The Prodigal Post – Getting Caught Up

My apologies for not posting for nearly two months. It’s been busy since coming back to New Zealand, and I’ve been wrapped up in some other things that have kept me from updating the blog. And, as usual, when we get someplace we stay for a long time, blog updates slow down. Why? Because we get in a routine, and you don’t want to hear me post “Go up, had breakfast, Danielle did school while B.J. wrote, made dinner, etc. etc.” every day when we haven’t done anything exceptional.

Visit Home from University / Holidays

Decked out in Christmas lights

A few days after I got back from the U.S., Will was scheduled to arrive in New Zealand for the holidays. He only got two weeks though, so we determined to make the most of it. Our original plan was to get the boat to Auckland before he got in, but that got shot to pieces when I had to travel. It didn’t matter, we hadn’t seen him since July and were thrilled he was coming home.

Ridiculous NZ Christmas Crackers!

As it turned out, we spent a pretty mellow family holiday together, and it was great. We took Will out to some places he’d missed, and went out into the Bay of Islands again for Christmas. We had a small amount of running around to do, but not too much. Christmas on the boat is a much more mellow affair. We’ve gotten away from the massive pile of presents Christmas morning. Part of that is our kids aren’t little any more – their toys tend to be smaller and much more expensive! And it’s tough to make a big pile under a two foot tree. But most of it is the scaling back we started doing when we moved on board in 2012; we just don’t do the same Christmas insanity that is so prevalent in the U.S. None of the countries we’ve visited around the holidays do it up quite like the U.S. does!

Will and Kathy continued what may become a Christmas tradition if we’re near someplace with a campground next year – they headed off on Boxing Day day to sail off in the Pudgy and spend the night camping on an island. Danielle isn’t an enthusiastic camper, and Will and I don’t fit in the Pudgy together, so camping by sailing dink has become a mother-son tradition. Danielle and I stayed on the boat, made snacks, and binge watched on movies we know Kathy would hate (vampire flicks and goofy slapstick).

Campsite on Urupukapuka Island. Evenstar is across the boat, in the cove made by the two outcropping points of land in the upper right.

We also took some walks, played some games, took some expeditions and just spent timing enjoying feeling…complete…as a family again.

A pair of dolphins Will and B.J. saw cavorting on our way to the snack bar on Urupekapeka for a beer.

We expected the New Year’s eve the weather to be lousy. A trough (low pressure pattern) came to move through, with high winds and heavy rains. Our initial plan to spend New Year’s off of Russell like we did last year didn’t seem like such a good idea. We were hoping to see all the boat lights and the fireworks again.

It was protected enough, but we had to get in the car on the 2nd and drive to Auckland to put Will on a plane, and we didn’t want to have to re-anchor the boat in the predicted thirty-five knots of wind and torrential downpours. Getting the four of us and his luggage to shore in the dinghy in those conditions would be enough of a challenge. So we exercised some discretion and came back to Opua. It was still a nice evening, we ate a nice dinner in the middle of the night, opened champagne and laughed a lot.

Two weeks are still too short, but we’ll have the whole summer break starting in May!

Other Excuses for Not Blogging Much

The primary reason my blogging output has dropped dramatically though isn’t visits from children, holidays, passages, or other things. It’s because I’ve done a lot of writing.

Some that have read this blog have suggested I should write a book about our travels. This is not that writing. It may happen, some day, it may not. There’s a lot of blogs-turned-books about cruising out there and I’m not sure the market needs another one enough to justify the time it takes. And writing a book takes a lot of time.

Instead, I’ve tried my hand at fiction. Since sometime starting last July I’ve written about 140,000 words of fiction, comprising two separate novels and starts on two others. Now, I’m focused on fixing and polishing the first one so I can try to sell it. And turning the second one into from a first draft into something more rich and coherent. This takes up a lot of time, and a lot of my spare time that I’d otherwise be blogging or pounding the keyboard on social media.

I won’t go into too much detail on these projects, as they may never go anywhere. But it’s something that, like probably half the people out there, I’ve always wanted to try. Everyone’s a writer, or so it seems. But actually finishing a story…that’s a lot of work. Even if it sucks, it’s a nice milestone.  So I am trying to write every day, in fact I usually AM writing every day – my target is 3,000 words per day. But I haven’t been writing blog posts.

If it seems that the writing will be meeting some commercial success some day, I’ll be screaming it from the mountaintops here. Mostly that will be links to an author website.  But I’m not going to turn this blog into a writer’s rumination page.

Going Forward

So outside of writing, visits from Will and the usual day-to-day tasks that’s most of what we’ve been up to in New Zealand.

We’ve got some projects coming up that I’ll talk about in another post: replacing our anchor rode, painting the bottom again, and some very gripping stories about the boat plumbing.

So sit tight, I’ll be back in no time with you favorite stories about rebuilding plumbing systems in exotic places!