Sereia Rides Again!

Land's End

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 22:46:00 +0000

At the tippy-top of New Zealand is Cape Reinga: a dry, gritty, windswept place where people go to die. More accurately, it’s where those who have already died go to jump away, into the next world. It’s a place where journeys begin.

The place where New Zealand stops is a rocky, tempestuous point of land, with gusts of winds that can knock you over, where the oceans beat the shoreline with unrelenting fury. This is the meeting place of the Tasman and the Pacific. You can see the confluence where they join, a place of standing waves and treacherous whirlpools. You wouldn’t want to swim here. You wouldn’t want to sail anywhere near it.

But then again, this isn’t a place for the living. At the tip of Cape Reinga, there is an ancient Pohutukawa tree, a gnarled, twisted old specimen growing right out of the salt-washed rock. According to Maori tradition, it’s where their spirits go, when their bodies die. The Maori ghosts climb down the roots of the ancient tree, making atua peruperu, the snuffling sounds of the dead. From here, they begin their long journey toward Hawaiki, their ancient homeland. I talked to Emily, a local elder for the Ngatikuri iwi, and I asked her what Cape Reinga meant to her. “When Maori people pass away, that’s where we go,” she said simply. “And no one’s gonna tell us any different.”

The land doesn’t even look like New Zealand, up here. It’s dry and empty, with a broad pelagic wind off the Tasman. We pass brushfires, leaping through the sun-parched grass. We pass a forest of low, scorched trees. The light is hazy; the grit burns our throats. The dust creates a spirit-filled haze.

And the dead aren’t the only ones who come here. Each year, thousands of bar-tailed godwits use the fine white silica sand dunes around Cape Reinga as their launching pad. The birds take off in March, to begin a seven thousand-mile, trans-oceanic voyage to Alaska. No one knows how they navigate, or how they predict the weather: they seem to take off just as a low pressure system is building, propelling them thousands of miles toward their destination.

Many of the godwits complete the journey non-stop, flying for more than a week without food or rest. Why do they make it so hard on themselves? Why go direct, when the Pacific is full of fertile, tropical islands, where they could stop off for a few days, eat bugs, take a nap, drink a piña colada in the shade?

The answer, in short, is that no one knows. Scientists haven’t even monitored their altitude, and no one knows if they skim the waves or soar thousands of miles in the air. As we watched those tiny specks congregating on the sand dunes, we wondered if they were planning the journey ahead. Did they feel fear? Did they think about the sleepless nights, the storms, the surging, empty sea?

Every year, many of the birds don’t make it. But the ones that do: just think of the stories they have to tell.

Cape Reinga was a turning point for us as well. We drove our van until there was no more land to drive on, then we turned her around and headed south. For five months, we’ve travelled New Zealand by sea and by land. It’s time to stop. The signs are all around us: Silas, now running and saying words, increasingly anxious to meet new kids and make friends. My twitching, pregnant belly, and my aching backside in the van as our baby gets bigger and heavier. Our rapidly emptying bank account.

Even our ancient van, which has carried us across New Zealand though a fortuitous mix of dumb luck and Peter’s mechanical skill, started giving up the ghost. At Cape Reinga, it started screaming out loud, red-hot and unable to cool its engine. I was ready push the goddamned thing into the Pacific and let it find its own way to Hawaiki, but Peter fixed it with a party balloon, and drove us safely back to Whangarei.

And now: home again. We’ve rented a little house on a quiet street. We’ve collected our car out of storage, signed up Silas for nursery school, visited with our midwife. I’ll write a book about our travels, and hopefully I’ll make some people laugh. Peter is looking for work on the water. And in May, we’ll have a little baby girl.

As to Sereia, who brought us so far, and kept us so safe, she’s waiting for us in Lyttleton. Peter will deliver her to Whangarei, after we've delivered our daughter.

I don’t know why we did it. It wasn’t fun. It was a hell of a lot of hard work. And sometimes, we were afraid for our lives.

But we made it. And now, if I’m not mistaken, we have an excellent story to tell.

How To Make Your Wife Happy On Her Birthday

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:56:00 +0000

A Guide for Husbands

Husbands! Don’t be frightened of the impending spousal birthday (ISB). This need not be an occasion for stress or fear. Keeping your wife happy on her birthday is really very simple. The key here is to keep in mind the HOLY TRINITY, which is: make your wife feel PRECIOUS, TREASURED and BEAUTIFUL.

Even if that sounds dumb. Even if you already do it anyway. Even if it’s stupid and boring and you’d rather be watching TV.

The ISB does not need to be expensive, but as with most things, a quality outcome will depend on an equation of time and money. Because you are a man and think mathematically, we can express the successful ISB as follows:

Where:
t= time
c= cash
SSSB= Spectacularly Successful Spousal Birthday

And the Spectacularly Successful Spousal Birthday is rated from 1 to 10 (1 being a grotesque failure with inevitable tears at the end of the day and no blow jobs for a year, 10 being truly sensational and a sure-fire means of assuring regular, enthusiastic sex for a very long time to come),

t + c= 10 (SSSB)

Thus, if you haven’t got much time to spend planning the ISB because you’re already working your tail off at a very important job, then you can sure as hell afford to make restaurant reservations. And if you’re sitting around on your ass between jobs, then break out the goddamned thesaurus and write the woman a poem.

And remember, don’t sweat it! The SSSB can be LOTS OF FUN! In fact, it’s as easy as ONE, TWO, THREE!

1) NO DRUDGERY
For at least part of her special day, your wife should do no drudgery. This means: no dishes, no laundry, no shitty nappies. This can be accomplished in a few ways, depending on how much money you can afford to throw at it. You can:

a) Arrange to have a maid come to the house and do all the shit work, for either a whole or a half day, or

b) Do it yourself.

Note that “no drudgery” does NOT mean that the dishes should be allowed to pile up in the sink, the laundry should overflow onto the sidewalk, and your child should be permitted to eat his or her own feces. This will make your wife purse her lips and do everything herself, all the while insisting that IT’S FINE. It’s not fine. All regular chores should be done, and preferably the extra-unpleasant ones too, like scrubbing the toilet. That way, your wife won’t wake up the day after her birthday and feel as though she’s entered both middle age AND Hell.

2) A BEAUTIFUL MEAL
For one meal, on one day, once a year, your wife would like to be served. Preferably, this meal should be both delicious and beautiful. While not strictly necessary, these last two qualities will result in her looking back on her birthday with fondness, which will a) serve you well when your birthday rolls around, and b) get you laid. Again, you have some flexibility here. You can make reservations at a very nice restaurant, hire a babysitter, and take her out. Or, you can buy a roasted chicken and a bottle of wine and take her to a beautiful spot for a picnic. Keeping in mind the equation [ t + c= 10(SSSB)], the possibilities are endless.
Note that Red Lobster, Mickie D’s, and KFC, however, are NOT among your options.

3) A GIFT
Yes, you have to give her something. Even if it’s just a goddamned flower. And don’t get caught up in how your love transcends the world of material objects. Fuck that. It’s not about the objects. It’s about how the objects make her feel: TREASURED, PRECIOUS and BEAUTIFUL. You have a couple of potential scenarios here:

a) If she has told you in advance what she wants, and if it is reasonably within your means, get it for her. You are not required to have psychic powers here. If she really wants something, she will tell you straight out, in advance, something along the lines of: “I would love to have a day of beauty at a spa.” Such a remark is neither hypothetical or rhetorical. It is a request. Write it down and take care of it.

b) If she has not told you what she wants, this is NOT because she doesn’t want anything. Remember the Holy Trinity: All women want to feel TREASURED, PRECIOUS and BEAUTIFUL, and it is your job to source a gift that will achieve that. If you can’t think of anything, go to the classics: jewelry, flowers and poetry.

If you don’t know where to buy the jewelry or flowers, contact one of her female friends and ask for help. This woman will know your wife’s taste, and if you’re lucky she might even tell you what to buy. If your spouse no longer has any female friends because she spends all her time changing shitty nappies and doing dishes, then go to the most exclusive shop in town. Don’t be frightened. This doesn’t need to demolish your wallet. It is far, far better to present your wife with a single orchid from a truly elegant florist than assault her with an enormous bouquet of creepy pink carnations from the corner deli. Likewise, even a bum like you can afford a tiny pair of silver studs from Tiffany.

If you really, really can’t afford to purchase anything, then you’re just going to have to man up and make her a card. I don’t care if you feel like an arts-n-crafts asshole preschooler; bust out the blunt-nosed scissors and the magic markers and craft up. Poems are best, but if you lack inspiration or wit, you can always fall back on heartfelt sentiment. It doesn’t matter if it’s corny. She’ll cry anyway.

