Bucket List Sailing: Memories from New Zealand

The preamble:

My late wife and I have always had the bucket list item of visiting New Zealand. Obviously it’s too late for her and I had kind of let go of that idea when she passed. I do sail with a group of singles called “SOS” otherwise known as “singles on sailboats”. Before you get all excited about it, we’re all old people who have lost loved one and therefore lost their crew on their boat. So we volunteered to be crew for each other’s boat typically sailing up and down the Chesapeake Bay. Members of the group include all the way from Pennsylvania to North Carolina. The group has been active for the last 50 years. Occasionally one member gets a hair braided idea that they want to go on a “bare boat charter” or rent a boat in a foreign land such as Canada or Mexico or Europe. This time around they decided it was New Zealand and I got all excited. Too much was going on in my life so I missed the deadlines and decided I wasn’t going to go. Needless to say a month later, they call back and stated that they needed crew as two members had canceled and one of the boats was short handed. I looked to the sky and realize somebody was talking to me. At the spur of the moment I decided to go and got a one way ticket. I didn’t know whether that was an ominous sign that I wasn’t coming back, but then again the whole trip was being thrown together very spontaneously.

So I had to fly from Greenville to Charlotte, Charlotte to Dallas, Dallas to Auckland. The last leg was 13 hours by itself. I felt I was living on an airplane for the next two days. I left on Thursday morning but didn’t get to Auckland until Saturday morning. Jumping across the international dateline, you lose a day. I met up with three other members of the crew who I had never met before other than on Zoom. I had it in my mind, no matter what, I was going to have a good time and I was gonna make it work. That’s the best attitude to have because that was tested from time to time but we all got along famously. We left Auckland on the boat, which was a 37 foot Bavaria sloop rigged sailboat. I was named the “bursar” which is the person that finances all of this. Somehow, I was getting a feeling like I might be the rookie on this. It turned out quite well, but I did keep track of all expenses. As they say there’s an app for that and I found one on my phone that did the job perfectly. We first went to the grocery store and purchased a week’s worth of food for four people with varying tastes. That was a challenge as well as trying to design, on the fly, a menu for four people, three meals a day for seven days. That being done and stored on the boat, we took off out of Auckland Harbor that Saturday afternoon. We headed up the western side of the bay eventually crossing over to Great Barrier Island and down to Coromandel and then to Waiheke Island (where all the vineyards are located) and then finally back to Auckland. A great circle route through rather open waters. The Hauraki gulf is very open to the ocean on the north and east side, so the ocean swells come in as well as the usual waves generated by the local weather. Part way though the trip we had to stay in port for the day as the tail end of a cyclone (Pacific hurricane) passed by. The islands are very remote and formed by volcanic activity from a more recent geological time. At the end of the week, on the boat “Pure Escape”, we were fast friends and had enjoyed a great time.

Ham Radio experience:

While at Great Barrier Island, I strung an End Fed Half Wave antenna made by Packtenna from the cockpit in the back of the boat, up the mast and down to the bow of the boat mimicking the shape of the rigging. I held it away from the rigging as it would just ground the signal otherwise. At first there was a horrendous noise on the ham bands that lasted an hour but then went quiet. I could then hear signals coming in on my Elecraft KX2 (5 watts on FT8). I hooked up my iPhone running iFTx software connected via DigiRig interface to the KX2. I subsequently made contacts in Argentina (same latitude south), Australia, China, Japan, Eastern Europe. I could hear stations in the US and made one contact but the sheer number of stations on the air in the US, drowns out my QRP signal. (Like someone whispering in the corner of a conference room while everyone is talking, you cannot hear the whisperer). I tried it several other times and had similar results. I would take it down before the next morning as we were sailing.

Island Exploration:

After that week was over, I had talked to my daughter who suddenly got photographic assignments in Australia, Figi and New Zealand! She arrived two days later and we set off in a rented car exploring the north island for 5 days. She had to go on to her assignments and I flew to the south island (Christchurch & Queenstown). I toured in busses and boats catching as much as I could in 5 days before returning home. Of course my trip home had rough spots with the airlines but I made it safely. Yeah, there is a lot more to this story! (More to come) No wonder we do not like traveling!

Random Notes:

A few things that I noticed while visiting New Zealand: the people are quite friendly, but also private. They won’t come up to you and bother you but if they are approached, they’re more than willing to help and talk to you. They drive on the left side of the road, so renting a car in anywhere that used to be a British colony gets to be a real exercise in concentration. Driving down the road isn’t hard on the left side however, going into a parking lot or making a right turn, we tend to cut the corner and wind up in the wrong lane. It’s interesting that in the tourist locations such as Hobbiton, the glowworm caves and other such tourist hotspots, they have arrows painted on the lanes, indicating which direction you should be traveling right around these locations. Obviously the accident rate is a little higher in these locations due to the tourist drivers and they’re trying to keep everybody safe. On a 4 lane highway, everyone drives in the slow lane (far left lane) and only gets into the fast lane (right lane) momentarily for passing. Even the fast cars do this and no one passes on the wrong side like we do in the USA. There were a lot of foreign students from England, Germany, and many other countries working for six months or a year in New Zealand as wait staff or other help. The New Zealand dollar is worth about $0.57 in American money so you get a discount. You first get sticker shot because dinner might be $100 but in reality it’s only $57. So an American coming in with American dollars, you can live like a king for a little while. They do mostly what they call “contactless payments”. That is you use your credit card and flash their terminal with it and it charges the card with New Zealand dollars. This is automatically transferred to your account as US dollars after the exchange rate is compensated for. I used very little cash on the entire trip. They also have a much more relaxed pace to their life, where they are not so hell-bent on profits that they’re willing to sacrifice the quality of life. The quality of the food was excellent as was the coffee or tea. About every bus stop has an espresso machine as their clientele expects high-quality stuff. They do not tip for the most part unless it’s something really special, the reason being is their minimum wage is relatively high, so people are not needing to have tips to make up the difference. This has other ramifications that could be explored, but on the face of it it is rather nice knowing that the price that stated is what you’re going to pay. Before I went, I called ATT and got their international plan activated on my cell phone so that I was not being charged at very high rates for data and calls. This plan limits the cost significantly.

That’s all for now, more to come if desired…
73 Peter N4PVH

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