrade to Business Class. I slept the whole journey.

The next week I threw myself at learning a new programming language. I do not recommend doing this when you are on holiday. It made me excessively grumpy. I have a better plan for my next bout of programming. It involves more sample code, slippers and less coffee.

For Cam’s birthday we spent a weekend in Matakana and went to a vineyard to see The Adults, Hollie Smith and Fat Freddy’s Drop. It was my first experience of a vineyard concert. I found the crowd very diverse with families, experienced wine drinkers and the very young mingling amongst the vines. I am not sure where I fit in there but I did.

During a trip into the vines I did get to take this incredible photo of a bounding youth.

The Youth surfaced later engaging in an arcane art which I think is called line dancing.
The diverse crowd was best summed up waiting in a queue to buy some wine. There was a quite possibly stimulated but harmless gentleman offering free hugs to people in the queue. His strike rate was low, probably 30%. Some people were quite rude.


Fat Freddies

The next week was spent readying our house for Anna’s 30th birthday. Being in charge of AV I did exciting things like running network cables under our house.

I also bought a bubble machine and a laser light. The bubble machine was a sentimental touch as we used a bubble machine at Anna’s 21st birthday party.

I turned the bubble machine on as soon as I got it home. The bubble machine invoked a magical day spent in our garden with friends and family. Cam and I acted as stewardesses for the event and I have a new found appreciation for them and what they do.

I do not have to say again how wonderful to see my almost long but not lost friends and family but I will. It was wonderful and I look forward to seeing you all a lot more regularly.

Our household was a bit lazy the following two days. My adopted cat Ollie did show up. He seems to like hanging out and his schedule seems to be very compatible with mine.

By now my holiday was in full swing. I started playing computer games, reading books. Doing household chores. Grocery shopping. This was heaven. A reminder that I do in fact have a job followed the party. An email enquiring as to when I could come back.

Current cruising schedules have meant I will return on the 3rd of March. Bummer.

Not to worry there was life in this holiday yet. Let us go to an Island let us go to Kawau Island. I am ashamed to say that the skills I learned as a deckhand quickly evaporated when I stopped working on deck. This is not surprising given the way my body and mind resisted learning sailing arts. I embarrassed myself trying to tie up an aluminium boat we used.

View of sandspit

View from Kawau

It is here that this tale turns dark. I think this will be the most polarising content that I have published on the internet. I am going to write a lengthy defence. I advise that you stop reading if you are fond of marsupials or are easily offended.

When we arrived at Kawau there was a strong smell. It was the smell of two dead Wallabies. Wallabies were introduced to the Island in our distant past. They have no place in New Zealand and remain a protected pest. On the Island there are two types of people. People who feed them and the people that feed them poison.

Two Wallabies were found in differing states of decay. One was put into a bucket and made the long trip down to the water where it eventually found its place on the sea floor. The other Wallaby was more intact and would not sink. This dead Wallaby became a symbol of our frustration. A beacon of Australian arrogance.

One of our brave crew tied the Wallaby to the end of the wharf. It was our hope that fish would feed on it and we would find it dispersed. All life came from the sea why not return it? Sadly the next morning the Wallaby remained, goading us with its corpulent flesh.

We needed to give it a proper sea burial. Sadly we did not have an Australian flag to shroud it in. The best thing we could come up was towing it out to sea and cutting it loose. Someone would mumble Waltzing Matilda or something.

There is some video footage of the Wallaby waterskiing but after viewing it carefully and repeatedly I do not think it is wise to share it on the internet. It would be an international incident and I do have to fly to Australia on my way back to my boat. If you are desperate to see it you can solicit me on Facebook for a viewing. I do hope the person that threw the beer bottle at our taxi gets to see it. Maybe it will end up in a Straya day video.

Need more examples of New Zealand quirkiness? I saw this in quite a large newspaper, The Herald.

It appears that we do give a shit about stolen nectarines.