And that’s all there is to it. In spite of prevailing myths, women really are that simple. So fellas, this year, when your wife’s birthday approaches, I’d like you to clip out the following worksheet and TAPE IT TO SOMETHING YOU SEE EVERY DAY, like your ass. I personally guarantee results.

[The above rant has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that the author turned 35 today. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, is purely coincidental and certainly not passive aggressive nor exhibitionist. Peter is a wonderful husband and I love him very much. We will return to our regularly scheduled circumnavigation of New Zealand in the following blog post.]

Suicide City

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 23:56:00 +0000

They don’t like John Cleese in Palmerston North. And he doesn’t like them, either.

In 2005, Cleese visited the town while touring with his one-man show. And this is what he had to say:

"If you wish to kill yourself but lack the courage to, I think a visit to Palmerston North will do the trick. We had a thoroughly, bloody miserable time there and we were so happy to get out.”

This is the kind of celebrity commentary that tourism boards don’t print on brochures. Heather Tanguay, the town mayor, wondered out loud if Cleese needed more medication. And Paul O’ Brien, from the local chamber of commerce, tried to spin it into a slogan. “Palmerston North,” he proposed. “So Boring, You’ll Relax In a Minute!” Finally, the city came to a consensus. They just stuck a sign in front of the pile of rotting garbage at the city dump. “MT. CLEESE,” the sign reads. “ALT 45.2 M.”

Obviously, we were intrigued. What would the suicide capital of New Zealand look like? Would it be full of staggering zombies, inhaling solvents and looking hopelessly into a dead-end future? No, it couldn’t be. Because that’s Invercargill. Still, our curiosity was piqued.

By the time we got to Palmerston North, I was about ready to slit my wrists, but I think that had more to do with being tired and pregnant than any fault of the town’s. “Palmy,” as it’s locally known, seemed like a very nice place. There was sunshine, and colorful flowers in pleasant little planter boxes, and the locals displayed a healthy curiosity about life.

"How old is your two year-old?" asked the receptionist at the holiday park, and when Peter paused in confusion, she went on to offer him a map. "Sure," he replied. "I'd love a map."

"Would you like a shady one?" she asked, and then Peter backed slowly out of the office, before she could offer him a parakeet or start making airplane noises. Maybe she’s drunk, he thought, and a pitcher of martinis in the afternoon is her only way to cope.

But I needed hard data, so I rang up the guys who handle dead bodies. And that’s how I came to speak to Dr. Temple-Camp, a pathologist at the city hospital. Formerly of Zimbabwe and South Africa, Dr. Temple-Camp is delighted that Palmerston North is a boring place. He spent the first part of his life dodging carjackers, praying for the chance to be bored someday.

“I wanted to ask you about this comment John Cleese made,” I began, once I got him on the phone. “Is it true? Do you get a lot of suicides, here in Palmerston North? Are people really dying of boredom?”

The doctor reflected for a moment. “I wouldn’t say there’s anything unusual about the deaths or suicides in Palmerston North. If there’s anything unusual, it’s John Cleese. Have you seen any of his programmes? He’s rather an odd fellow.”

“So you can't tell if your bodies are overly bored?”

“No, but I can tell you they're overly nourished. They like their food here.”

“Any regional specialties in particular?” I asked, hoping for a restaurant recommendation. Death by Lamb Shank, for example, would be an excellent way to go.

“No, just good food. And lots of it.”

This was going nowhere. A sunny town, full of happy people, with flowers blooming on every corner, and now this: they die from deliciousness. Frustrated and annoyed, I changed the subject.

“Out of curiosity,” I asked, “what did people die of in Zimbabwe and South Africa?”

“Oh, that would have been a lot of gunshot wounds,” he said. “ We don't get many gunshot wounds here in Palmerston North.”

“Oh no?”

“You'd be pretty safe walking the streets here. You wouldn't really need a metal jacket.”

I thought about the flower-lined sidewalks, the pretty town square. Earlier that day, we’d seen a toddler, dressed in pink, splashing through a fountain. No carjackings in Palmerston North. Just good food, sunshine, and blossoms. I scowled into the telephone.

“I see. And just one more question. When people do commit suicide in Palmerston North, how do they do it?” Maybe now I’ll hear the real dirt. They overdose on chocolate, or impale themselves on butter knives.

“I’d say it’s fairly standard here. Pills, hanging, the occasional gunshot. Carbon monoxide.”

He paused, and then went on.

“The only strange thing about New Zealand suicides, I'd have to say, is up in Auckland. I attended a conference there, and apparently a lot of people are setting themselves on fire up there.”

“I’m sorry, what? People in Auckland are setting themselves on fire? Alive?”

“Yes. I don't know why they would do such a thing. Seems to me a terribly unpleasant way to do it. Perhaps John Cleese should have a look up there.”

Perhaps we should have another look up there. Auckland sounds like a fascinating place.

Happy Poo

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 01:01:00 +0000

We were having a perfectly nice day in the park when my ice cream shot up my nose. “Tell me that’s not a mural of dolphins playing under a rainbow.”

“Why yes, it is,” Peter confirmed. “And over there we have hippie in a knit cap playing guitar.” He paused for a moment, contemplating the music. “It’s remarkable how tone deaf this guy is. Just remarkable.”

But we listened, and we didn’t rip his throat out, or cook him and eat him. Which is more than I can say for some people.

Golden Bay is a very tolerant place now, much more so than it used to be when it was called Murderer’s Bay. You can take classes in yoga, permaculture and tarot cards. You can buy a wooden yurt for three hundred thousand dollars, or a didgeridoo for fifty bucks. You can sit under a tree all day and ruin old Eagles hits, and no one will bother you except a couple of sarcastic Americans who smell weird because they live in a van.

This wasn’t the case in 1642. When Abel Tasman dropped anchor here, he and his men made history: they were the first Europeans to glimpse the New Zealand coast. The thrill didn’t last for long. Almost immediately, they were met with boatloads of local Maori, who hailed them by sounding wooden trumpets. Tasman thought it only polite to answer back, so he had his men blow a greeting in return.

As it turned out, this was a very bad move.

You’re not actually supposed to respond to the wero, the traditional Maori challenge. If someone drops a leaf or a feather, you should pick it up, but otherwise you should act very meek and respectful and try not to piss anyone off. The whole purpose of the ceremony is to find out if you’re up to no good, and if you respond to a trumpet call with a fanfare of your own, you’ve just made a declaration of war.

Tasman, of course, knew nothing about this. Before anyone had a chance to react, the Maori warriors overwhelmed his crew, smashing them in the necks with their taiohae, beating their brains out, and generally unleashing a world of hurt on the unsuspecting Dutchmen. They killed four, dragging their bodies to shore where they were presumably roasted and eaten.

Tasman, needless to say, got the hell out of there. And no white man dared set foot in New Zealand for another 127 years.

Since then, things have gotten a great deal more accommodating around here. Modern New Zealanders have a reputation for tolerance, and when we visited the Nelson-Tasman area, we found this to be true. Take Motueka, for instance. It’s a town of seven thousand people, approximately 6,999 of whom believe Jesus Christ is coming back in their lifetime. And the other one is Michael Jackson’s gay hairdresser.

Tommy’s an extremely handsome, friendly guy who happens to own a very good restaurant in town. And he spent seventeen glamorous years traveling the world with the King of Pop, retiring at 35 so he could slow down and enjoy life with his lover. In the late nineties, when his boyfriend emigrated to New Zealand, Tommy came along as the “domestic partner.” Yup, that’s right. More than a decade ago, New Zealand granted gay partners the same rights as married straight people. If anyone had tried to pass a law like that in the States, they’d probably have been roasted and eaten.

The Nelson-Tasman area is home to all sorts of folk—artists and hippies, evangelical Christians and gay hairdressers. There’s even some Dutch living there now, though they tend to be a little jumpy. Then there’s Megan Hansen-Knarhoi. She crochets shit on a blanket.

Megan is an Auckland artist who now lives in Nelson, and her medium is wool. She makes boobs from wool, Jesus from wool, and she’s even knitted a little brown turd, nestled on a blanket. She calls it Happy Poo.

New Zealand is a place where people take their knitting seriously. The country is teeming with grandmas who knit, shooting out pastel baby booties, cardigans and throw blankets at a furious pace. So when Megan makes a throw pillow in the shape of an erect penis and calls it Hampton Wick (Cockney rhyming slang for “Prick”), she is offending on a number of levels.

