Category Archives: cruisingkids

Life afloat in New Zealand: January 2019-July 2019:

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I’m not sure what happen to the blogging, or lack there of, while we spent life afloat in Aotearoa (New Zealand). Truth be told, I quickly lost touch with the romanticism of cruising life and lost motivation to write about what we were doing. I still, to this day, am not entirely sure what and how to write about our time in New Zealand. And the longer it gets the harder it is. It’s not that New Zealand lacks in amazing things to write about either, and we did do a lot of amazing things! So here I am, finally sitting down with some room to breath and ponder what to write about our time afloat in New Zealand from October 2018 to October 2021.

We arrived into New Zealand late October 2018 and Christian and Taj made their way down to Wellington (south end of the north island). See this part of the journey here in which I did actually write about.

I’ve somewhat already summarized 2019 in this post here, but I mostly just posted photos without explanations/captions. Now with a little more time to write, I’ll give you more words and many more photos.

January is summer time in New Zealand and school starts at the beginning of February. Nina was set to start “year 12 in College”at Aotea College, which is junior year of high school in American terms. The school was not but a 10 minute bike ride from Mana Marina. Ellamae started in “year 7” at Paremata School, which was 6th grade. Her school was even closer, a short walk away. And Taj was still homeschooled for a short time and enrolled at a local Playcentre, which is a child led play-based co-op type learning center. I had started work on January 14th, 2019 as nurse in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in Wellington City. (Please feel free to send me a message if you have questions about nursing in New Zealand.) Christian ended up connecting with a Mountain bike buddy who needed help at his shop @getfixedbicyclecafe with bike mechanics and e-bike conversions. Our lives quickly became back into “standard life” mode, but of course not really, because when do we Lauduccikins ever do “standard”?!

Coffee time at Christian’s work.
Taj’s school field trips (every Wednesday).
NZ is big on high visibility/safety. All the kids and adults had to wear them on the field trips.
Nina in swim team.
Ellamae in swim team.
Nina checking out her school before starting.
Nina’s first day of NZ college (highschool).
Ellamae leaving for her walk to her first day of NZ school.
Ellamae inn front of her class room with a new school buddy.
Remnants of the original Hospital.
At work “tea time” was a real big deal. There was a number of “plungers” (NZ’s word for a French press) and a huge container of ground Havana Coffee for the staff!
My first bike ride to work in Wellington went without a hitch.
Our boat neighbor welcomed us to the community by adding our family gnomes to the gnome garden at Mana Marina.
Josie’s happy place.
We quickly learned how to gather the local Pāua (Abalone) and Christian even speared a huge Kingfish (yellowtail) !

6.5 months (January- July) went by super quick. A half a year into school, work, and life in New Zealand! I accepted a permanent position at my job since we felt confident that Nina wanted to finish high school there and we were enjoying exploring New Zealand on our vacations (called holidays there) from work and school. One really cool thing about Kiwi working and living, they sure do value their vacations. Every 8-10 weeks, the schools take a 2 week “holiday” and then summer is about 6 weeks. My holiday pay accrued quite quickly, so I was able to take time off (at least part of the time) during those holidays and go on family adventures.

Camping, hot springs, and Mountain Biking near Rotorua our first Autumn Easter in NZ.
Camping at Blue Lake near Rotorua….
Some cold mornings here!
Hair dressing time by the campsite.
Taj making friends with the local ducks.
Easter came while camping.
Instead of chocolate bunnies for Easter we found chocolate Kiwis !
Nina
Ellamae
Taj
Camping resort in Tauranga.
We found shelter from the rain at Rainbow Lodge hostel in Taupō.
The girls in the community kitchen.
Hot Water Beach…yes it’s really a hot spring on the beach!
Flat Hills Cafe: a popular rest stop on the North Island.

Soon July would roll around, and it would be time for Ellamae to fly back to spend time with her Papa in Florida. New Zealand schooling was ok with her swapping back to homeschool since we were already registered as US homeschoolers and weren’t NZ residents.

It was our first winter there that we had bought a camper, named Sharkie. We realised that it cost us >$50 /night to sleep in a tent on the cold and wet ground. With a camper we could do what they call “freedom camping” there. With a self contained certification, there are loads of designated sites where you can just pull up in your vehicle and camp for the night. Most places are limited to a certain number of nights, some have very limited spaced, some are in a busy parking lot, and some are remote gems overlooking the surf break. They also have a motor caravan association called NZMCA , which gets you discounts on the ferries across the the North and South Islands, more options for private camping areas, and a few other cool perks as well. Sharkie took us on some amazing adventures and it started with taking Ellamae up to Auckland airport!

