2022 Life Logs, Day 41: Writing, Writing, Writing
Date: Friday, February 11, 2022
Weather: Mix of Sun and Clouds, Windy in the PM; High Temp 49, Low Temp 33 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Physically I spent my day here in East Falmouth, but mentally I was in the Northland of the North Island (Te Ika a M?ui) of New Zealand. Te Ika a M?ui, the M?ori name for the North Island, translates as the fish of M?ui, a superhero demigod in Polynesian and M?ori mythology. The M?ori came to New Zealand from further east in Polynesia in huge canoes called wakas. An unbelievable feat in human history. Windbird sailed more than 13,000 miles from Boston to get there. Not as amazing as crossing the Pacific in a waka, but today as I wrote about our arrival in New Zealand it seemed almost surreal to me. Did we really do that? Yes. Mark and I did it and enjoyed every minute of it. When we left Boston, I don’t think we had any idea what to expect. We had some really challenging weather and boat issues in the beginning plaguing us all the way to the Caribbean. But once we arrived in St. Martin, things started turning in our direction. I was loving doing the research on where we were going and what we were going to do when we got there, and Mark really loved the technical challenge of figuring out how we were going to get there. We joked that I told him where to go and he got us there. He was the Captain and I was the Admiral. It took us 393 days to get to New Zealand, but most of that time was spent at anchor enjoying the beauty of the South Pacific. My good friend Alan Kanegsberg keeps asking me to add up the days spent traveling versus the days at anchor. When I finish writing the final chapter of the first year of the Voyage of Windbird, I am going to do that. And I have high hopes that tomorrow is the day that I will complete that final chapter. So, stay tuned, Alan. And hopefully Alan is recovering quickly from the hip replacement he had this Tuesday. It’s only been two days, so I doubt he is out jogging, but hopefully not in too much pain.
Today I truly enjoyed writing about our explorations of the very northern most part of the North Island after we arrived. New Zealand is a beautiful country from top to bottom and I am so jealous that my friend Lynne Kirwin is living there now. Lynne sailed to New Zealand with her first husband, gained citizenship, divorced, and lived in New Zealand for about 15 years before she met Ed. Then she spent 17 years sailing around the world with him. The year after Ed died, she split her time between the US and NZ, but when she went back in the fall of 2019 she didn’t get to come home in the spring of 2020 due to Covid. She will have been living there for more than two years when she comes home this summer to visit family and friends, which will hopefully include a trip to Cape Cod.
On the Olympics scene, last night I stayed up late to see Nathan Chen’s free skate performance. I loved watching him skate to Elton John’s Rocket Man. It was definitely a Gold Metal performance. I watched the men’s half-pike snowboard competition tonight and was terrified watching the young snowboarders try to fly. They go so high. I was disappointed that Shaun White didn’t metal, but he did come in 4th. I loved hearing that the teenager from Japan who won the Gold was a baby when Shaun won his first Gold. It was time to pass the torch.