I have about ten days left in New Zealand. What do I have planned? More of the same minus Wallabies.

It is sweet to be home.

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The Significance of Straya Day

Caution: the video embedded in this blog contains course language, racial stereotypes and a large almost life threatening amount of satire.

A couple of years ago I was introduced to this video by the Great Aussie Battler who could recite sections of it verbatim. It serves to explain why Australians get so excited about Straya day. It will be quite neat to see how Straya day unfolds around us tomorrow.

Please do not watch this if you are easily offended.


The most important thing to remember about ‘Straya day is that is always comes after my birthday. Australia for all of its wonderful qualities lies in second place.

Chur.

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Rounding the world

There you have it. I have travelled around the world. I have actually been around the world in the last solar year. Starting in New Zealand I first flew to Barcelona. I then back tracked. Going all the way to the Seychelles by boat stopping in France, Egypt and Oman. I then ended up in Qatar and very nearly went terminally mad before escaping to Newcastle and finally breaking my Middle Eastern shackles.

I then flew to Italy and began my long and interesting voyage across the Atlantic to my vessels port for the foreseeable future, Puerto Rico. But I am hoping you know all of that and are more interested in what has happened in the past couple of days. 

To be bluntly honest I did not want really want to fly through America. I did have a more direct flight going through Peru but it had some lengthy lay overs. I have heard some horror stories of flying through the states. I also have some colorful friends who are not allowed to fly into America. If someone wanted to keep me out they probably could find a reason pretty quickly. 

With all of this tumbling through my brain I actually started packing last week. I cleaned my cabin fastidiously. It was so clean that the stewardess who cleaned it said it was the cleanest crew cabin she had ever cleaned. I hope my Wife is reading that and not reading that. I arranged northern George to give me a ride to the airport on Wednesday morning. My flight was at nine. I briefed George that I wanted the car wheels rolling at 7am. 

I got up early, ate porridge and protein (food to go to war on) and then put my numerous suitcases by the crew exit. I was outside at 6:45 to find that some of the crew had taken the truck I had pre booked. This was the worst possible thing that could have happened. People that know me well, know that I have two modes of operation. 

Unflappable.
And positively flapping. 

I started to flap. Luckily I had only had one coffee and after a few phone calls I got a taxi driver out of bed. I took my bags to the security gate. Whilst I was waiting one of the culprits turned up with the truck. She offered to take to the airport. I left the gate guy $20 to give the taxi that had not shown up. 

Shelly did a great job of getting me to the airport. Even though she missed two critical off ramps we got there with plenty of time. I had my bags scanned for narcotics by the USDA and went to get some cash in case I needed to pay for luggage. 

It is worth noting that the night before I had rang my persistently incompetent bank to make sure that there were no bars on my credit card and to tell my hem my travel plans. This was in vain. So there I was with $6 to my name and a stupid amount of bags yet to check in. 

I must have looked a bit flappy when I approached the counter. The nice chap there said Que Pasa and I told him of my lengthy amount of travel ahead. He was very nice but wanted me to move 3 kilos of luggage across from one bag to another. At this point I said I work on a boat and played my trump cards. My seaman letter and my NZ hat. I got a high five and waved through to customs. 
It was very lucky that things worked out like that. Because I tried ringing my terrible bank once I was through and I could not get a proper line until I landed in New York. The hands on head scanning by us border control was a new experience. But I am happy to say my first leg was relatively smooth and on time. 

I got some nice photos about an hour out of New York.



Sadly it was a grey and miserable day in New York and I did not see any of the famous skyline. I had to make do with sight seeing in the Airport Terminal. 

After abusing my bank I got this hearty meal.



I got stuck into some refreshments. Pro tip. The next time you make a Bloody Mary add some French moutard. For a French Bloody Mary, a Mary Antoinette if you will.


I saw this awesome vending machine and then I waited and waited and waited. 


Our connecting flight was very late. I saw a Gentleman go beyond flapping. He flew off his handle. A broomless witch if ever I saw one.

