NZ Land Logs 43, Year 2: Love That Skype
Date: Monday, April 2, 2007
Weather Today: Mostly Sunny Day with Some Liquid Sunshine Periods
Location: Whangarei, New Zealand

Definitely the highlight of today was getting to see our grandbaby Sam via webcam during a Skype call. These little glimpses of Sam are what allow us to stay out here and still feel like we are watching him grow. It’s certainly not the same as being right there with him, but it does help us feel close to him. His Goldstone grandparents were visiting this weekend, so we also got to see them. It was so neat to see Sam actually “talking” to Jed’s mom. He is definitely developing a special language of Sam babble. As his Grandpa Donald said, “He really is quite charming.” We miss you Sam and love seeing you in our once a week phone calls.

The rest of our day was spent working on Windbird. We have committed to being taken out of the water this Wednesday, so we are trying to get the work done on the deck before then. Once we are out of the water, we need to put our energy into doing the necessary work on the bottom and sides of the boat. Mark completed putting plugs in the teak deck today and I sanded, then scraped, and then resorted to a varnish stripper on the hand rails. I got the one on the starboard side ready for a final sanding and will work on the port side rail tomorrow morning. Tomorrow afternoon I’m going shopping with Marie of Ranger to do some major provisioning. I want to get the heavy stuff onboard before we are out of the water and have to climb up a latter to get things into the boat. As soon as we are done on land and they put us back in the water, we plan to leave Whangarei, so provisioning for the new season needs to happen quickly.

Safina left this morning bright and early and the space she left on the dock reminded us all that in two weeks time most of us will no longer be here in Whangarei. In between trips to the laundry room tonight, we have been working on our plans for the upcoming cruising season. We’re getting closer to making some final decisions and its looking more and more like we will spend the cruising season in the western South Pacific and sail to Australia or back to New Zealand next October or November. If we decide to do this, we will then start the trip home in May of 2008. That trip will take us through parts of Malaysia, across the Indian Ocean, around South Africa, to the coast of Brazil, and then back to the Caribbean and on up the East Coast of the US by April or May of 2009. It’s sounding like a plan, and now all we have to figure out is when we can come home to visit and when kids can come visit us. Mark’s been looking at flight possibilities all evening but hasn’t found the magic flights with low fares yet. He’ll keep working on it.

070402 Web Pics–Working on Windbird