The rest of this post will just be more photos and captions. Enjoy!

New sites to take in and new birds to discover!

At my coworker’s for dinner with a view of the bay that our marina (Mana Marina) was in.
The Bach area around the corner from the marina along the Camborne Walkway
Great bird watching along the Pauatahanui inlet. This is a Spoonbill .
Kererū (Fat Pigeon).
The stairs up to Colonial Knob.
The view from Colonial Knob.
View towards our marina from the train station.

One week into being liveaboards at Mana Marina we were Bbq’ing and camping with our new fellow liveaboards.

Mana Marina liveaboard crew.
Eleanor, Sara Dawn Johnson, Tara .
Ellamae and Ava.
The waterfront dive platform in Wellington.
Larger than life wax sculptures at the Gallipoli exhibition.
On top of Mt. Victoria looking over Wellington.
Wellington is a bit low San Francisco. Many similar attributes.
One fancy Burger King.
Girls night out to see Rocketman.
The iconic statue along the waterfront of Wellington in which I rode by everyday to work.
Ellamae and her new friends.
We ended up spending many days here: Lyall Bay near the airport, for surfing fun.
There was always something to explore in Wellington: the waterfront diving platform, Te Papa Museum, Mt. Victoria, good coffeehouses, cool architecture, hip streets, and Lyall Bay Beach to name a few.
Swing bridges!
We camped at Kaitoke “Rivendale”! (Lord of the Rings)

We were so excited to have visitors from outside of New Zealand come and see us! Always fun to be a tour guide.

SV Bajka : A kid boat we met sailing crossing the Pacific.
Captain Ron from San Francisco area.
Josie’s neighbors growing up.
Steve and Carol!
Evangeline and Don from Bishop, CA also came to visit and we sure enjoyed playing tourist with them.
The Cable Car experience!
We love old Cemeteries.
From the Cable Car museum, the walk takes you down through the botanical gardens, the old cemetery and the Rose Garden.
Nina pretending to be dead over a grave.

Christian went up to Paihia to grab our new dinghy , the OCTender that we’ve been dreaming about since we started cruising!

Wellington Zoo!
Lots of amazing birds here in NZ!
Top of Colonial Knob.
Smurf corner… part of the MTB trail.
Taking photos of the local wildlife.
Whittakers Chocolate = YUM.
One of Taj’s favorite places was the Library.
Heading up Makara.
Makara Peak.
Mt. Tamalpais (our home port mountain) … a mere 10,850 km away!
Sometimes I would grab a coffee here on my way to work… #littleblackcoffeetruck and my little bro prom bike.
Local New Zealand grown avocados for a mere $4.50! (what the what?! )
The warning image of an extremely premature baby on the back of cigarette cartons.
“Hell Pizza” probably the only decent pizza we found in NZ.

Some more scenes around Mana Marina.

Taj hanging with the Marina Manager , Neil.
Many dreary days of n these parts.
But that also means many rainbows.
Homemade tortillas.
And more galley goodies.
FaceTime with friends afar.
Music class.
Skating to music class.
The local skatepark.
Local Māori art.

More photos of Taj’s school (Playcentre).

July 2019 came quickly and it was time to take Ellamae to Auckland Airport to fly back to the US to spend the next 6 months with her biological dad. We left at the beginning of the Winter break in our camper for the first real adventure in “Sharkie”. After Ellamae flew off, we continued north all the way up to see our friend’s Russell and Karin of OCtenders and then west and back down!

6 months to the date: bottom picture upon arrival to NZ in summer and top photo is winter.
Northwest Auckland area.
Arataki Visitors centre.
More beautiful rainbows.
Whangarei Falls.
Nina and Christian hopping on the pump track at Waitangi MTB park.
Russell and one of his daughter.
Third Wheel Coffee in Paihia, NZ .
Karin in her office at OCtenders headquarters.
Paihia art.
Waipoua Kāuri forest.
Turangi thermal pools.
Opononi

And that about sums it up for the first half of 2019 in Aotearoa (New Zealand). I’ll admit getting this ready to post took a lot more time than I expected, but I sure did enjoy rummaging through the photos that jogged many amazing memories. It’s a good way to journal and it feels more “real” than Instagram or Facebook, but I do wonder…. do people even read blogs anymore? Please leave a comment on your thoughts on the matter.