Our flight to LA was two hours late. It was also very full. I was one of the last people allowed carry on luggage and I had to stow it in the tail of the aircraft. Thankfully there was WIFI on board. I busied myself making inane comments and posting photos on facebook. At one point I added salted peanuts into my cocktail after my vodka. When my Internet time ran out I started writing this. There is probably a lesson I don’t want to learn in that.  

Los Angeles was absolutely stunning as we flew in. It was very clear and you could see the Santa Monica pier. At least it was a very rehearsed collection of lights doing a very convincing impression of a pier. The pilots parked the plane ok. I crossed the terminal and magically found my way to the Koru symbols where the Air New Zealands planes were.

Air New Zealand felt obliged to check in my 15kilo carry on suitcase. So that is over 65 kilos of luggage I bought home with me. The last leg of my journey was spent thinking how proud we can be of our National carrier in between discussing the finer points of earth quake structural surveying with a chap from LA and favourite TV shows with a student on the other side. Naturally I did not have anything exciting to talk about. I saved it all for here.

It is so nice to be back in New Zealand. I look forward to seeing you all and sharing NZ with the less fortunate.

Ciao!



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Case Closed. Time to turn the page.

Well we made it to Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is arrestingly American, Latin American with a dash of Caribbean  After tying the boat up and taking care of US border control formalities a few of us ventured out for a drink at the micro brewery. It was my first drink with a lot of the crew and I did have to put the hand brake on my tongue at one point because it was cleaving egos mercilessly. I am blaming the Gin. I am not sure what they add to the Gin here but it is clearly poisonous as I felt very average upon arising the next day. My direct boss and I went and spent $70 on breakfasts at the local McDonalds. McDonalds is a great leveller  I find if I feel too healthy McDonalds will take me down a peg or two. If I feel terrible McDonalds levels me out. It is franchised lithium.

My department worked half a day. My other colleague named Dan wears jandals when we are not on charter. I have decided that if we are in port and it is a weekend day I will wear my slippers. The conclusion of working half a day poisoned in my slippers was that I needed to go shopping for the boat.

Puerto Rico is endowed with the largest shopping mall in the Caribbean. I think it is called Plaza Americanos. It was huge and it was my first real experience of American shopping. The variety and scope of shopping was overwhelming. I bought three t-shirts and a pair of new shoes. I did not buy one critical article but that will have to wait until we can go to best buy. I have been getting a bit of shit for having three man bags. So it was very comforting to see the ridiculous torso covered carry bags one gets at Abercrombie and Fitch. Not only can you look like a nob wearing it you can look like a nob on your way home. My apologies to Abercrombie and Fitch wearers, not.

I will be leaving the boat on Wednesday. I will fly to New York, Los Angeles and then to Auckland. I will arrive in Auckland on Friday morning. Call me weird but am kind of excited about walking around in Airports that have been in so many movies. I will have circumnavigated the planet. It has only taken me 35 years. There are many things to look forward to in the next little while.

*Getting home
*Moving into a new house
*AVIT’ing the new house
*Going to Sydney to see my long but not lost Sister and partner
*Seeing Above and Beyond in Sydney. Need tickets email me if you can help.
*Seeing all of my family and in laws at home
*Seeing all of my friends at home
*Seeing the Hobbit in Middle Earth
*Annas 30th Birthday
*Days at the beach
*BBQ’s
*Our Six year wedding Anniversary
*Seeing the Stone Roses
*Some photography lessons(more about that later)
*The end of the Year of the Dragon. I think there will be a bang.

It shall be quite an incredible couple of months. Ah and I arrive home just as my birthday month begins. Perfect timing again.

   

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My Very Different but a bit familiar Christmas

Happy New Year! I started writing this a few days before but I expect it will be well after New Years when I post it. When I last left you we were in Barbados. After leaving Barbados we steamed steadily northwards to Saint Thomas. America being America, we did not tie up because of the lengthy and ridiculous red tape. Our boss choppered onboard and so commenced our Christmas and New Years boss trip.

