Explaining “Gang Signs”

To be bluntly honest, I have spent much of last year struggling to understand other cultures and to be understood. So much time has been spent doing this I have not coined many memorable phrases. I have certainly not started any internet grass roots campaigns like the hugely lauded success initiative from last year.

New Zealand it seems, is the best place to launch campaigns like this. The people are funnier, more versatile and seem to love getting behind good ideas.

On Saturday just past I was overwhelmed with the quality and quantity of people that had turned up to have a few drinks with us. One of our more urbane friends entered the periphery and I felt obligated to greet him in an urbane way. Sadly whilst I have been known to wear velour, know what a blunt is and listen to hip hop I had no physical gang sign that I could gesticulate with.

In fact the only sign based thing that I do these days is play Rock Paper Scissors.

Exhibit A

Never being one to let details get in the way of anything I greeted my friend with the words “Gang Signs”. Being a suave individual he was quite chuffed about this and I spent the next five minutes explaining the milisecond of thought which had gone into it. I then proceeded to tell each and every person I saw the rest of the weekend and it seems to be catching.

So the next time you want to appear cool, funny and maybe a bit kooky greet someone with;

“Gang Signs”

They will not forget it.

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Crew Bio #3 Peter “Deck Dad”

Peter is one of our engineers. He was with us for a week when I started before he went home to his wife and the Birth of his first child.

Hailing from Split, Croatia Peter is the latest wedge in my ever expanding worldwide net. A smart and gregarious man. Peter often pops up out of a hatch or doorway to give free advice and critique the hard working but not always mechanically sound deck department. He often does this whilst puffing on a cigarette, such a debonair engineer is Peter.

My first real memory of Peter was during our very drunken bowling night. I was quite grumpy and not enjoying the bowling at all. Peter made some reassuring drunken noises and I felt better instantly.

Peters background is in commercial shipping and he us full of plenty anecdotes and comparisons. He explained the lodgings and vast spaces afforded engineers on commercial ships. The resounding advantage is being able to cure dead fish outside your cabin if you so desire and smoke everywhere.

It is through Peter that I learned one of the great secrets of modern sea bound engineers. They are walking reset button pushers. In a less than guarded moment Peter confided that they often do not know what they are doing but resetting machinery works a lot of the time. Sounds just like computers.

The deck dad moniker comes from this never ending torrent of information. He also likes to slap us on the back and will always change the music playing no matter what we say. He has also been known to fall asleep in the lounge watching TV. Just like Dad.

Some useful Peter quotes.

Engineering is all about the reset.
You know what I would do ? Let me tell you.
What is wrong with you ?
You should not drink too much fizzy water, I like beer but I would not drink it all day.(using twisted Deck Dad logic we can deduce fizzy water is as bad as beer).

Peter is a fun guy to work with but he is camera shy. I did want to get two photos of him. One was to be a busy photo where he had his ear muffs on. The other was a relaxed photo where he was smoking and had his ear muffs off. Using my formidable powers of persuasion I was able to find this photo of him drinking dangerous beer.

Next up we have a very zany crew member. In the short space of a month he has had more incidents ever thought possible. He is also South African. Stay tuned.

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New Zealand!!!!

Well after a turbulent last day in the Maldives it was nice to get into an Airplane and get the hell back to New Zealand. Turbulence Dan? surely you are talking about sour weather? Maybe I am but some things are best left unsaid and unread.
Our flight home was a two stage affair. We stopped in Singapore and gorged on Belgium chocolate and free internet. Please add internet to your list of things that go well with chocolate. Singapore airlines did a good job of looking after us and we were soon on the ground in Godzone.

The international terminal has had a facelift since I was here last. It has more capacity and seems a bit smarter. I had forgotten how good looking everybody in New Zealand is. Even the customs dog handlers looked positively radiant.

We had a very special friend pick us up from the Airport. She drove us home very smartly and even offered to stop at a garage so I could get a steak and cheese pie.

