The big good bye party

We were told anything between nil and 200 people could show up to Alveis farewell party. It turned out to be a total of about 25 on and off during the night.  We had made four kilos of potato salad, so you can easily guess what we'll be living off the next days before the final departure. The ship ended up looking so clean it almost was too much, pretty much everything is put in the right place, and deck has been scrubbed, saloon and galley vacuumed and all table  and galley tops inside and out washed down.
I planned to take pictures, but realised my memory card had gone missing.

 Instead I drank pear scrumpy and red wine and danced on the deck  - we've made a crew dance as well, and added new disco moves such as haul up the anchor, climb the mast and scrub the deck. We also made the discovery that all of the male crew are quite the playboys with female guests flocking around them. It was pretty funny to watch and I guess that's what sailors are supposed to be like.  Hard working sailors do party hard, but not late - I wet to bed as one of the later at 00.30.

There's a fun story at the end

I was originally planning to write some posts ahead and have them appearing here. It didn't really happen; we've been to busy getting everything ready before sailing. Hence this space will be empty for the next month or so - there is no net on the ocean. I promise to return on Fiji and write fascinating tales of the sea and the islands. Deal?

Oh, the funny story: our kitchen sink outlet got plugged the other day. It turned out to be a dead fish, which had swam in there to gobble on our flushed out leftovers. I pulled it out of the outlet by the tail, sitting on our land raft.

Dirty sailors

Much less interesting than the title suggests, we're busy fixing up the ship still, grinding rust, painting, playing with phosphosric acid cleaing up the galley top, finding (or making) space for everything and gerneally cleaning up. It's starting to look nicer and nicer, though there's still a clutter of paint buckets and containers of all sorts to trip over on deck. It is coming together though, the inside of the ship is getting pretty neat and tidy, and even thoug it feel like we're adding one job on the to do list for each which is being done, it slowly shrinks.

The crew

In order of appearance:

Cap'n Evans, originally american, now a man of the sea around late fifties I guess. He's been sailing around for the past 30 years or so. He's a quiet man, who speaks more with his eyes than his words, but can pull out quite a few good stories I believe.

Will, 21, american, former studetn who got tired of studying and wanted to do something real. Looks scruffy, eand puts up an appereance, which hardly covers a really nice guy.

Kevin, 24, francais, palys guitar and mouth harp and dresses as a pirate and travels the world and has a jolly good time.

Lou, 27, kiwi as they come, chef, happy, likeable to the max.

Michael, belgé, 19, straight outta school and wanted to travel before university. I'm very supportive of the idea. Looks like a dark Tintin. Bright as few.

Dan, italian-spanish, the partyboy who accidentally spends three days on land, when going for a beer with his friends. A touch timid and also terribly nice.

Sibel, Turkish not German!, 22, taking a break from Germany, travelling NZ, very pretty, very nice, very good sense of humour.

Charlotte, German, has sailed on the Fritdjof Nansen from Germany, just returned from Abel Tasman Hike, definitely knows what she is doing. She's nice too.

Tawny, whom I meet in Takaka when roadtripping with Madeleine. She's a wilderness guide for troubled youth in Colorado, happy hippie, and I'd be deligthed to share cabin with her any day.

Canouck the wild card, french canadian nurse, not on board yet, but has sailed with Alvei and Evan before.

Update upate! An addition of Pepe from Italy has turned up, he knows how to sail, and smiled very friendly at me, while I was busy grinding the hell out of everything, then disappeared while I was in the shower. Well, we'll get time to meet while sailing.

Preparing the cruise

Alvei is a big boat. There's 187 ropes aboard weighing around a tonne, and I have to learn what happens when you loosen them and pulls. I also have to learn to tie knots, practice climbing around in the masts, grind rusty shackles and paint them, stowe away food, make maps over the food storing so we know where everything is, clean, and wash and out away. Luckily I'm not doing it alone, it looks like we'll be a crew of ten on board as well as Cap'n Evan.

It's pretty good and pretty busy, I'll try to remember to take pictures and update you guys. Most of all it's fun.

