e left New Zealand this week 7 months to the day since we last sailed Saoirse offshore and for the first time, in the exact opposite route- from the Bay of Islands, New Zealand to Port-Vila Vanuatu via New Caledonia. I begin season 5 both more excited and yet more disillusioned than ever to continue our circumnavigation. While my father has insisted that the point of writing these logs should be to entice potential clients into joining us in our adventure, writing of nothing but paradise and sunsets is neither true nor ultimately, very interesting, so this log is an attempt to capture what sailing is really all about when we’re not feasting on lobster or Mai Tai’s.

We’ve been in and out of New Zealand for the past three years and I depart the land of the long white cloud this time for good, leaving knowing my negative outlook on the country has been garnered not through traveling and enjoying New Zealand’s many vistas and hospitable people, but through endless exhausting days of sanding, varnishing, chemicals, repairs, eating crappy meat pies and pickling our skin in the saturated gray days that in time become indiscernible from one another. In short the weather is awful, the service sucks (I’d rethink the tipping thing), the exchange rate has gone to Bush, and dammit, I don’t like it. To grow to not like a place is a good lesson. Usually when we travel we find the cultural differences enlightening, the food interesting, the conversation thrilling- it’s why we go. But when you go from traveling to living the newness wears off and is replaced by the reality, which is not necessarily a mirror of your perceptions. Everyone I talk to who travels New Zealand loves it. Everyone. So am I wrong? Probably. There are things I love about the country and things I don’t, which is no different than anywhere I’ve been. The reality I believe is that in the end New Zealand has not been an adventure, it has been a nightmare of work trying to stretch our dollar as far as it will go to get Saoirse ready for another 20,000 miles of stress and shamelessly selling our souls to continue this dream, which at the moment is questionable. New Zealand has forced me to ask the question: is it worth it?

Time will tell. At the close of last season I wanted to sail forever. Everything worked, very little broke, I had great crew and fun guests and we sailed to glorious places. Sailing is only different in my experience than living on land going to a 9-5 job in that the hours are grossly more (24 hours a day most of the time), the pay pathetically less (try selling a charter for what it actually costs to be out here and you get laughed out of business) the stress exponentially more and I burn myself a lot more in the galley than I do in the kitchen at home because we’re rolling around like a Disneyland log ride. I realize these words fall on unsympathetic ears. How can sailing around the world be less fun than going to meetings, sitting in traffic, getting bitched at by the boss? Well, here’s a snapshot of yesterday. First, the client’s head (toilet) got blocked. We unblocked it by blowing a mountain of shit all over the head and ourselves. That lead to a problem with a valve rendering the aft head useless for the remainder of this segment, or until I can get a part, so now 6 people will be using the forward head. In the attempted fix of the head I did something I still have not been able to fix that puts the autopilot on the blink whenever I close the door the autopilot is mounted on. Then we had an electrical problem for my now $20,000 dollar freezer that has been redone and redone and redone which kept me up all night so we wouldn’t lose a freezer full of meat. Then the stove wouldn’t work- another wire to the propane solenoid had busted loose while we wrestled with the exploding head. I tried to catch a bit of shut-eye in sheer exhaustion and noticed an unwanted sloshing underneath the anchor storage- the bilge pump one-way valve was jammed and all the water we were taking over the foredeck was slowly building up underneath the forward V-berth. To fix it I had to haul 350 feet of 5/8ths chain on to the deck in very uncomfortable seas at night (I’m still sore), then hacksaw an aluminum cover in half to access the bilge pump. In due course everything eventually gets fixed and there is great satisfaction taken in knowing I can get my frequently questionable mind around these problems much faster and make the repair far better than I could 5 years ago. That satisfaction leads into a day like today where the sailing has been incredible and the things that broke neither smelled nor kept me awake- they’re just the inevitable and somehow we’ll figure it out. It is now 4 am on my watch with everyone asleep and only the stars for company. It’s a beautiful night and I’m reminded that if life out here didn’t have its setbacks and disappointments there wouldn’t be much reward when it all goes right. Once again, the lesson is attitude. I can be thankful for a beautiful wonderful woman who’s stood by my side through months of days like yesterday with the exploding head, thankful to have Francis back for another season who is easily the best crew mate anyone could wish for and thankful that the dream is still alive.

May 2004 en route to New Caledonia