New Zealand, it does not get better than this.

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Still here

My first real charter experience has been very nice. We have had brilliant weather and a pretty nice schedule. We have four more days and then it will be time to tie things down and get aboard a plane to New Zealand. I am so excited I think I will hug the ground as I step off the plane and be trodden over by other eager travellers.

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Leaving Las Vegas sans Bars, Strippers and Casinos,

Our exit from Abu Dhabi had just as much comical energy as our entrance. We said good bye to our Kiwi ship yard and headed towards the dreaded Abu Dhabi commerical port to get our passports stamped and exit.

Upon arrival we were told that our fuel trucks from Dubai had been barred entry to Abu Dhabi and we would have to go to Dubai. Luckily this time we had not prematurely celebrated. Dubai did not want us straight away, they even tried to make us wait twelve hours.

Dubai commercial port was even less interesting than Abu Dhabi. We did get to see the currently largest Super Yacht in the world, Dubai.

We have bigger lines.

We had a productive day in Dubai and at about 7:30pm we were rounded up and driven to customs to get our exit visas. Immigration offices are always very clinical affairs. We livened things up with El Fuerte attacking a coffee machine.

We also rammed ourselves into a passport photo booth and made like giggling Japanese schoolgirls to take this masterpiece.

That is Uncle Phil, Anna, El Fuerte and myself.

We did leave Dubai and the Emirates for the Maldives but that is another tale..

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Swedish Lesson #3

So we made it to the Maldives, I am sitting on a whole pile of things to write. Time is scarce but there is always time for Swedish!

What would a Swedish gangster say to his bros if he was hanging off a Super Yacht cleaning it?

EZ.

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To the Maldives

We leave Abu Dhabi tomorrow for the Maldives. Our awesome Kiwi run shipyard has kindly provided internet via a UTP cable for the last couple of weeks. Kiwis; making stuff work since always. Anyway once we leave the shipyard we will not have internet for the next little while. We will also be working like mad until the 7th of April.

After the 7th of April Anna and I will begin our ascent to the gloriousness that is New Zealand. I do believe we left New Zealand on the 7th of April to come to Europe last year. How is that for symmetry?

In the last month Spain and Sweden surpassed New Zealand for visitors to my blog. With this in mind it will be neat to share some wonderfully New Zealand things with the people of the world.

Bye bye for now.

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Abu Dhabi & Dubai

Still suffering the fallout from the horse bomb we were eventually given clearance to make our way to the yacht show and civilisation. I say civilisation loosely because yacht shows are a very distorted slice of humanity and the whole Emirates experience can be very overwhelming.

Large circular building that beggared my beliefs.

The Emirates are full of impressive monuments to money, engineering and some would say a foolhardy disregard to physics and geography. Our marina was purpose built beside a purpose built racetrack and a very impressive hotel.

Imagine if you will (use the pictures where your imagination fails ) entering the lobby of said hotel and being blinded by a white everything. So white you could think you were inside a bottle of bleach.

You enter a lift and notice this pearl of wisdom beside the buttons.

We were actually on our way to the roof top pool bar. Imagine our surprise when we came upon a very unfurnished and unfinished room. Even with my formidable lack of carpentry skills I would have struggled to do less. This was a recurring theme for our trip. Large tracts of the Emirates are under construction. It is a great place to be if you are in city planning or enjoyed Sim City.

We had a very enjoyable day in Dubai following the yacht show. It was our third day off for the year and we were determined to make the most of it. Our morning began with a delicious buffet breakfast followed by a furious bout of relaxed shopping. We then ordered room service for lunch, had a scrumptious day spa session and headed towards the Burj. I ate lobster for dinner and we drank some very expensive New Zealand wine

I can safely say the service provided by almost every person in Dubai and Abu Dhabi is exceptional. The only place where things go awry is when you step into a taxi. We had some abysmal taxi rides. in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The offered excuse for this is that the rapid development in this region makes GPS, maps and a memory better than a gold fish helplessly redundant. If I was professionally travelling again I would have unleashed my wife of war but I am now a professional who happens to be travelling and time off is a very precious commodity best not soured by anger.