Surely she must get hate mail? I asked her. Surely people must tell her she’s a sicko?

“Oh, you don't do that,” she corrected me. “You say, oh that's nice. I like the colours.”

She looked a little dejected. “Feedback is so rare. Maybe I should be more proactive and ask people what they think. But then, a lot of people are scared to express what they think.”

Disappointing for an artist, but perhaps less confrontation is a good thing. Just ask Abel Tasman.

Pounamu

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:42:00 +0000

When Europeans landed on the West Coast in 1846, they encountered unbelievably hostile terrain. The northwest edge of the South Island was made of dense jungle bush, stinking swamps, and torrential rivers. The coast was lashed with rain, bashed by the storms that came hurtling off the Tasman, and—as if that weren’t bad enough—the whole place was infested with biting flies. They also found a bunch of skinny Maori, who were hanging on by their fingernails for one reason only: greenstone. They traded for it, they fought over it, and when negotiations failed, they killed for it. And they used the greenstone to do the killing.

Pounamu, as the Maori call it, is known to geologists as nephrite, the native New Zealand jade. It is beautiful, it is hard, and it can be carved to a razor edge.

In the Hokitika Historical Museum, I overheard a conversation between two bird-like old ladies. They were admiring some greenstone mere, on display in a glass case.

“These really are lovely, aren’t they?” the first one murmured, and her friend made a little twittering noise in agreement. The designs at the base of the mere were intricate and skillful, with interlocking curves carved in a low relief.

Then they started reading the caption. “Oh,” they said. “Oh my. Oh. Oh. Oh my word.”

This had to be good. I leaned over their shoulders to see what they were reading:

THE OLD MAORI USED THE MERE FOR STRIKING AND THRUSTING. A FAVOURITE USE WAS TO DRIVE THE SHARP EDGE OF THE BLADE INTO THE THIN PART OF THE SKULL. THE EXPERTS WERE ABLE TO WRENCH THE SKULL OPEN BY A TURN OF THE WRIST AFTER THIS THRUST.

Essentially, the mere is a can opener for your brains. This comes as a surprise to most Europeans, but unlike these sweet old ladies, the first pakeha settlers didn’t learn about greenstone mere in a museum. They found out the other way.

But greenstone can be put to all sorts of peaceful uses as well. Like jewelry, for example. Many Maori still wear pendants made of greenstone, but mostly their culture is appropriated by white people on holiday. I decided to join in this happy tradition when we came across a studio in Hokitika that lets you carve your own greenstone.

“I need to make a necklace,” I announced to Peter. “It’s for our new baby girl. She’s going to be the first New Zealander in the family, and she needs to start her jewelry collection.”

Peter, who is accustomed to this kind of self-serving logic, agreed. So he got to spend the whole day babysitting, while I got to take the day off to play in an art studio. This may seem like a hard bargain, but as I keep reminding him, I am a sacred vessel. I need special attention. And jewels.

Also, a little talent in stone carving wouldn’t hurt. Carving pounamu is a lot harder than it looks. The first Maori, who had no metal tools, worked the stone with a combination of sand, water, and the kind of mind-bending patience that we’ve lost since the invention of channel surfing. I had a whole roomful of power tools, and a teacher to supervise me, and I still came up with a greenstone turd.

Possibly, my design was too complicated. After looking through the binder of traditional motifs (fern fronds, fish hooks, marijuana leaves), I settled on the manaia, which seemed a good choice for a baby. Said to protect against evil, the manaia usually depicts a being with the head of a bird, the body of a man, and the tail of a fish. This is not as disgusting as it sounds. They’re actually quite beautiful.

First, I worked out my design. Note the bulbous bulges. I was trying to make the figure look female, since we’re having a girl:

Next, I chose which part of the stone to carve. You have to look at it with a backlight, so you can check for faults:

Then came seven hours of grinding and polishing. This got a little boring. It would have been more fun with cable TV and a remote. Also, possibly an iPod. And a sandwich.

Finally, at the end of the day, the finished product! The… Cancerous Aardvark!

Those bulges were supposed to be a breast and a belly, rather than malignant tumors. But as the Maori discovered long ago, greenstone is hard.

Besides, an aardvark makes a good guardian, too. Those claws'll tear you right up. Just like a can opener.

Exposure Therapy

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 03:34:00 +0000

People who suffer from irrational phobias cope with a host of unpleasant symptoms, such as heart palpitations, shortness of breath, and the fear that they’re going insane.

A few days ago, we drove into Invercargill. It was the first time we’d visited since escaping six months ago. And as soon as we got there, I started to choke.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” asked Peter, steering our ancient van through familiar streets. “You sound like you’re coughing up a hairball.”

“I’m dying,” I told him. My left hand started picking chunks of flesh from my forearm. It felt strangely relaxing.

“Stop that,” Peter swatted my hand away. “You’re acting crazy. Let’s go get a burger.”

“Not crazy,” I corrected him. “Phobic. I have Inverphobia. It’s an irrational fear of the Asshole of the World.”

“Whatever.” He rolled his eyes, parking our van in front of the world’s most southerly Burger King. “We’re here now, so you’re getting exposure therapy. Let’s try to find something to like about Invercargill, instead of just bitching about what a depressing place it is.”

Peter’s so great. He knows exactly how to pull me out of a funk. And he was right. While visiting Invercargill, our mission was clear: we’d find things to like about the Asshole of the World.

First up: the media. The main Invercargill newspaper is called The Southland Times, and that day’s copy just happened to be lying on the counter while we ordered our lunch. As luck would have it, the headline was a heartwarming animal rescue story. SOLVENT POURED ON DOG, the cover read, with a big color picture of the dog. The dog was bald, his skin bright pink. This made him especially cute and soft-looking.

Next, we visited the Southland Museum. Now, the great thing about the Southland Museum is that a dinosaur lives there. It’s true. His name is Henry.

Henry looks sort of like a dried-up iguana, but he’s actually a tuatara, which is a kind of Mesozoic sphenodon that flourished about 200 million years ago. Henry’s not quite that old, but he was born at the end of the nineteenth century, which means he’s seen pretty much all of New Zealand’s European settlement. If he wasn’t around for the Treaty of Waitangi, he hatched soon after, and he’s borne witness to the end of the Land Wars, World Wars I and II, the great flu epidemic of 1918, and the world’s first votes for women. Now, he lives in a glass box in Invercargill. He spends a lot of time biting the other tuatara. Nobody's sure why.

There’s also some great art at the Southland Museum, such as this lampshade made out of a varnished blowfish:

Many people choose to mock the bedraggled citizens of New Zealand’s most southerly city, but that seems cruel. Instead, we chose to count them, like endangered birds. In a rigorously scientific enquiry, we defined three basic population groups for study. They are:

THE TEENAGE MUM (TM): This group is easy to spot. They are pushing baby carriages, and they’re too young to drink in the United States.

THE CRAZY SOUTHLAND MAN (CSM): Somewhat more elusive than the Teenage Mum, the Crazy Southland Man displays at a minimum three of the following characteristics:

• wild grey hair
• darting eyes
• sunken cheeks
• autolalia (talking to self)
• open container (likely containing solvents to pour on dog)
• gum boots

THE AIMLESS RUFFIAN (AR): The Aimless Ruffian is defined by the following: he or she would be quite happy to spend a happy afternoon inhaling solvents. In fact, he would consider it time well-spent.

During the course of a 48-hour observation period, Peter and I observed the following:

TEENAGE MUMS (TM)............................10
CRAZY SOUTHLAND MEN (CSM)......... 6
AIMLESS RUFFIANS (AR)...................... 65

There are a great number of important conclusions to be derived from this data, such as the likely fact that each Crazy Southland Man has mated with an average of 1.6 teenagers, impregnating each an average of 6.5 times, thereby producing a small army of Aimless Ruffians. Where, one might ask, do they get all the solvents? How much of it do they inhale, and how much do they pour on dogs? These questions go beyond the parameters of our initial study, but I’m considering applying for a grant.

Then, there’s the wild mushrooms. Sure, the Italians talk big about their truffles, and in the American Northwest folks pick chanterelles right off the forest floor. But how many of those so-called connoisseurs can harvest mushrooms from their living room carpet? My friend Melissa can. Last winter, she couldn’t afford enough coal to heat her home, so she only warmed the place up a couple of times a week. Her house was so poorly insulated, and the air was so cold and damp, that she grew a healthy crop of mushrooms right in the living room floor. Imagine that. Wild mushroom risotto, without even leaving the frigid damp of your own house. That’s the kind of life Invercargill can offer.

