Heading Off...

When we drove away from the Bay yesterday, we realized that this is the longest we will have been away, AND, the next time we drive away to the international airport, we may never come back to this special place again... what a feeling?????

Packing Up... Selling Up... AND...

It is the most bizarre feeling...

We spend our lives getting ourselves all of the "things" we want, need, love, enjoy - it is not until you look at going away for a very long time that you realise how much "stuff" you really have... so we have been selling off, giving away and packing up (again).

After the Cotlands sale we thought we have done a lot of it, BUT, here at the Bay we have things that have been very personal to the Bay - our dive gear, our dive compressor, our fishing gear, the concrete mixer (yes, it has a history with us too!)

It is now less than a week before we leave the Bay for three and half months to go to Thailand, and then when we return it is only one month and we go to South Africa on our one way ticket to join "Our Rose."... the one thing we haven't allowed yet, is the realization of how much we are going to miss our darling friends... and our family...

These photos are Richard, Jen (and Hannah Robinson) , Tony and Us, and Harrison with some catches here at the Bay...  Unfortunately we don't have any photos to show of Roddy and his catches...

 

The Name...

We had been thinking of lots and lots of different ideas for names for our beautiful boat...

The events that came to the thought of the name of our boat were:

When we were in Japan in February, we found out that the translation of Hannah is Flower...
Cotlands Lodge our home we sold in Auckland had lots of Roses...
We had Hannah cremated - when she came back to us, she was in a white box with a red ribbon wrapped around her with a red rose attached!

Sooooo, therefore the decision to name the boat "Our Rose" came about...

Exciting Week

Rudi (www.maverickyachts.co.za) came to NZ this week to sort a few remedial points on Peters boat and to meet with the NZ Safety Ship Management people - our boat will be built to the NZ standards.

We were then lucky enough to finalize a lot of the details for our boat with Rudi here in person!

Following an appointment at Eye Lasik on Wednesday, Jen had both eyes laser'd on Friday - "yah" no glasses needed on the boat - unless they're sunnies!

The First Stage...

So, we packed up, stored, sold our possessions and moved out of Cotlands Lodge within 3 weeks... basing ourselves at the Bay of Islands, now things really were moving.

We arrived at the Bay, then 24 hours later the exchange rate suddenly hit the forward order we had placed for the Rand!  We placed the order for our boat - our pipe dream was becoming our reality...
This is a sunset at the Bay...

We decided we would "formalize" our water experience and upskill ourselves in a major way - so we have booked to go back to school.  Marlene and Johan had told us about a sailing school they went to in Thailand.  So we checked it out.  We go to Thailand on 30 April and will be there for three and a half months... we are aiming at achieving our Commercial Ocean Yachtmaster to 200 tonnes certificates.

AND THEN...

In February we went to beautiful Furano snow skiing... we had Irene and Arthur (Hannah Robinsons temporary live in Grandparents) come and look after her while we were in Japan - our total time away was supposed to be three weeks...

and then the phone call... Hannah had suddenly collapsed - 3 days later Jen started the journey home and two and a half days later she arrived and collected her baby from Doggie Hospital - a very very severe inner ear infection.  She was a sick little girl.  24 hours later and a negotiation from one end of the house to the other and our home "Cotlands Lodge" was sold... A week and a half later, Richard came home and then only five days later Hannah Robinsons Journey with us had to come to an end...

Our Precious Baby - we miss her soooooo much

Along came Marlene, Johan, Joe and Marco....

We had asked Rudi and Deslynn - www.maverickyachts.co.za if we could have the contact of the people they had built boats for... he sent us all of them.  What a wonderful amount of people - they ALL responded to our emails and were very happy to share about their boats.  What a wonderful help they have all been - we have to mention Paul Rackshaw - whose blogs were so valuable to us and of course sailing on his boat in South Africa, Peter Windsor - the first to buy a Maverick and bring her to New Zealand and Marlene, Johan, Joe and Marco - who are sailing the world on their Maverick, fulfilling their dreams... www.mycatlyn.blogspot.com

Well it was Marlene, Johan, Joe and Marco who dry-stored their boat in Trinidad and sailed Peters boat to New Zealand... when we all met, we felt like we had known them for a long time.  They stayed in our home (which was on the market and had been for 6 months).  As a thank you, Joe (19 years old) decided to put together a website for our home - www.cotlandslodge.com  What an amazing thing to do for us.  We loved our brief time together with them all.

To Begin...

It had always been a pipe-dream... "One day we will sail the world"...

When the children have grown up.... when our parents are gone... when our precious baby (welsh springer spaniel) Hannah Robinson is gone... when we have time... when we can afford it... when we've sold our house...

Well, the day came and Richard asked me "How about we build a boat and sail the world?"

Two months later we were on a plane and headed to South Africa to look at a beautiful catamaran that was built there, meet the boatbuilder and research...

Our precious baby (Hannah Robinson) was still with us, so it was still a "pipe-dream" BUT how things change and change rapidly...