Please enjoy the numerous photos I took.

Interesting solar cells covering that magnificent hotel near the marina. Power generation other than oil is illegal in the emirates. Abu Dhabi is exempt.

Bentley on a floating pontoon. Exotic cars a plenty here. More impressive than Monaco.

Burj from the highway.

The Burj up close.

Water fountains in front of the Burj.

Just another amazing skyscraper.

Dubai is what I imagine Las Vegas to be like without strippers, bars and Casinos. I look forward to testing this theory. For arts sake of course.

I do have a lot more to write about the Emirates but we are going to leave here on Sunday for the Maldives and we will soon be without internet again. The numerous things might take up pages in that book which more people are starting to make noises about.

The really exciting thing is that we will be heading home to New Zealand after the Maldives. The last week has been a very challenging one for Anna and I. It is good that learning English as your first language endows one with a stiff upper lip.

God save the Queen.

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El Fuerte the Horse Killer

So there we were, booted out of Abu Dhabi and anchored off shore. We were cleaning the boat and conversation was sparse. I delved into a special conversation starter that I had been saving for over a year. Feel free to use it at your next cocktail mixer or when ever there is an uncomfortable silence.

“Would you kill a horse with your bare hands for a million dollars?”

Now think about that question. There are a few considerations. There are the physical problems of killing a horse. They are large animals and have powerful legs. They can also run very fast. A successful kill would require subterfuge and a good deal of luck.

Also think about the emotional problems. What kind of person could kill a horse ? Let alone with nothing but his/her body.

I got a wide variety of answers, one of our security detail would not only have killed a horse; he would also engage in enthusiastic love making with one for a million dollars.

The real surprise was the always very mild mannered and perhaps borderline LOCO, El Fuerte.

His steely eyes narrowed and said “I would kill a horse for a million dollars”

Every spare moment since this conversation has seen El Fuerte puzzling over how to kill a horse. His solutions included.

“Jumping on a horse and biting its neck”

“Eye gouging”

“A flurry of jaw breaking boots”

I could not kill a horse for a million dollars. My respect for horses is well documented. My only real contribution to this conversation was to somehow have a horse fall in love with me and then leave breaking it’s heart and therefore killing it.

El Fuerte has since emailed his sister who is studying to be a veterinarian asking for horse weak spots. She has replied you could theoretically kill a horse with a heart stopping punch ala Kill Bill.

Woe betide any horse spotted in our travels I fear for it’s life.

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So close and so far

A strange mental state enveloped the crew of RoMa as we neared Abu Dhabi. We had been at sea for 11 days. We had had a few hic ups, stoppages and the prospect of land did not seem entirely real. We gradually got close to land and discovered our view was limited due to a sand storm gathering.

We made our way to the Abu Dhabi commercial port. I am a huge fan of commercial ports having been stuck in the Livorno one for a few days. We moored RoMa ok and I exchanged pleasantries with one of the locals who was fishing.

We had twelve bags of rubbish to dispose of. I very cleverly delegated the extraction of the said rubbish bags to El Fuerte and Uncle Phil. After dinner we engaged in a small celebration of sorts. I retired to bed and was soon awoken by Uncle Phil.

“Dan we are going out “

“Oh you crazy guys, have a good one”

“No we have to leave, something about customs”

Naturally I was enchanted at the idea of leaving Abu Dhabi before I had even seen anything other than a rubbish bin. We set about getting the boat ready to leave. El Fuerte did not believe we were going until he heard our Captain giving orders on the radios.

A small hic up by our agent in Egypt mean our crew list was missing three people. These three people could have been illegal aliens or disposed of with our rubbish. We spent the night 2 miles out to sea. What happened next? Keep reading.

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