stevens40 | A Family Afloat

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”?!

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.

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.

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

The waterfront dive platform in Wellington.

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.

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

Some more scenes around Mana Marina.

Taj hanging with the Marina Manager , Neil.

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.

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) .

Yep you read that right, S/V Shawnigan , our lovely solid, world cruising ready, Sparkman and Stephens, Stevens 40 is up for sale! $140,000 NZD

Before I post all of her details I will reassure you that this DOESN’T mean we, Afamilyafloat , are done with sailing / boat life… we’re just switching things up and looking at a different boat. Exciting changes to come!

I know most people love video tours: so here’s a link to our “old” one (or see below). There are few improvements , additions and removals, since the video so we will list these below. Please feel free to message us here or call (NZ +64 2041790882) directly if you have any questions. Note : we are currently in New Zealand, so listing in NZD for the NZ and Australian market.

Vessel Name: “SHAWNIGAN” Model: 40’ STEVENS 40 center cockpit cutter Builder: STEVENS Yachts, Queen Long Yard, Taiwan, R.O.C. Designer: Sparkman & Stephens Year Built: 1982 LOA: 40’ 7” LWL: 31’ 4” Beam: 12’ 6” Draft: 6.75’ Displacement: 24,000 # Ballast: 8,000#, internal in fiberglass fin Power: VolvoPenta 40 Equipment: – Wheel steering, autopilot, Hydrovane with spare wind paddle- Complete set of sails including mainsail, harken roller furler with 120% and 150% , hank-on staysail – ICOM IC-M802 SSB and VHF radio, RAYTHEON RL70 radar, B & G depth sounder, GARMIN 176 GPS/plotter, Lawrence fish finder /depth sounder. Vesper Marine AIS receiver and transponder – Safety equipment: ground tackle electric windlass with 350′ hi-tensile G4 American made chain, 45# ROCNA . Standing rigging , turnbuckles and running rigging done in 2012 – custom hard dodger – 3x 150W solar panels, mounted on arch. Installed fridge/freezer in 2021 as a drop in model – Dickinson Diesel Heater . 2 Levac heads and a shower. Master bed in aft cabin. Two berths in v-berth with leecloths. Pull out settee with leecloth on starboard side of main cabin, and another leecloth for settee on port side. New awlgrip paint 2017.

This STEVENS 40 is a production fiberglass sailboat designed by the famed Sparkman & Stephens and built in Taiwan in the early eighties. Only 10 boats were built under this brand between 1982 and 1984 until the boatyard Queen Long Marine Shipbuilding became in 1984 the exclusive builder of the well-known HYLAS Yachts. The STEVENS 40 and 47 are very similar to the high end HYLAS on many levels: solidly built, sea-kindly hull designed for blue water cruising, center cockpit layout and high-quality teak interior.

Dodger with the sides rolled up, providing shade in hot sunny locations.

Dodger providing comfort in wet conditions.

Starboard side of main cabin looking aft.

looking toward port side and forward of main cabin

Double compression post bound with spectra (structural and cosmetic).

Main cabin view from Port looking aft and towards the chart table.

DCIM101GOPROGOPR2040. — right side of stove has been customized as a drop in fridge/freezer (see photo above of port side).

Galley: 2 ice boxes (we use for dry food, and pots and pans) and Force10 stove/oven) and a large double sink with fresh and saltwater pumps and new faucet for electric powered flow.