I know the suspense is high in finding out exactly what we’re planning to do next, but to be honest, we weren’t quite certain therefore we decided to wait to tell all.

Are you ready for it?!?!?!?!

We bought a new boat!!!! Her name is Malihini and she’s a Shuttleworth 35 catamaran. Yep, you ready that right, we bought a CATAMARAN and its official as of the 9th of October, she’s all ours!!!

During the latest lockdown here in New Zealand, it became clear to us that our nomad desires to set sail to new oceans and new lands would be very difficult and different with COVID lurking about. Sure, there are some places we could go, but we would likely to get “stuck” there like we are here in New Zealand. When I say stuck, I’m not really complaining about being here at all, it’s more that we can’t go visit family and then come back. So long story short, after many years of not seeing family and friends and no signs of that being a possibility anytime soon, we decided we will go back to the States for a while! That lead us to looking for boats to buy there. S/V Malihini was there waiting for us to find her in Portland Oregon.

Christian boarded his flight on the 10th of October out of New Zealand to fly to LAX on the 10th of October (time travel) , to drive up California to pick a few items for Malihini up along the way, see his dad and friend Jonah. He stocked up at Costco (picture a kid in a candy store after being in New Zealand for 3 years. Actually, Christian hasn’t been back to the US in 4 years!) Today, he drove drove up to our new boat … our new home! She’s been floating in Oregon, at St. Helens Marina, along the Columbia River, which is closure to the ocean than Portland is. He will get her all prepped and set sail to arrive in San Francisco with the earliest weather window.

More pictures of Malihini!!!

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I can’t really describe the feelings we are having. It’s overall really exciting and we’re are looking forward to seeing our friends and family again. With the uncertainty of where New Zealand was heading (All things Covid related) it feels good to have made this choice. There will be many things about New Zealand that we will miss, to name a few: the Māori culture, the slower life, the clean and crisp air with its bright and vibrant colours, the accents, the not so crowded surf breaks, the bird songs, the happy cows grazing along with a billion sheep and many red deer. The list goes on, which is great, I’ll just have to finish my post about our time in New Zealand to show more about that. We made a few life long friends here too and parting with them (for now) has been hard, but it truly feels like we will return at some point to the lovely Aotearoa (New Zealand).

One step at time…. Or one ocean at a time. But first, Oregon to San Francisco!