On board

I'm aboard the Alvei in Nelson and the crew is trickling aboard. I've already had my first galley watch cooking for everybody, luckily it was pretty good even if the rice burned at the bottom. I've also learned a few knots and fixed the netting under the bowsprit (google translate, don't blaim me if it's wrong) and then my bike decided to go for a swim. Luckily we could fish it up again, but there were a few moments of panic in my behalf. This is where I'll spend the next couple of months and I think it is going to be awesome

Golden string of perfect days

It's been an absolutely fabulous roadtrip aound the Golden Bay on the north west corner of South Island. We've kayaked and hiked in Abel Tasman, hitch hiked with great people, met new friends, played with baby seals, listened to world class violin concerts while drinking manuka beer at The Mussel Inn, made and eaten faboulous dinners,  rock climbed, celebrated St Pattys day around the fireplace and generally just had a magnificent time with fantastic people.
I'll post some pictures and elaborate further - in short, all is well, I'm alive and very happy.

Port Nelson

Nelson is a pretty sweet little place, with happy hippie kiwis, loads of backpackers, a nice atmosphere, a bustling and still industrial harbour, cute cafes, parks to hang in, walks to do, museums to visit. Quite the change from Havelock's population of 400 people.

We've been doing the tourist thing, the art museum is more recommendable than the local history, the japanese park isnice, so is the look-out point, and otherwise we recommend just strolling around. Accent on the park was the first place to be friendly and have beds, and we're quite happy.

And concerning that port that I mentioned, I've been looking for a ship to crew to go to Fiji in May. Trying out findacrew turned up a lot of lonely 40 and 50+ skippers looking for a queeze in the cabin of their nutshell boat, while I'm rather looking for a decent stable ship and an experienced captain who want sto swap sailing experience for good cooking and no further benefits.

Instead of looking for the needle in the virtual haystack I got lucky in real life and found the boat Alvei docked in the business side of the harbour. She's a schooner type, and her captains sails her as a non profit cooperative sailing school more or less. They're bound for Fiji beginning of April and need some more to crew the boat. I think I'm going to jump at that chance, and have already found a place to store my bike - the nice guys at Stewarts bike shops are saving the day once again. That means of course that the biking is postponed a bit, and I'll return to NZ sometime after Fiji in June or July. It'll be quite interesting to see what the weather is like then and if biking is even a remotely comfy option of transport.

Me and Madeleine will though first go for a little roadtrip, packing only the very basic - I feel rather intimidated by leaving both tent and sleeping bag behind, but there are hostels where we are gong and the plan is to hitch ride, which is a lot easier when you carry less. We've got a couple of days in Abel Tasman to kayak and tramp on daytours, then heading up to Collingwood and the Farewell sandspit, seeing where luck takes us , then head back to Nelson early next week. I'll board ship then and practice knots, setting sails, navigation and such on and Madeleine is going further down south to explore New Zealand.

Hotching with bikes

I've already had one bike break down - the derailer twisted itself into bits right after leaving Picton and I got it replaced and pedalled on. Betty the bike didn't seem quite happy though, and both me and a couple of English lads on bikes (Alan and Rob of the Possum Posse) fettled quite a lot around to fix her up to run smoothly. It didn't quite work out fully, and the blame was put on a slightly twisted derailer hanger in need of a change in Nelson.

I didn't make it any further than Pelorous Bridge, which is app. 15 km off Havelock. There I had a lunchbreak, went up the hill and heard a nasty crunching sound, which I recognized before I put my foot down as a broken derailer. This time it was the hanger snapping of, the gear wire breaking, and the rear tyre axle which holds Bob the trailer bending a bit. Not possible to go anyfurther anywhere. The ressourceful person runs up to the Kiwi experience bus full of kids with rasta hair, hangovers, purple harem pants and new SDI's and asks the driver if there are any free seats. There isn't. The driver's pretty cool, though, and checks if there are other buses passing by today. There isn't.

Pelorous Bridge has a nice little camp site, so there's no need to panick, apart from the fact that there's no phone reception, and I was supposed to call Madeleine when getting to Nelson. I can't even call to say I may be a day late.

The resourceful person then mills around the parking lot noting all the big cars that could fit a bike, asking if they are going to Nelson. No one is.

Then the ressourceful person stretches out a thumb, and several sympathetically stop to ask if they can help with a quick fix, they do have tools, but unfortunately not space for a bike and trailer.

