Greetings from Tauranga (Toe-RON-Ga), New Zealand! We arrived here on May 12 to move aboard our new boat and it’s been a challenging time. Let me back up to my last update and highlight a few experiences up until this windy (gusts to 40 right now) and rainy day here at Sulphur Point Marina.

Weeks and, now, months have been spent dealing with shipping logistics. From the beginning, starting in the Bahamas, it’s been a challenge trying to figure out the most reliable and cost effective way to get our stuff to us and our new boat. Do we ship our new life raft? How do we get tools and lithium batteries there? Do we just buy new stuff once we get there? So many questions, so many permutations. The only consistent theme was that it was going to be incredibly expensive and take a long time. After weeks and weeks of work we finally settled on shipping 2 large crates to Fiji and dragging the rest of the stuff with us on the plane.

This was still full of challenging logistics. Our friend Brent Hughes offered up his warehouse in Tampa to help with the storage and shipping of the large crates to Fiji. I rented a U-Haul, loaded 1 crate in the van, filled it with our stuff, then loaded the next empty crate in the van and then filled that one. Then I drove the 2.5 hours to Tampa and they were fork lifted out of the van. I then drove back to Cape Canaveral.

It was so hard to pack up a boat…while living on the boat. We didn’t have any spots to put the stuff once we packed it up, it had to stay on the boat while we lived aboard. This was really hard and extremely unpleasant. Oliver was forced to give up his room to allow us some place to put the stuff, but it was quickly filled and we ended up living amongst boxes. To try to coordinate when we would lose our cutlery, glasses, clothing, tools, etc was challenge that got the best of us. We were sleep deprived and overwhelmed. Not the best setting to make good decisions. Regardless, we got it done. We remain extremely grateful to the buyers of Atlas, S&G. They could not have been more understanding or patient with us. We will always remember them for that. They were a very bright spot during a rather challenging time for us.

Due to the vast amount of crap we were bringing with us we had to rent 2 vehicles for our drive up Florida to Michigan. Melissa drove a minivan absolutely bursting with stuff while I drove a Subaru with the boys and Bo. We spent 3 days making our way north and discovered the joy that is Buc-ees. We enjoyed those stops very much and I’ll always remember eating brisket on the tarmac of the parking lot while the boys and Bo ran off some of their energy.

Once we arrived to Michigan we disgorged our vast quantity of stuff on my poor father and Laurel, and the next day drove to Toronto to leave Bo with his new family. I covered that in my last post and it wasn’t a fun experience. It was undeniably the right thing to do and Bo is doing very well with his new family. Moving on…

Once back in Michigan we took the opportunity of having more space to repack all of our items in to stronger cardboard moving boxes and bags. We determined that the cheapest and easiest way to get the rest of our items to New Zealand was to simply check them as luggage on the flight. This was neither easy nor cheap mind you. It was simply the easiest and cheapest. It, once again, required the renting of 2 vehicles to drive to Chicago…and then 2 vehicles to get from the hotel to O’Hare airport. Cheapest and easiest…

We had an awesome few days in Chicago. All the work of the past 3 weeks was now behind us. All decisions had been made, logistics solidified, packing done. We were finally able to focus on the kids after an extremely tough time for the entire family. Being able to do this in one of our all time favorite cities was a great bonus. We visited museums, play grounds, walked the river and enjoyed the great architecture. And took 3 rounds of covid tests. We were extremely worried about one of us getting a positive covid test, which would prevent us from flying to New Zealand. The thought of staying in a hotel room for another week or 2 was enough to keep everyone on the tight and narrow. We wore masks everywhere and stayed away from seeing friends. Not easy but the right decision. We were rewarded with 3 rounds of negative tests. New Zealand bound!

Our travel to New Zealand could not have been easier. We had a total of 3 flights to get to Tauranga, New Zealand. Each flight was on time. All of our bags made it. The last year of traveling by boat prepared the boys for the 24 hours of travel. Honestly, it could not have gone more smoothly. The worst part was the shockingly long walk from the domestic gate at LAX to the international terminal. My god, it had to have been at least a mile. Dragging our 8 carry on items was brutal. Both Melissa and I were absolutely drenched upon arrival. We were able to track our checked bags the entire way which is sort of amazing. We could see that they had all made the flight(s) from ORD to LAX and that they were now loaded for Auckland. We then had to be reunited with all of the bags in Auckland and go through customs. It was extremely difficult to navigate this process by ourselves. You know the drill, collect 21 bags, load them on to carts, manage 2 young boys who just got off a 13 hour flight, and somehow move them with a mass of humanity through immigration and then customs. We then had to have them go through security again and check them in, again. We had 6 carts. Bags and boxes repeatedly toppled off the carts. This. Was. Fine.

We were greeted in Tauranga by the team we had been working with from afar, Pam and Sam. Pam and Sam had been helping us with the boat, from the initial walk through, to the sea trial, to finally having Sam move aboard the boat for a week to try to coordinate work prior to our arrival. They showed up with 3 cars!!! We just couldn’t believe it. 24 hours of travel, 21 checked bags, 8 carry ons and a month of emotional turmoil, we had made it. Everyone pitched in and loaded the massive amount of stuff in to the 3 cars and then we were off to our new boat just a 10 minute drive away.