And without a doubt, the highlight of our trip was our visit to Alliance Freezing Works, a sort of Wal-Mart mega mall of sheep death. This is the local slaughterhouse, where they process four million sheep in a nine-month season. By “process,” I mean electrocute, kill, eviscerate, dismember, and shrink-wrap to feed the world.

This was an amazing experience, and not just because Peter had to wear a sexy beard net. We got to follow the whole operation, dodging sheep carcasses and doing our best not to slip in the gore. And here, at the heart of the slaughterhouse, I saw the philosophical core of Invercargill, the man who made our trip complete.

"This guy here's cutting the asshole off,” our tour guide told us, indicating an elderly man on the line. He was wielding a razor-sharp knife, and as each sheep carcass came past, he lopped off the asshole with a flick of his wrist. That’s 16,000 assholes in a 12-hour shift. This man sliced out the assholes of sheep, lodged deep in the Asshole of the World. Four million assholes, all in a nine-month season.

I caught the guy’s eye, and he gave me a wink. And that’s the best part about Invercargill. If you can have a laugh here, you’re doing all right.

Convergence

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 22:50:00 +0000

Peter and I recently attended the Convergence Festival, where we hoped to cavort with naked hippies and obtain enlightenment. Unfortunately, the only naked hippy there was me.

This happened accidentally, when the door to the composting toilet I was using unexpectedly swung open. Before I knew it, I was displaying my nakedness in all its pregnant glory, complete with fat pants around my ankles and a fistful of composting sawdust in my sweaty palm. When I finally slammed the door shut, I found someone had scrawled the words ALL THAT IS IS NOW on the wall, which means that I will be a fat pregnant lady with a handful of wood shavings in a porta-potty, again and again, forever. Which is one kind of enlightenment. I guess.

I like to think of hippies as nature-loving free spirits, but these hippies had a lot of rules. The Convergence Festival is GE-free, alcohol and drug free, dog-free, and meat-free. It is also, apparently, ejaculation-free. I learned this when I attended the Introduction to Tantra Workshop, at which the teacher informed us that he had not ejaculated for months, because the loss of his divine sex energy would drain his body of vital life energy. After he said this, there was a long pause in the sharing circle.

“Is that all ejaculations, or just the ones from intercourse?” asked one participant.

“All of them,” the teacher replied. “Including intimacy with yourself, and er… nocturnal emissions.”

More silence.

“Is that healthy?” asked one woman. “I mean, not just on an energetic level, but like, for your body?”

Apparently, it is very healthy, and keeps our teacher in a constant state of ecstatic bliss. This might explain why later on, when I was peeling back the layers of his psychic mask to reveal his true and God-like form, he contorted his face into a grimace of sexual climax. I felt a little icky, as though I’d caught a stranger having a wank outside my window, but the Convergence Festival is judgment-free, so I didn’t say anything.

It is not, however, spelling mistake-free. I noticed this when I was sneaking back to our van for a snack of illegal ham. The festival is decorated with a number of multi-colored and uplifting banners, saying very nice words like BLISS and DIVINE and EXTASY. Perhaps the seamstress was thinking about exhuming her execrable ex-husband to smear his body with excrement, and she just got carried away. But somebody should really tell her that ecstasy starts with “ec.” Like eco-friendly. And eczema.

Speaking of eco-friendly, we’re not. Silas is a Huggies man, which is our diaper brand of choice, despite the unpleasant fact that they take 500 years to biodegrade in a landfill. We flirted briefly with the idea of Elimination Communication, before deciding that we do enough laundry without letting our baby pee all over the floor. Besides, Silas is entitled. He’s going to save the planet.

As it turns out, Silas is a Crystal Child. The Auckland pediatrician may have diagnosed him as globally delayed and autistic, but that’s because he is a limited man who is stuck in third-dimensional consciousness. As a Crystal Child, Silas was born on the Sixth Dimension of Consciousness, with the potential to open up rapidly to the Ninth Dimensional level of Full Christ Consciousness, and then from there to the Thirteenth Dimension which represents Universal Consciousness.

Allow me to back up a little. We first learned of Silas’ gifts when he started a staring contest with one of the participants at the Convergence Festival. The man pushed back his dreadlocks and gave Peter a serious look. “Have you ever heard of the Crystal Children?” he asked. “I’m no expert, but I think you should look into it. That child is special.”

We knew that Silas was special, of course, in the sense of special homes, where people learn to live independently, eat special food, and pet the special kitty-cat. But when we left the festival, I raced to the Internet to learn more about the Crystal Children. And now, everything is clear.

Apparently, Crystal Children began appearing on the planet in the year 2000. As Celia Fenn says on her website, they are “extremely powerful children, whose main purpose is to take us to the next level in our evolution, and reveal to us our inner power and divinity.”

But wait, there’s more. “The first thing most people notice about Crystal Children is their eyes, large, penetrating, and wise beyond their years. Their eyes lock on and hypnotize you, while you realize your soul is being laid bare for the child to see.” This is what so confused the Auckland pediatrician. “His gaze is very intense, but it’s not a social gaze,” the doctor told us. “He doesn’t really smile at me.”

Clearly, this is because the doctor’s soul was being laid bare, and Silas didn’t like the guy’s limited, third-dimensional aura. In fact, Fenn explains, “It's no coincidence that as the number of Crystals are born, the number of diagnoses for autism is at a record high.” This is because the Crystals often wait until they are three or four years old to begin talking. And why do they wait, you may ask? Are they autistic? Dispraxic? Globally delayed? Dumb?

No. They’re telepathic. In the future, Fenn writes, “We won't rely so much upon the spoken or written word. Communication will be faster, more direct, and more honest, because it will be mind to mind.” And that’s why Silas doesn’t talk yet. He is far too evolved to rely on verbal communication. He is communicating, just on the sixth dimension. So if you can’t understand him, that’s your problem. You’re just not spiritually evolved.

Another way you can spot a Crystal Child is that they are fascinated with rocks. Now, Silas has always loved rocks, to the point where he used to sit in the parking lot, popping rocks into his mouth like gumdrops. I used to worry that the engine oil and other toxins on the gravel might have given him some kind of brain damage, but now I know: it’s just his sixth-dimensional Crystal energy manifesting.

As a Crystal Child, Silas represents the next step in our evolution as a human species. As Fenn writes, the Crystal Children “are the pointers for where humanity is headed... and it’s a good direction!” Silas, and other special children like him, “aren’t autistic. They’re AWE-tistic!”

On the other hand, as I recently learned in the porta-potty, ALL THAT IS IS NOW. So the possibility remains that my son might never speak, but just eat rocks, forever and ever, into infinity.

And as a Crystal Child, he’s pointing the way to where humanity is headed. So take heart. When you’re ready, you’ll be eating rocks too.

Knockdown

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 20:21:00 +0000

Peter looked to starboard, and he saw a wall of white. Is that a wave? It couldn’t be a wave.

He looked again, squinting into the darkness. He’d been at the helm for hours now, the wind and seas steadily growing as we sailed south through Cook Strait. At the start of the gale, he could see the rollers charging toward Sereia’s starboard quarter, and he cracked off to port, keeping his stern to the swells. But now everything was black. He could still hear the waves, rushing waterfalls hissing up behind him, until the gusts came. Then all he could hear was the wind.

Something white was rushing at Sereia in the darkness. He couldn’t judge how large it was, or how fast it was approaching. There was no reference in the blackness. Is that a wall of water? It can’t be water. It’s too big.

***

I’d started throwing up that morning. It wasn’t much—I was eating lightly, drinking lots of water to keep the nausea at bay. When the vomiting started, it was my watch, so I tried to be quick. I held my hair out of the way, retched, wiped my mouth, then turned back to the helm so we didn’t fall off course.

Toward the end of my watch, I started throwing up water. And then I got a little worried.

Once you can’t hold down water, you fall into a downward spiral. When your stomach is empty, you dry heave—your body racked with exhausting, unproductive spasms. As time passes, you get weaker and more dehydrated, which makes you sicker. It’s a very difficult cycle to reverse. The only thing that’s worked for me is taking tiny sips of water, or sucking on ice chips.

Later, I sat on deck, watching the horizon as I sipped from my sports bottle. We could still see the coast of the North Island—we weren’t yet into Cook Strait—but the wind was already picking up. The water was grey and choppy, topped with whitecaps. Occasionally, waves rushed up the lee side, and I jerked out of the way, not wanting to get too wet, too soon. Wet foulies are a misery. I retched, emptying my stomach again, then sat down heavily. A much larger wave raced up the port side, bigger and faster than the others, lifting me up and floating me. I dug my fingers into the netting, adrenaline momentarily drowning the seasickness.