To say I was a bit nervous about the trip is a bit of an understatement. I had not met the owner and have had limited dealings with his nationality before. I am not at liberty to divulge details about him but some of my writing might give some clues.

One of my core tasks was maintaining three streaming television channels. After watching hours of camel racing and football in the Middle East my new QC work has been quite eye opening. Firstly the language sounds far more attractive and interesting. The programming also is far more attractive and interesting. One of the shows was scripted like this over two days.

*Women with gigantic boobs who would like them measured on stage and talk about them.
*Attractive twins talk about being attractive and being twins.

These are not channels that I have hunted to find. These shows are on the first main news channel of a country in Europe.

Six days out from New Years we got bundled with the task of creating a party out of thin air with the same setup as we had during our Mediterranean season. What the powers that be did not understand is that the parties we had during our Med season were setup by a dedicated team of roadies who followed on an 80m support boat. Not to be discouraged the technical department and our very capable Purser moved a few mountains to accomplish the impossible.

Our first problem was booking a DJ. Sadly the DJ’s that commonly DJ to this circle of people appear to be wankers. One of our DJ’s actually wanted to find out how much money our Boss wanted to spend before he set his price. Another one wanted to charge us 5k to hire some DJ equipment.

This incensed me. I know a little bit about DJing. I actually program my Boss’s gym music and if I was a bit sneakier I would have casually slipped a deckhand mix in to promote myself.  Anyway as soon as we got to Saint Martin I went off to buy some frigging DJ equipment. It would cost less than 5K and it would be top notch.

I felt a bit guilty leaving the boat, but it was really nice to get some sun. I did some epic bartering and got.

2x Pioneer CDJ 2000 nexus
1x Pioneer  DJM 900 nexus

for less that 5k US. This was a very good price.

My only problem was carrying it back to our tender through Philips-burg  I had side walk singers serenading my stomping self lugging my loot. I even had a taxi driver offer me a ride as I entered the marina. I do not know where he was going to drive me.

What I lugged.

After collecting our Captain at the airport we made a very bumpy and wet passage back to the mothership. We had problems immediately after leaving Saint Martin. The bucket which drives the jet seemed to not be engaging correctly. Being that it is one of our two New Zealand made tenders and I was the only Kiwi and member of our glorious engineering team I felt obliged to investigate.

Photo of glorious engineering team. Photo blurred to protect the innocent. 
After investigating the jet and watching the bucket move freely I declared the vessel “she’ll be right’ status and she was. By now it was getting quite dark. The sea was quite rough and it felt like something from an old Moby Dick movie. I could actually envisage buckets of water being thrown off camera into my face. The deckhand driving the tender was a little bit worried about finding his way back home. He needn’t have been. We stood out like a huge floating Christmas tree with each deck being colored Red/Green or White in led lighting. We are the only yacht in the world to my knowledge that can do that on a whim. I felt quite proud returning to her. 
The next day we got busy and assembled a huge lighting truss. It reminded me of happy days gone by working in the sun before it poured down with rain or hail at one of Jarras awesome parties. 
That evening I got out the DJ equipment and made sure it worked in my office.
It worked fine. The next day was the day of our party. We did a couple of tender runs to get our equipment. It turns out that NZ made tenders make awesome large speaker conveyancing vessels. Our Fijian lead deckhand was more than happy to let me drive for a bit. This was great. I did not get to drive a tender for a whole year on my last boat and it is supposed to be harder to do things like that on large boats. I guess that just shows what a family style boat I work on now.
Engineer ‘Mouldy’ with a speaker
We had a French sound technician arrive with the speakers. We did a sound check after we had plugged them in with my iPhone. It sounded incredible, things were looking good. Our DJ arrived just before lunch. His name is DJ Jus Ske. I had never heard of him but I think hes someone on his way up. Sadly if you google him his claim to fame is having been Lindsay Lohans BF. The internet is a bitch like that. I befriended him and tried to brief him on the Boss’s music tastes. I did put some fear into him when i told him we had over 600 gigs of music on board and the Boss likes to listen to Trance when he works out. Jus Ske retired to his Cabin and I made sure he had some football to watch.
Our other entertainment turned up later that afternoon. I was busy flapping about with other things so I did not meet her until later. Her name is Mia Femi and she is another artist that I think is on her way to stardom.
As darkness fell our party began in earnest. Our first issue was creating a custom lighting scheme out of thin air on the fly for the Boss. These are the sort of things that you would like to prepare before hand but with some clever radio work, use of CCTV and frantic clicking we got a blueish hue working just in time.
The second problem was of a musical nature. Our stage setup was not near our usual entertainment setup. I setup my diagnostic laptop and it went into random mode pulling out some dubstepish tunes from that 600 gig music library. Largess is a curse. I requested that the DJ be summoned. He was summoned and soon busied himself playing to what can only be described as a tough crowd.
Our singer came out about an hour later. I do believe I was a bit gob smacked.