Pam, her wife Kim, and Sam helped us schlep our stuff down the incredibly long dock to our new boat. They were clearly sensitive to our jet lag and our general sense of being overwhelmed and quickly left us alone to sort things out. But not before one final act of generosity that wouldn’t be fully appreciated until the next few weeks. Pam handed us the keys to her Land Rover and said “keep the car. We’ll be back for it in 2 weeks.” WHAT?!?!!? Holy shit!!! Even at that time, despite being incredibly grateful, we didn’t fully appreciate just how much this would end up helping us and making our experience easier. Anyway, wow. Who does that?!?!!?

I’ve held off on writing this blog for so long because I wasn’t sure how to approach this next part…the boat. I’m still not sure how to best write about this. I think it’s best to just say that there are many interpretations of how to take care of things. We’ve spent the last 3 weeks and an uncomfortable amount of sweat and money trying to bring it up to a level we’re comfortable with. It’s the first time since we’ve decided to start out on this adventure that we’ve had regrets. I’ll leave it at that.

We’ve worked very hard, while working very hard, to try to spend some time with the kids. We’ve mostly failed and they’ve been forced to come with us on all of our provisioning runs and errands. But there have absolutely been some incredible highlights. In fact, if you take the condition of the boat out of the equation, our time here in New Zealand has been nothing but positive. The people here are so incredibly kind. The level of expertise of the marine trades here has been amazing. We’ve been so fortunate to have such a breadth of services available here in Tauranga and, for better and worse, we’ve had to use almost all of them. We’re grateful that they’re here and have been so prompt in helping us.

Back to the highlights. With the use of the car we were free to take some local trips and see the highlights of Tauranga. You can’t miss the biggest feature of the area, Mt. Maunganui. It’s beautiful and dominates the “skyline.” After a week of hard work we finally were able to break away, take a day off, and climb the Mount. We had a great time. The next week we came back to the base and swam in the thermal pools. Another memorable experience!

We also met a lovely family with 3 young boys who reached out to Melissa on the #kids4sail Facebook page. They are in planning on taking off on their own adventure next year and have welcomed us with open arms. We’ve now been able to share many meals together and have been so grateful to have our boys playing with their boys. We’ve really enjoyed our time with them and had a riot going down the Luge in Rotorua. We’ll be sad to say goodbye but expect we’ll see them again when we’re back in NZ in 5 months time.

Writing these blogs is often cathartic for me and this time is no different. It offers perspective and allows me a moment to look back. Thankfully the human condition, at least my condition, weights positive experiences more than negative, at least with the passage of time. While we truly don’t enjoy being tied up at a dock and the amount of work we’ve been engaged in has been hard, we’ve been having another positive and unique experience. The weather here is incredible. It is quick to change and the winds can be incredibly intense. I’m currently writing this post while the winds howls through the rig, with gusts to 40. Last week we had gusts to 45 and sustained winds above 30 knots for 24 hours. It’s been blowing 25+ for the last 18 hours right now. The weather here is not to be trifled with.

We’ve also enjoyed some aspects of moving aboard the boat. There is no doubt this is a fantastic design and a very well built boat. We’re stunned by the amount of space aboard. Frankly it’s far more than we need and I’m a bit embarrassed by how lavish it is. There were many reasons why we selected this boat but the amount of space wasn’t part of it. Yes we wanted more space, but not this much. It’s far more than we need. But we wanted the length and volume of the hulls for passage making. The robust build and stability. The powerful and adaptable rig. Now Melissa and I sleep in a bed larger than what we had at home. We love the salon and the space to gather. We’ve spent each night doing a family dinner around the table. Many nights have been spent playing family games and trying to connect after a tough day of work. Melissa has, once again, done a great job decorating the boy’s rooms and helping make them their own. The boys are MASSIVE fans of the boat. This has helped us enormously as they were very sad to leave Atlas and reminded us that, perhaps, we’ve done the “right” thing. And the galley is awesome.

Some other highlights of our time off the boat was riding a REAL, coal fired, miniature steam train and, of course, seeing Top Gun. What a great movie and a truly memorable family experience. We loved it. This was Elliott’s first time in a theater, ever. The boys were reminded of that time they hung out at the home of an amazing family, one of the US Navy’s best. A commander of a carrier no less. They left that night with patches from the US Navy Fighter Weapons School and a piece of arrestor cable. It reminded all of us how lucky we are and how much fun we’ve had the past year.

So where do we currently stand? We’re still trying to check off some critical items on the boat before we can depart. The nav lights don’t work, the solar doesn’t work, we’re still trying to resolve engine monitoring issues and the boat still isn’t registered. That’s been a rather clunky and challenging experience as well. We started the registration process over 2 months ago. We’re still working on it and will be heading to a local attorney in 2 hours from now to try to push the ball across the goal line. We can’t leave until we’re registered and we can’t update all of our electronic emergency safety beacons, radio station license, etc. Once these items are done we’ll head either directly to Fiji or north to Opua. We had a burst of excitement at the end of last week when we saw what might be a window to depart directly for Fiji at the end of this week. That door has now slammed closed and if the long range forecasts are to be believed (they aren’t) we may be here for another 10 to 12 days minimum. Hopefully that’s not the case. Thankfully we’ll be joined by both Pam and Sam for our passage to Fiji so we’ll have very experience sailors helping us get there.

Thanks so much to all of you who have reached out to check in on us. We’ve enjoyed the video chats. It’s been a tough month for us but we’re still grateful for the experiences we’re having. We hope that we’ll soon be off the dock and anchored in stunning bays. The pace of work is slowing down and we can see progress being made. Our family remains resilient and we, somehow, haven’t quit yet. Head down, one foot in front of the other, keep moving forward. I’m just happy I didn’t have to ship the bed.