“I finished my letter to Santa”, said Lukie, holding out a piece of paper.
I glanced down.
Dear Santa. I wood lik a skwid. I wood lik a dragin. I wood also lik a hamstr. From Lukas.
“Well, that’s clear”, I said. “At least he knows what you want for Christmas. Now fold it up, and put it in tomorrow’s pocket on the calendar”.
Lukie carefully folded his letter and stuffed it into the calendar.
“Now Santa knows what to get me!” he beamed. “He may drop it off tonight – perhaps tomorrow we will find the presents on the deck.”
We were on day three of the sail from New Caledonia to Opua in New Zealand, and, it being the beginning of December, the frantic letter writing to Santa had commenced once again. Matias was writing endless enquiries into the mechanics of Santa getting on board with advent presents in the middle of the ocean, and had also branched out into asking all sorts of personal questions about Santa’s life in general, leaving carefully crafted boxes for multiple choice options and a pencil to make it easy for Santa to reply. Lukie just wrote long lists of what he wanted for Christmas, spurred on by the fact that the first request (a squid) had promptly landed on the deck the morning after he asked for it. Undeterred by my warnings that we were unlikely to be allowed to import a dragon or a hamster into New Zealand, the list got longer and longer, the requests more and more outrageous.
The trip to New Zealand is meant to be awful, with many cruisers meeting fierce winds and heavy seas, but our passage proved uneventful, no doubt thanks mainly to David’s extensive experience with weather forecasting. After five days with good winds and a relatively calm sea, we sighted land just before midnight on Thursday. At sunrise the wind was completely gone, and in a magic moment a welcoming pod of dolphins amused themselves in our bow wave, clicking and squeaking so loudly as they glided through the oily still waters that I could clearly make out the message.
Nau mai, haere mai ki Aotearoa.
We spent all of Friday slowly motoring along the rugged coastline with occasional showers and chilly air greeting us on our return to the land of the long white cloud. Finally, just after dinner on Friday evening, we pulled into Opua marina and tied up to the quarantine dock. We had made it, crossed the last bit of ocean, brought Bob home. We breathed out, had a celebratory drink and then went to bed, savouring our first blissfully uninterrupted sleep for six nights.
This voyage has been the most incredible adventure of our lives.
We have seen natural wonders and encountered creatures splendid beyond belief, at close hand in their natural environment. We have visited places of magical beauty and learned about culture and customs of which we knew nothing prior to setting out. Our children have run around free on deserted islands, frolicked in sand dunes, climbed coconut trees and swum in deep and shallow seas, in clear and murky waters. They have played with kids from tiny villages on remote islands with whom they shared no language, and met children on boats from all over the world. They have been to places dripping with history and have learned much about the links that join our ancestors to the forefathers of the people who inhabit the corners of the earth.
We come back with our souls enriched by the countless sunrises we’ve witnessed, and the special moments we’ve shared with people from faraway lands, whose daily lives became enmeshed with ours sometimes for short times, sometimes for longer. We have made fantastic friends and so many memories that our hearts are full and our heads overflowing.
If, in the end, life is reduced to a string of feelings, of memories, encounters and experiences, this year has provided enough to give texture to our lives for a long while. The oceans are vast and we are overjoyed that we were fortunate enough to be able to take some time and see first hand a big bit of water and some islands, and share the wonders and magic of nature and farflung destinations with our children.
Not really ready to leave the adventure behind, we will remain on Bob the Cat until after Christmas, but this blog will end here, with our safe arrival home. Kia ora, Aotearoa, it’s been a long time.
SV Bob The Cat 