“Well, okay,” I said, dryly. I glanced at Peter. I wanted to see if he was alarmed. He smiled thinly. We both knew that this was the beginning.

I stayed on deck for awhile after that, knowing that the wind and spray were keeping the sickness from overwhelming me. But I was soaking wet from the waist down, and the wind was getting stronger. My teeth started to chatter.

“I’m shaking,” I told Peter. “I’m just going to go down below to warm up.”

He looked at me, and that was the first time I saw fear. I didn’t come back on deck for two days.

***

Peter was at the helm for the knockdown.

When the gust hit, it ripped his mouth open. His cheeks pulled away from his teeth, his face blasted by salt spray. He stumbled backwards, still gripping the wheel. That’s the strongest wind I’ve ever felt, he realized. Then: we’re completely overpowered.

The gust knocked Sereia on her side. She struggled to right herself, pinned by her sails. Our double-reefed main is tiny. There’s practically no canvas up, and it’s still too much. The third reef is our storm trysail. I was saving that for hurricane-force winds.

She was still heeled hard over when Peter heard the breaking wave. He couldn’t see it in the darkness, but the sound told him it was bigger and faster than the others. He could hear it hissing as it curled, breaking behind Sereia. There was no way to dodge it. He turned the wheel slightly to port, and held on.

The wave crashed over his shoulder like a blast from a fire hose. He felt Sereia skid sideways across the white water. She leaned hard over, pausing as the lee side filled with ocean and her bulwarks dug in. Then she fell, the main boom skidding across the swells. And her sail went into the water.

The cabin top was submerged. White water tore back toward the helm on both sides, filling the cockpit like a bathtub. Peter felt his legs floating, the ocean up to his chest. He was swimming in the cockpit. We’re like Silas’ bathtub toy, he thought, like that little plastic tug boat that fills up with water, right before it sinks to the bottom of the bath. Silas loves to sink that boat.

He thought: There goes the engine. It’s never going to start now.

He thought: I wonder if we’ll come back up? If we take another wave now, that’s it.
There was a sucking sensation as the water churned out the gunnels. Gravity returned, and he scrambled for a foothold. Sereia stepped up, out of the sea. And she started to move again.

***

It was the stench of piss that made me think of steerage. At about twilight, the waves got so rough that I was tossed out of the quarterberth onto the floor, and I remembered Peter had told me that the steadiest place on the boat was low down, amidships. Clutching my green plastic bucket, I crawled forward, laying my head on the floorboards.

The cabin sole was cold and gritty, which felt nice against my skin. My head was near the through hull for the head, the stench of ammonia cutting through the sickness. My thoughts wandered to those poor European immigrants, thousands of them, who’d crossed the Atlantic to New York in steerage class. They must have been lying on the floor like this, too wretched to move, the smell of piss in the air, vomit in their clothes.

Silas was crying. I could hear that he was crying, but I couldn’t move. My face flushed, I lifted my head to puke again, just clear stomach juices now, nothing left to throw up. Over and over, I convulsed, then lay my head down, the sickness paused. Now, I felt the cold. My face was bathed in sweat; my body shaking.

Silas was screaming. Somehow, through the sickness, I heard my own voice. Get your ass up off the floor and go help that baby. You’re his mother.

I staggered to my feet, steadying myself on the galley sink as I heard Silas retch, then scream. He retched again. I got there, too late. He was red, frightened, sick. There was vomit down his front, across the blankets. “It’s OK,” I told him. “Mama here.”

I pulled his shirt off, tossing it to the cabin sole, clearing away the soiled blankets, grabbing at a towel to mop the mattress. Silas kept screaming. He retched again, spraying his undershirt, his new storybooks, the towel. “That’s good,” I soothed. “Good boy. You got it all up. Mama here.”

I took off his undershirt, leaving him in his shorts. He lay back, exhausted, his eyes dull. I curled him into me, then sat up, spitting bile into our last dry towel.

The cabin was dark. Dimly, I was aware that it was night, that we were sailing through a storm. Waves smashed on our heads like bomb blasts in the dark. Below decks, the sound was magnified. The cabin was the inside of a fiberglass drum, each wave a tooth-jarring crash that made me think of Sereia’s structural integrity. I thought about steel against steel, an inch of fiberglass pressed against the seething ocean.

Silas and I rolled back and forth in the seas, the stinking mattress scattered with toys and storybooks. I’ve got to get this baby into the lee side, I thought. I’ve got to get him pressed up against me where I can protect him with my body.

I sat up, my head swimming. I started sweeping toys to the bottom of the bed with one hand, grasping Silas with the other and using my legs to brace against the bulkhead. I fell into the port side, reaching down to pick one plastic teacup from the small of my back. I grabbed my baby and snuggled him into my core, wrapping my arms and knees around him. He did not protest. He burrowed into me like a frightened animal.

When it came, the crash was violent and loud. I heard steel screaming in the darkness. I felt us go over, pitch gently sideways. Water sprayed into the cabin, spattering our faces. My mind hurtled through the possibilities. Knocked down. Dismasted. No, I don’t hear any broken rigging, if the rigging was shredded I’d hear something terrible. Knocked down, I think. And then: Jesus Christ is Peter still on BOARD? What if the harness snapped? What if he’s not there?
Above our heads, through the moaning wind, I heard my husband’s voice: “I’M OKAY! WE’RE OKAY!”

He was on board. And I blessed him.

I held Silas close in the dark, my body shaking against his little head.

***

Someone else was on board that night as well. Marina Nijs was our crew, a Belgian go-go dancer who’d never sailed a day in her life. She’d hitchhiked three days to meet us in Gisborne, and she was waiting for us on the dock when we arrived. We were impressed, so we hired her.

Marina is from a small town in the center of Belgium. Before joining Sereia, she’d been to the beach a few times, but she doesn’t like to swim unless she can see the bottom, because she’s “a bit wary about the animals.” She’s never surfed. She’s never been pushed down by the ocean. The closest she’s come to big waves is watching old surfing movies on DVD.

I asked her, later, if she’d ever been in a storm.

“Yes,” she said, “I’ve seen thunderstorms, in Belgium.”

“Have you ever been outside in one?”

“Oh, yes!” she nodded. “I love to watch them. Sometimes I open the window or the door, and I watch from the doorway.”

Throughout the storm, Marina conducted herself like a hero. And later, she said it herself: that was because she didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on.

***

Peter did the math in his head. It looked as though Sereia wasn’t going to sink. She was moving again, still on course for Lyttleton. The winds and the seas were huge, but the cockpit was dry, and he could stand again. How long is this going to last? He tried to remember the forecast. The winds weren’t supposed to lie down until the next afternoon, which meant he’d have to helm alone, through the storm, for another twelve hours at least. After the knockdown, there was no way he’d see any of his crew again. They’d be crouching down below, probably terrified. He hoped no one was injured.

The companionway hatch slid back, and Marina popped her head on deck.

Peter blinked. He couldn’t believe his eyes. “You’re brave,” was all he could say.

Marina looked confused. “What do you mean? It’s my watch, right? Ahh,” she conceded. “Yes. It’s very bad down below. Pots and pans go wizzing above my head!”

Yup. That’d be the knockdown, thought Peter. He assumed she knew what had happened.

“Oh, I almost forgot to tell you!” Marina went on. “There is water in the boat!”

Peter swallowed. This was the nightmare. The leak that a captain can’t find, the water that keeps rising until he can’t bail fast enough. “I think you’d better take the helm, if you can,” he shouted over the wind. “I have to check that out.”

***

Sereia has four bilge pumps on board, and that night, one by one, they started to fail. When he got down below, Peter looked first into the head, where Marina had seen the water. There was ocean sloshing around, three inches above the floorboards.

It hadn’t spilled into the main cabin yet, but Peter knows Sereia’s shape like that of his own body. If it’s above the floorboards in the head, that means the bilges are full. Sereia’s bilges are maybe three feet deep. How much water was that? Seventy-five gallons? A hundred? At eight pounds a gallon, that meant nearly a thousand pounds of dead weight, sloshing around in the boat.

He opened the floorboards. Peter, you cheap bastard. The primary bilge pump, the one that’s supposed to go off automatically, was broken. He’d known that before we left Napier, but the repair kit he’d found had been so wildly overpriced that he’d refused to buy it. I’ve got three other bilge pumps, he’d reasoned. That’s plenty.