I do another car park round and someone does have space, it turns out, and that's the NMIT having been on a field trip with the full Asian student body. I go in one car with bike, and the luggage goes in the other van, and all goes to Nelson, where the story ends happily at Stewarts bike shop, where everything damaged is straightened, replaced and fixed within a couple of hours. Betty the bike rolls smoothly on again, and I apparently wear out chain per thousand km.

Next stop Nelson

We're heading to Nelson tomorrow to see if we can get work as apple pickers. Considering the experience we already have from picking apples off wild growing trees, it shold be possible.
Otherwise there's the Abel Tasman national park to explore and grapes in Blemheim, that won't be ready for another couple of weeks though.
My panniers have not arrived yet, but I think I can make it to Nelson without strewing my belongings all over the highway. Neither has the mysterious package from the lovely boyfriend, but when it arrives I'm hitching back to pick up both packages.
I'm on bike, Madeleine gives hitching a try and then it'll be interesting to see who gets there first.

Pictures from Havelock

 

We try the picture theme once again

the possum hunting posse; Alan, Shane and Rob

getting ready to fly

flying!

the skipper. It's pretty far down

We calmed down after the excitement of flying (and crashing, all is well with the people involved, but not the glider) by playing cards, drinking beer, wine and cider to each own desire and sillygoosing around.

Geographic inspiration - places to go before I die

They have a huge stack of old national geographics at the hostel, some dating back to the fifties, but the bulk is from back when mama was a boy* and USSR and East Germany still existed. Ihave ofcourse poured over them, read about all sorts of animals from wolves over whales and head lice, natural phenomonons ranging from hot springs over desert dunes and perma frosts, as well as exotic people and places - the older ones with horrifying and horrifyingly amusing views on the wild africans/new guineans/native americans/Arab deserts/USSR collectivefarms/Patagonia etc.
It's still pretty inspiring, and aparting form wanting a subscription badly (pretty hard when you don't have a permanent adress) there's a million places I want to go. Then there's all the people going through here with some pretty fantastic stories to tell. They've given a few ideas as well.

• Bike around the Baltic Sea
• Bike & hike Eastern Europe
• Bike the UK; Dover to Dunnet/Easter Head (that's the northernmost point in Scotland according to Wikipedia)
• Kayak the Donau
• Go by motorbike (cause I'm not THAT sporty) from Patagonia and all the way up through Latin America
• Bike USA from coast to coast
• Get a work holiday visa to Canada because you can get that until you're 35, and be a lumberjack and travel by train
• Sail the Pacific
• Travel on the transsiberian railroad
• Africa - the places where you don't risk ending up in a war/civil war/pirate lair/gold mining conflict
• Bike the East Coast of Australia
• Ski from Kemi, Finland to Kirkenes, Norway with Papa Bear
• Learn dog sledding on Svalbard
• Greenland!
• Climb mountains in Central Asia
• To be expanded

How about you guys?


*Anglified Danish joke. Does it work in English?

Other things to do in Havelock

Sorry guy, I know the whole blogging thing came to a screeching halt here in Havelock and it's only me to blame. The internet has not agreed with picture upload, but it's not like I couldn't have written about what we have been doing and it's not like I've just been making beds and vacuuming kitchen floors.

so here goes the list of things to do in Havelock:

• go see the glow worms at night, bring a torch, up the street by the war memorial opposite of the hotel, find the track that's signposted 'track to water fall', head up there, continue, further, then you see a few glow worms, further still, and there's millions of them. About 20 minutes to walk and for free unlike so many other places.
• Check out the museums. The fish museum is five dollars and actually quite nice. The local history one is free and peculiar. It also features a lemon- and an orange tree in the garde, which may be of greater interest.
• Have fudge at the fudge place
• Drink beer in the bar of the hotel and play pool
• Go kayaking in the sounds
• Go hang gliding over Havelock (don't crash)
• Bike out to beaches to gather cockles, you dig them up from the sand at the tidal beach. They hide just a few centimeters down.
• Pool up your friends, load them into a truck,bring a power torch and a gun and go for a possum hunt in the hills
• Go deer/pig hunting by boat.
• Pick apples off road side trees
• Bike up all gravel roads you can find
• Hitch out to Pelorous Bridge to hike around
• Read loads of books and old National Geographic
• Do the Nydia or Queen Charlotte track (this is the only one I haven't done myself)
• Play cards and monopoly with other travellers
• Tell tall tales and have tea and apple crumble made from those self picked apples