Category: News

 

Our new home 🙂

We’ve moved onto what will be our home for a year. A lovely 46 foot catamaran, in Martinique, French Caribbean, which we plan to sail back to New Zealand. For an unsighted online purchase, the boat is surprisingly fine; there is work to do, but no more than we expected.

The kids have been awesome, entertaining themselves as we rush around stocking up on essentials, like linen, food, fresh water, mozzie lotion, tools, cooking utensils, and anything else one needs to turn a bare boat into a family home. It is clear the endless shopping was not quite what the children expected from the year away (‘Are we going to go shopping again today, Mummy? When can we go sailing?’ ), but they are patient, and haven’t expressed any disappointment so far. Mind you, there is plenty to see, on land. We drove to the capital city last week, and found the main road flooded, all traffic barred. On our way back we took a back road along a river, and when rounding a corner, we drove straight into a group of red crabs crossing the road, killing a couple as we desperately hit the brakes.

We’ve had some fun on the water too – shops are closed on Sundays, after all, and today was a public holiday. So we’ve been for a couple of beach trips. Today we took the boat around the corner to a beach for a snorkel, celebrating her renaming. Gone is ‘Alize V’, now it is our boat: ‘Bob the Cat’ in memory of Bob, our cat, left behind in Raglan. We had a great time, the kids frolicking in the water, until Matias touched a rock and started screaming that his hands were on fire. We think he might have touched a stinging red sponge, so rushed him back to the boat for vinegar soaking and painkillers, and had to spoon feed him dinner, as he couldn’t use his hands at all. Useful lesson learnt: don’t ever touch any rocks when snorkelling.

The water is amazing, the best way to cool down, but never too chilly. It is incredibly hot here, 30 degrees, and we are covered in sweat pretty much all the time. The heat is overwhelming below deck, we’ll need to install fans in all the cabins, otherwise we’ll never get a good night’s sleep. We sleep with all hatches open, waking up frequently to jump out of bed to close them all when a rain shower passes over. All modesty is gone and we’re stripped down to underwear or swimwear round the clock – we look a bit out of place with our pasty white bodies, covered in sunscreen, sweaty English speaking ghosts on an island of tanned cool Frenchies…

The mosquitoes are fierce, and apparently several boaties here have caught chikungunya, a nasty mosquito borne disease that lasts for many weeks. So we were glad to move out of the marina onto a mooring yesterday; the further from land, the fever mosquitoes. We still get all the sounds from land, last night a calypso band played until the early hours of the morning, keeping me company as I opened and closed hatches throughout the night. 

It’s a big change being here, and a whole year of adventure to go…