Only, they weren’t enough. Now, he could see why. When he lifted up the floorboards, Peter saw black ocean, glinting in the light of his head lamp. Water had risen all the way up to the engine. The bilges were completely full. And the secondary bilge pump was only working intermittently, because some genius had installed it so that it only sucked water when the bilges were just about to overflow. With each wave, water flowed over the pump, and it sucked once or twice. Then, the water sloshed back the other way, and the pump just sat there, silent and useless.

On to the third bilge pump. This one was mounted on deck, and Peter would have to open up a panel in the cockpit to get to it. He grabbed a screwdriver and crashed on deck. Marina was still at the helm, a dim shape in the darkness. He couldn’t think about her now. He had to get the water out of the boat.

The problem with this pump was that it was potentially dangerous. When he opened up the panel to access it, Peter would be creating an six-inch hole in the deck. If we took another wave while that hole was open, or if we got knocked down again, the boat would take on more water. Maybe this time, it would be too much.

But he didn’t have a choice. At least, it’s on the windward side. We’ll be okay. He jammed his screwdriver in the fittings, twisting the panel open. He’d completely rebuilt this bilge pump just a couple of weeks ago. He knew it worked perfectly. He knew exactly where the handle was stored. He reached into the hole and fitted it into the slot.

One arm wedged in the bimini frame, braced against the crashing seas, Peter started to pump. Instead of water, he heard the unmistakable sound of sucking air. “This is bullshit,” he muttered. "I JUST rebuilt this fucking thing. I KNOW it works."

But it didn’t. He’d have to go to his fourth bilge pump, now. And if that one didn’t work, it would be buckets. He didn’t want to think about that.

Quickly, before another wave could come, he closed the circular panel. He unhooked his life harness and crawled to the leeward side, snapping in again on the port side jackline. This bilge pump, the last one, was stored in the port lazarette. When he opened the locker, there would be a four foot-square hole in the deck, just inches from the sea. Before the passage, he’d moved the pump to the top of the locker. He knew exactly where it was. But if we got knocked down while that lazarette was open, we would take on a catastrophic amount of water. It could sink the boat.

Working fast, he unlatched the locker and snapped open the lazarette. Reaching down into the hold, he put his hands on the bilge pump, hoisting it up and jamming it down into the cockpit well. He slammed the locker shut and turned his head to starboard, just as a breaking wave came over the windward side.

“Damnit, Marina, we’re trying to keep water OUT of the boat!” he hollered.

“I’m sorry! Talk to the water gods!” She grinned at him, her hood plastered against her face in the driving wind. Later, she told me how glad she was that Peter was still telling jokes.

***

When boats are lost at sea, it’s usually not because one thing went wrong. Every now and then, there’s a whale attack, or a someone falls asleep and hits a reef, but usually disaster comes from a combination of factors. Sailors call this the “cascade effect.” A boat is a complex system of interconnected functions, and when something goes wrong, it often means that another system fails as well. If you have enough equipment, enough crew, and enough knowledge, you can usually compensate, and everyone makes it out safely. It’s only when the cascade accelerates beyond your ability to keep up that you get into serious trouble.

Peter slammed his last bilge pump onto the cabin sole, ripped open the floorboards and inserted the hose into the sloshing pool of black water. He ran the other hose on deck, securing it to the stern rail so it would drain overboard. And then he reached for the handle, which he’d carefully lashed to the pump before the passage.

The handle wasn’t there.

This is it, he thought. This is the cascade. If I can’t get this bilge pump to work, then it’s buckets. If we’ve got a leak or a failed through hull, there’s no way we’re keeping up with buckets. Then, we get out the liferaft.

He heard a giant wave crash on deck, dumping another fifty gallons of water into the cockpit. And he had an idea. He went for his biggest screwdriver.

Peter’s got a screwdriver that’s at least a foot long, with a head about as wide as a man’s thumb. He pulled his tool bag out of the main cabin, trying not to smell the stench of vomit on the crumpled towels and blankets, trying not to think about the dark shapes of his wife and baby, pressed against the leeward side.

He grabbed the screwdriver and jammed it into the fitting, pumping so hard he thought for an instant he might snap the thing two. There was resistance. He knew he was pumping water now, but he couldn’t tell if the level was going down. A hundred pumps. Two hundred. It was much less efficient, pumping with the screwdriver. He knew he was only moving about half the water he could have pumped with the handle. As he worked, he calculated. There’s two buckets down here, the rubbish bin and the one we use for washing dishes. First, get the liferaft on deck. Secure it to the binnacle and toss it overboard, pulling the rip cord to inflate it. Send out a Mayday on the VHF. Set off the EPIRB. Get Antonia on the helm, tie her on if we have to. I’ll start bailing, then hand the bucket to Marina so she can pour the water overboard. Three hundred pumps. The water was going down. He pumped a few more times. It was definitely lower now. There wasn’t any leak.

Now, he had to relieve Marina. She’d been up there too long, she was probably freezing by now. He grabbed a muesli bar and drank some water. He popped his head up.

He couldn’t believe how much louder it was on deck. The wind was still screaming through the rigging, the deck pitching up as the waves lifted Sereia’s stern, then crashed to port in a surge of white water. Marina’s brow was furrowed, her face a mask of concentration.

“How you doing?” he yelled.

She answered him, but her wind whipped away her words. Peter gestured to her that he’d take over, and she crawled forward, unhooking her life harness when she got to the companionway.

Peter stood at the helm. The night was still black, though it had to be nearly dawn by now. He felt strong. Sereia had made it through the knockdown. He’d gotten the water out of the boat. This storm couldn’t last forever. We were going to make it.

When the second knockdown came, there wasn’t any gust. It was just a massive wave, breaking on Sereia’s stern. Peter never saw it. He heard it coming fast, like the rumbling of a giant waterfall, rushing up Sereia’s starboard quarter. There was nothing he could do.

Then it was blasting him, ocean white water cascading over his head. Sereia slid horizontally. Fuck, we’re going over again, he thought. Then: That’s too much water. This time, we’ll roll.

But she didn’t roll. Sereia slammed down this time, her mainsail hitting the water. But she wasn’t pinned, for those sickening few seconds. This time, she popped back up. The cockpit well was full, but it drained fast. Peter smiled. He knew it would.

***

Dawn did break, finally. Marina was on watch when the sun came up, and she could see the waves for the first time. “It was a bit… unsettling,” she told me. “They were above me. I think they were above the bimini. They were black. Not the normal color of the sea at all.”

Peter came in to the cabin, that morning, to see if Silas and I needed anything. I asked for some water. “I can’t look at you,” he said to Silas. His voice sounded unsteady. “I ‘m afraid I’ll cry.”

“What was that noise?” I asked. “The big one. The really big one.”

“We got knocked down, baby,” he said. “Twice.”

Then he went on deck. I realized, then, how serious it was. How horrifying it might have been. I held Silas close, tears sliding into his hair.

***

We made it to Lyttleton on the third night, then stood off the coast until daybreak. When it was light enough to see, Peter steered us into the harbour and dropped the hook.

Neither Silas nor I had held down any food or water for two days. When I got out of bed, I was shocked to see myself in the mirror. My stomach was flat. It looked like I wasn’t pregnant anymore.

The cabin sole was a foot deep in sodden possessions. Clothing, towels, books and saucepans lay in heaps of salt-soaked debris. We’d need a shovel to clear it all away.

Marina was cold and wet, but exhilarated. She came to get Silas, to give him a big hug and change his diaper. Silas loves Marina, but he screamed when she touched him. He was terrified to be out of my sight.

At first, she couldn’t find the diapers. We usually keep them in the quarterberth, aft on the starboard side. When she finally found them, they were all the way forward, hidden under the dining table. They’d flown to the opposite side of the boat.

We sat in the cockpit, drinking tea and talking about what had happened.

Peter was particularly perplexed by water I’d felt, spraying into the main cabin. The windows were all intact, so a leak didn’t make sense. Then he smacked his forehead. “Of course. It’s so obvious. The dorade.”

I blinked. “The dorade?” Dorades are periscope-shaped fittings on deck, specially designed to let cool breezes in down below, while keeping out water and spray. There’s no way the fitting could have leaked, unless it was submerged.

Still, that was the only way we could have felt the spray. We measured the dorade’s position from Sereia’s port side. It’s three feet in. During the knockdown, Sereia had a third of her beam underwater.

I wrapped my hands around my cup of tea, warming my fingers. “I’m amazed no one’s hurt. And the rig’s okay?”

“It looks fine. I’ll have to do a complete check, but it looks like all we lost was a bucket over the side.”

Peter raised his mug to Marina. “Excellent helming. There’s not many crew would come right back on deck after a knockdown like that. That was very brave.”

