Wednesday april 29^th 2009 (auckland, new zealand)

Alas (or not so much alas) we are still alive but have clearly not been doing a good job of haunting you all electronically. It would be a big job to try and convince you that we’ve been too busy over the past couple of months to post a decent update because alas again; I’m having a hard time believing it myself.

We have as usual been crushing in a lot of activity. Following our last post our boat projects were put on hold to help out our friends on Kauhale Kai full time. The 100 foot mega yacht was hauled out at the marina beside us and in the midst of a mountain of refit that made our work on Slapdash look like child’s play.  

Without any time off between, our good friends Jeff and Brenda arrived from Calgary and we happily began a whirlwind tour of the North and South Islands. We managed to see sights, penguins and other New Zealand wildlife on our way South to the Catlins before they had finally had enough of us and flew back.

Jaime and I managed to get back to Auckland just in time to pick up Micah, our third Slapdash crew. Micah and I grew up together, he even introduced Jaime and I. We are happy to have him here because a day after he arrived Slapdash was hauled out and we were living on dry land. Micah’s introduction to our life of easy leisure commenced with 10 days of really hard and dirty boat work. To say that it's been a bit less than a life on the high seas full of the sunsets and umbrella drinks since he's arrived would be an understatement. At this point he may be questioning the decision to quit his job and join us but since he'll be with us for several more months there's plenty of time left to make up for it. The boat-work was still unrelenting but much more bearable once we were floating happily in our slip back at Westhaven, and much more enjoyable with Micah around to lend a hand.

Jaime completed another trip around the Sun (I’m told that the ambiguity is necessary). An occasion that we gave suitable recognition to the very night before an enticing Kauhale Kai crew interrupted our flow once again. We seized upon a generous offer to join good friends once again and found ourselves helping them deliver the boat to New Caledonia. A short time later we learned first hand that big boats have the same kind of fun as us little guys when the oil pressure dropped on their port main engine (which is roughly the size of our collective slapdash living space) and began overheating. We returned to Opua in the Bay Of Islands for repairs and were underway once again in a couple of days. We arrived in New Caledonia with 36 hours to spare. It was just enough time for a few celebratory beers and a serious scrub and suds session for the boat before their guests arrived. We flew back to Auckland yesterday and commenced with our own repairs this morning which included a surprise estimate for 1800 NZ dollars to replace the heat exchanger on our beloved Westerbeke. We had the exchanger removed for cleaning and pressure testing just before we left for New Caledonia. Welcome back.

No rest for the weary. We need to sell the car, get our stuff out of storage, finish up our task list and get underway as soon as possible in an attempt to meet up with Jaime’s Dad and his girlfriend Pam in Fiji.

That pretty much covers the high points. It may be a poor excuse for detailed coverage of the past couple of months, but if pictures are indeed worth a thousand words then maybe these will get us back on equal terms. If not, just consider them proof of our existence.