Looking from the marina towards the town of Porirua.
Shawnigan nested in her berth (they don’t call them “slips” in NZ) .

S/V Shawnigan is for Sale with a broker in Whangarei, New Zealand (Sold!!!!)

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Christian made it safely up to Marsden Cove Marina, where Shawnigan has been tidied up hauled out and placed in the hand of a broker to sell (link to come soon) to some lucky person/family.

The sail up the east coast was pretty much as to be expected around these parts of New Zealand, with gusts into the 50’s off of Castle point. 2-50 in 30 seconds kind of situation. The East Cape was slightly better, but not much. He thankfully had crew, Nick from Mana to Napier, and Jamie, from Napier to Whitianga (Coromandel). Of course… he did manage to surf both in Napier and in Whitanga. A very much deserved farewell gift for him. From Whitianga, he just had an over nighter to arrive with the right tide and current into the Whangarei heads.

After catching up on some much needed sleep, Christian spent almost the whole week straight cleaning up the boat, going for a sail to take drone photos, and sorting out a bit of last minute departure details for himself. He also managed to fit in a few social events with friends we know from up there.

Hi Deb!
Hi Deb and Phil from SV Costal Drifter

A special shout out to the crew (Nick and Jamie) for pulling through, swapping their lives around and helping Christian and Shawnigan get up the east coast of New Zealand safely.

As for myself and the kids, we’ve been doing a little local sightseeing during the school holidays and then they have one more week of school and I have 6 more shifts of work before we fly out to California to reunite with Christian.

A new year…will Shawnigan ever leave the harbor again?!?!

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We haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been SLOWLY working on our second half of Tonga post (which will be over a year past the time that we were there.) For some reason, once I’ve uploaded photos to a hard drive, I find I have a hard time fishing them out to add to our posts. That’s neither here nor there… what this short post is about is how we’ve been in New Zealand over a year now, and as of today, January 1st, 2020 S/V Shawnigan has officially not budged an inch while at her new home in Mana Marina.

“What?!”, you say, “Shawnigan has not been out sailing for a whole year! A family that has done so much sailing, has not taken their boat out for a year?!” Yes, it’s true. Although we are still happily living aboard S/V Shawnigan, we have not taken her as much as a few inches here and there adjusting the dock lines. As the year comes to and end and to a new  beginning, we hope to start taking her out more often, but who knows what this new year will bring.

When we left for “sailing the world”, we left with an open ended plan. Not really sure with what we’ll do, where we’ll go, where we’ll stay. As we made way towards New Zealand, thoughts of setting some shallow roots came to mind. Find jobs, put the kids in school, and see how it goes. Not long into our time here in the Wellington area, with my work as a nurse at the hospital and the kids’ involvement and enjoyment in the local schools, we decided to apply for residency.  That whole process is still pending and we still don’t know where it is heading, but as it goes when we’re sailing, we go where the wind takes us. Well, I guess that’s not completely spot on for this situation, is it.  Our time here and what we do next in this case is always being re-evaluated based on what we desire for the now and the future, financial status, and overall family happiness.  Right now, we’ve come to the conclusion of staying put, waiting for our New Zealand residency, having fun and being productive at work and school, meeting new friends and building stronger relationships with them, and exploring New Zealand via our newly (not so) purchased camper van and hopefully by boat one of these days.

Honestly, after so much sailing, Captain Christian has quite enjoyed the break from moving place to place all if the time. I get that. Also, its been quite nice not o worry about dragging anchor, running aground, hurricane seasons etc. Don’t get me wrong, we love sailing and we’ll get back out there, but for now we are going with the flow here in New Zealand.

This is not a “year in review” post as one might think this post would be. My apologies if you were hoping for that. Knowing myself, if I was to go down that road, I’d never get the post out, because I’d be looking for all of the “right” pictures to post and things to say.  For a glimpse of what we’ve been up to in New Zealand over the last year, its probably best to head over to our Instagram or Facebook page, where we are mostly up to date with pictures.

Here are a few pictures mostly in chronological order, just because..

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Happy New Year and we hope 2020 brings you many adventures!

~ @afamilyafloat