“After a what?” asked Marina. “What’s a knockdown?”

She had no idea what had happened. So we told her.

POSTSCRIPT:

After a great deal of thought and discussion, we've decided to put this sailing trip on hold. The Southern Ocean is a place for experienced, adult sailors— it's not for little babies, and it's not for women who are nearly five months pregnant.

We've purchased a beat-up van to continue our exploring New Zealand by land. Stay tuned for Sereia's ongoing adventures... this time by gypsy caravan!

Arrived Safe

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 21:11:00 +0000

Knocked down twice in Cook Strait. Arrived Lyttleton. Everyone safe. More later.

Cliff-Diving

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 02:18:00 +0000

My father used to hang glide when I was a kid. He told me the best hang glider was the guy who got up at five o’clock in the morning, packed up his gear on the roof of his car, made himself a bag lunch, and then poked his nose outside. If the wind didn’t feel right, he didn’t go. He made other plans for the day, no matter how much he’d been looking forward to jumping off a cliff.

Then my Dad broke his arm and stopped hang gliding. He took up safer hobbies, like windsurfing and eating smelly French cheeses. This may have something to do with being a responsible parent. I can’t be sure, because I never really listened to that part of the lesson. Sailing our baby down the Wairarapa Coast is not the safest way we could be spending our time. We could be home right now, on land, watching Finding Nemo for the eight thousandth time while Silas learns how to take off his diaper and fingerpaints the walls.

The part of my Dad’s lecture I did listen to, though, was the bit about turning around if the wind didn’t feel right. We’ve been watching the weather for days now, planning our next hop to the South Island. This is easily the most challenging leg of our journey so far. It’s about 360 nautical miles to Akaroa, our destination. Most of the trip is in the Roaring Forties. In order to get there, we have to sail through some of the stormiest waters on New Zealand’s East Coast, then cross the Cook Strait, where winds can funnel through the narrow pass and kick up massive seas. The trip will take us three to four days, and there’s no safe refuge between Napier and Akaroa. Once we leave, we’re committed. We either keep going , or we turn around. There’s no third option. We could head out to sea, but the next stop would be Chile.

We knew this leg would be hairy, and we’re ready for it. We met up with a carpenter here in Napier, and had him make us a set of washboards instead of the cute little doors that usually cover Sereia’s companionway. He also made a set of 1-1/2” kauri battens for our doghouse windows, bolted right through the cabin. Our windows are now at least twice as strong as they were before, much less likely to shatter in case of a knockdown.

Peter’s been stalking the web for weather like most men search for online porn. He has to keep at it, because the really tricky part about the weather down here is that it changes all the time. On Friday, we thought Sunday would be a good day to leave. On Saturday, our window moved to Tuesday. Yesterday, we saw a front building, but we figured if we left this morning, we might squeak past Cook Strait before the really nasty weather hit. Then today, the forecast changed again:

Outlook following 3 days: Northeast rising to Tuesday afternoon 20 knots. Becoming Tuesday evening northwest 20 knots, rising Wednesday afternoon 35 knots and Thursday 50 knots with high sea.

It’s those last 6 words that got me. Fifty knots? Fifty knots?? The Wairarapa Coast is a notorious place. Land people say, “Don’t go,” but they say that about everything interesting. We ignore them. We listen to the fishermen and the delivery captains, the guys who’ve been there. “Wouldn’t want to be down the Wairarapa in a blow,” they tell us, looking grim. “You’ll want a northerly wind, not a northwesterly if you can help it. And stay away from those southerly blows. They’ll stop you dead.”

Yesterday evening, we tried to keep things light. “Fifty knots, ha ha,” we tittered. “At least it’s going in the right direction. Who knows? We might miss it completely!”

Then I woke up in the night, electrified with fear. I stared at the water reflections wavering on the cabin wall. It’s not Sereia I’m worried about. She can take fifty knots. We wouldn’t sink. At least, I don’t think we’d sink. But what about Silas? What if he gets sick, not just for a few hours, but for days? What if I get so incapacitated that I can’t move or function? What if we make it through two days of hell, only to get turned around?

This morning I went to take a shower, hoping to collect myself. Peter rang up John, the guy who made our washboards. He’s delivered boats all over New Zealand. He lives in Napier, and these are his home waters. As expected, he didn’t tell us not to go. Instead, he said, “If you go today, and it blows fifty when you hit the Strait, you will be very, very uncomfortable.”

John’s version of “uncomfortable” is most people’s version of “car crash.” He confirmed what Peter was already thinking.

I came out of the shower, still shaky. I’d surprised myself by bursting into tears while I was putting on my shoe. I stood there, in the shower stall, wearing one shoe, my breath coming hot and fast. I wasn’t sad—not at all. I was scared.

“It’s not a good idea,” Peter said, as we sat on the ground to talk. “If we go today, we’re going to get our asses handed to us. If it was just you and me, and you weren’t pregnant, we’d take a shot of rum and we’d just go for it. It would be fun—”

“But what if we don’t get our weather? What if we get stuck and we run out of time?”

The question hung in the air, unanswered. Because that’s always the question. People do get stopped in New Zealand, all the time. They get tired of waiting and then they make plane reservations. Or else they sail into a storm, and battle it out. Mostly, they make it. Sometimes they don’t.

“It’s still early in the season,” Peter soothed, rubbing my back. “We might go tomorrow. You never know.”

But today, at least, the wind wasn’t right to jump off a cliff.

Give The People What They Want

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 23:00:00 +0000

Napier is known as the Art Deco City, because the whole place was rebuilt in the 1930’s, when people thought Art Deco was neat because it reminded them of primitive savages and shiny new cars. They were looking for a cheerful sort of architecture, something to make them look to the future. That’s because on a bright sunny morning in 1931, their city disappeared.

The first thing that happened was that the ocean went away. Ruth Park, one of the survivors, was out in a rowboat with her dog at the time. "On a still hot morning, February 3, an extraordinary phenomenon occurred. The tide went out and didn't come in... The sea did not roll up like a scroll, like the sky in Revelations. It quietly withdrew.*"

Then the earthquake hit. It’s hard to imagine a 7.8 earthquake, even if you’ve lived through a few quiet tremors in your life. Since the Richter scale is logarithmic rather than linear, an increase of one point indicates a shaking increase of one thousand percent. The 1989 Loma-Prieta earthquake in San Francisco, for example, measured 7.0 on the Richter scale. It made the Bay Bridge collapse. And the 1931 earthquake in Napier was nearly ten times worse.

The Napier earthquake also happened more than half a century earlier, so the city wasn’t prepared with modern emergency procedures. The nurses’ home near the main public hospital collapsed, crushing much of the city’s medical staff. And when the first fires broke out, firefighters discovered that the earthquake had shattered the waterpipes. The hydrants were dry. Citizens who weren’t already buried in rubble ran from the ruined town. By nightfall, more than a hundred fires blazed. The city burned for thirty hours. Audrey McKelvie lived through the quake, and as she put it, “It wasn’t just a disaster. It was the death of a city.**”

But disasters make great tourist attractions, especially once the city’s been rebuilt and the people have had a chance to recover. Storefronts are painted in the colors of fruit-flavored sorbet, and the street names are laid out in charming mosaics. There’s a downtown bank that incorporates Maori spirals in its façade and ceiling, New Zealand’s own version of the noble savage design motif. Since the red and black rafter patterns in Maori meeting houses are heavily symbolic, depicting local geneaologies and wildlife sacred to the tribe, I had to wonder what the design on the bank’s ceiling represents. Old-time bank presidents? The sacred principle of compound interest?

The city’s done a great job encouraging Art Deco as a massive tourist attraction. There’s an annual Art Deco festival, the city’s been nominated for Unesco World Heritage status, and there’s even a McDeco McDonald’s in town. If a new business puts up a sign and it looks Deco enough, the city council kicks down a check for $500. If someone puts up a building in a contrasting design—Bauhaus, say, or Tudor Revival—it’s possible the city will burn it down. No one will admit to this, but I have my suspicions.

And yet, despite all the city’s best efforts, Art Deco is not Napier’s greatest treasure. The town center is nice enough—I like pink buildings as much as the next girl. But all that cheerful architecture pales in comparison to Napier’s true gem, the jewel in her crown. I refer, of course, to Opossum World.

Opossum World is a treasure-trove of knowledge. A combination storefront-museum, Opossum World educates its customers about the Brushtail Opossum, an Australian marsupial that was introduced to New Zealand in the nineteenth century, with devastating results. The Australian opossums loved New Zealand so much that they immediately started making babies and eating their way through the native bush. They’ve destroyed millions of native trees, from pohutukawa to rata, and they’ve endangered several species of native birds: kokako, kereru, and even the best-loved kiwi.