Luckily she was wearing high heels and we had to tell her to remove them. I always find if someone is incredibly attractive asking them to remove their shoes is a great leveller  Thankfully she was very pleasant and made for a good laugh as the party progressed and she and the DJ had to deal with requests. 

Looking back I do not think I could take money to be a DJ. Requests make me angry. I guess that is where being a professional comes in. I guess thats why I like writing. Its not like I have some reader critiquing me as I go and asking me to change things. The words just come out of my fingers freely. Woe betide my first editor.
Mia and Jus Ske were both from New York. They were both New York cool. They both thought tenders arriving with red and green lights were Police boats. Bless New Yorkers. I did illegally take a couple of photos of them both performing. No police boats arrived.

 Jus Ske
Mia, notice the lack of shoes.

I had to do a running repair on Mia’s laptop HDD. I felt special. I fetched a couple of strong drinks for our sound engineer who also needed regular cigarette breaks. Bless the French. The night went very well until the end when….. I had to turn down a day of Saint Barths exploring with Mia and a trip to Puffys party with Justin. Puffy is Puff Daddy or Sean Coombs latest nickname. Naturally I had to inform them that I was working and I regretfully decline.

I think that is the definition of a catch-22 If I wasn’t working I would be able to do these things but if I did not have the job that I do there is little chance I would meet these people. Until I get famous of course :-).

It was about 2am on New Years eve before we had packed down. Naturally New Years eve was an anticlimax. George the first engineer and I DJ’d in the crew mess to a very fickle crowd, I would say it was tougher than the crowd from the night before. I had my head on a table at 12:01am, I was absolutely buggered.

Quite an Awesome Xmas tale that one I think.

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Let the Games Commence

Well I safely made it across the Atlantic again. Obviously this crossing was a bit different for me. There was an absence of rinsing, sanding and watch keeping. My only excursions outside were to take part in our Atlantic crossing games and to have a swim about one day of of Barbados.

I am happy to say that things started to *click* work wise about four days ago. Strangely enough this coincided with me discovering and starting to use our Crew gym. The gym is a converted play room which has Scifi murals and a slide which descends two floors. It is the perfect place for me to exercise.

I did some freakishly admirable hacking the other day to balance one of our TV Sat domes. Without a proper weights kit I used some nuts, bolts and cable ties. This worked incredibly well, so well it will be a shame and a little bit embarrassing when a professional comes to balance it properly.

Barbados is nice enough. I had a traumatic shopping experience when I went to the local computer super store. I was not sure I was ever going to leave that part of the island. However comparing Barbados with other parts of the Caribbean it is obvious that people take pride in their houses and enjoy a good standard of living.

We got the firm word from our stand in Captain about what we can say with regards to cruising plans. All I can say for now is that i will be spending New Years and Christmas in a familiar place with at least half of Hollywood and the wealthier enclaves of Europe.

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