Luckily for New Zealand, the opossum also has a marvelously soft and snuggly coat, and when mixed with merino wool, it provides fur for sweaters that sell for hundreds of dollars each, as well as slippers, socks, and the indispensible Possum Peter Heater, which warms more crucial parts of the body. So killing possums not only protects the environment, it also results in a very profitable export trade.

I offer the above as background knowledge only. What makes Opossum World spectacular has nothing to do with sweaters and native birds. Really, it’s all about the displays.

Opossum World is quite likely the only place on earth where you can see a fully annotated exhibit of all the different ways to kill opossums. There’s the Timms Trap, in which “the opossum triggers the mechanism which compresses the arteries to the brain,” and the enticingly named “Gin Trap,” now sadly illegal. There’s the Victor Coil Spring, the Victor Soft Catch, and the good old-fashioned cage, as well as my favorite label, which reads simply: THIS OPOSSUM WAS KILLED BY CYANIDE.

And that’s not all. Where else, I challenge you, can you pay a dollar to shoot at already-dead opossums that someone’s tied to a tree? Or push a button and see five poorly-stuffed marsupials singing “On the Road Again,” perched cheerfully on the roof of a Morris Mini automobile?

There’s an exhaustive display on the possum lifecycle, showing opossums at each stage of their reproductive life, from kitten to crusty old age. It features a sort of explicit opossum porn, in which the female licks her belly so the tiny opossum fetus can wiggle, worm-like, from her birth canal to her pouch. These opossums, I should note, were killed and stuffed around the time of the Napier earthquake. They look like desiccated muppets from beyond the grave, their ears as crispy as potato chips. It was unspeakable. It was marvelous. I could not tear my eyes away.

And there, at the center of the case, lay the pièce de resistance, the cornerstone of the museum’s collection: a pickled opossum fetus in a jar. Skinny and translucent, it looked like a genetic experiment gone horribly wrong.

I tried to buy it as a souvenir. I begged the woman at the front desk to sell it to me. But she was immovable. She’d sell me a sweater or a sock, or even a Possum Peter Heater, but the pickled opossum fetus was not for sale.

That’s my only problem with Napier. It’s a charming town, but they just don’t understand what people want.

____________________________________________________
* Bob Brockie (ed.), The Penguin Eyewitness History of New Zealand. Auckland: Penguin Books Ltd., 2002. (pp. 158-9)

** Gaylene Preston, Survivors' Stories. Gaylene Preston Productions, 1998.

Window

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:07:00 +0000

I’ve never had to dart across the street under fire, but I’ve seen people do it on TV. The trick is to crouch behind something thick and bullet-proof—a shot-up car, for example, or a buxom young blonde. You squat there, looking intense, then poke your head out like an anxious groundhog. When the coast is clear, you make a break for it, charging across the street before the bastards get a chance to reload. That’s the basic set-up, though you can accessorize with a sawed-off shotgun or a steel briefcase full of money if you prefer. QKNW6BDWDSBP

Apart from the briefcase full of money, that scenario is a lot like sailing around New Zealand. Before rounding East Cape, we crouched in Mt. Maunganui, feeling nervous and forlorn. Every morning, Peter checked the weather. “GALE WARNING IN EFFECT,” the friendly lady informed us. “WINDS SOUTHWEST 20 KNOTS, RISING TO 40 KNOTS IN THE AFTERNOON. MODERATELY ROUGH SEAS BECOMING VERY ROUGH IN THE AFTERNOON. IF YOU SAIL TODAY, YOU’LL DROWN, WHICH IS AN EXTREMELY PAINFUL WAY TO DIE. THANK YOU FOR USING NEW ZEALAND MET SERVICES.”

“Maybe we should wait a day,” Peter would suggest. “That Turkish place makes an awfully good falafel.”

Then we’d go into town and stuff ourselves with chickpeas and chili sauce, and try to forget the Apocalypse that was being unleashed to the east of us.

And then, last Friday, we got our weather window. “WINDS NORTHWEST FIFTEEN TO TWENTY KNOTS,” the friendly lady informed us. “CHANGING TO WEST TWENTY KNOTS THIS EVENING. SEAS CALM. IF YOU SAIL TODAY YOU WON’T DROWN, THOUGH YOUR BABY MIGHT THROW UP ON YOU IN A FOLLOWING SEA.”

“Let’s do it!” Peter announced. “Get that anchor up and roll out the towels. We’re headed to Gisborne!”

And despite the weather lady’s friendly optimism, we took every precaution. The first thing we did was move three hundred pounds of chain out of the bow, and shift it into the bilge. This, we hoped, would help Sereia to sail through waves, rather than just squat on them like a petulant toad. Then, I prepared to be demolished by seasickness. I made a pile of ham sandwiches, a big pot of pork and beans, and baked several loaves of bread.

As we steamed out of Tauranga harbour, we clutched our bread at the ready. There’s a statue of Tangaroa there, the Maori god of the sea. As you leave port, you say a little prayer and toss him some bread—or else. In 1950, the crew of the Ranui got a little drunk and chucked some empty beer bottles at Tangaroa, instead of his favorite food. Their boat smashed on the rocks, and twenty-two sailors were killed. Sereia wasn’t about to make the same mistake.

Peter and Matt raised the sails and headed out to sea. Silas sat down below, happily playing with Legos in our cabin. And I lay down my head and prepared to die. It’s only forty-eight hours, I reasoned. A person can throw up for two days and survive. How bad can it be?

And it wasn’t so bad, actually. Like so many worries and fears, the anticipation was worse than the trip. Our sail round East Cape, in fact, was fabulous.

First, we sailed North-Northeast, directly for White Island. White Island is an active volcano which last erupted in 2000, shooting boulders the size of Buicks into the surrounding sea. We approached it at dusk, when the sun set its slopes in sharp relief. Pale puffs of smoke shot above the cliffs, the crater’s rim curling like the claws of a crab.

Enraptured, I took my hands off the wheel. And promptly jibed the boat.

“Sorry sorry sorry!” I hollered, yanking us back on course. Jibing the boat by accident is a major faux pas in the sailing world, sort of like throwing up on yourself at an afternoon tea party. But Peter barely noticed. Because right then, a seagull the size of a Labrador retriever swooped past.

“Holy shit, was that an albatross?” Peter ran to the stern, pointing like a maniac. The bird, now headed toward the volcano, had an obscenely wide wingspan. You would have a difficult time parking this bird in a single-car garage.

We left White Island astern, its smoke signals floating in the gathering gloom. That night, as we approached East Cape, the wind kicked up and we sailed all night, charging toward the easternmost point of New Zealand in a rush of waves and foam.

Because I am a selfish troll, I claimed the last night watch, and sailed into the dawn on the morning of November 21st. I saw the sky blushing pink behind the Cape, and tried very hard to feel awe-struck at the thought that I was the first human being to see the morning. But irritating, rational thoughts kept invading my head, like the notion that the Earth is a sphere, and time zones are arbitrary lines drawn on a map. So I just sat there, shut up, and tried not to jibe the boat.

The island off the coast of East Cape, by the way, is called East Island, which almost makes a complete set: North Island, South Island, and East Island. Those early New Zealanders had a marvelous knack for metaphor.

Late that morning, I was sacked out in the main cabin, when Peter gently tugged my shoulder. “Orca,” he whispered. “A whole family of them. Come and see.”

I dragged myself on deck, and there they were. At first, they looked like dolphins, just fins breaking the surface of the water. Then they swam right at the boat, peeking at our propeller and rising to the surface to see who we were. A family of orca: mama, papa and a little baby.
We’d picked our weather window carefully, and now we were here, at the dreaded East Cape. The sea was glassy, the weather calm. And instead of fighting for our lives, we could feed Free Willy from the palms of our hands.

But the problem with weather windows is that they come to a close. Sooner or later, the bastard reloads. We saw White Island at sunset, we spied the first dawn, and we frolicked with whales. And now we had a quandary. We could keep heading south toward Gisborne, arriving in the middle of the night. Or we could tuck into Tolaga Bay for the night and have a good sleep, then make for Gisborne in the morning. We opted for sleep, and the next day the window was closed.

It wasn’t a gale, and there weren’t any mountainous seas. It was just twenty-five knots, on the nose, and six-foot swells, all the way to Gisborne. Sereia leapt and crashed, Silas hollered, and Peter tried to distract him with wolf noises below. I stayed on deck, dripping with spray, and tried to keep down my breakfast.

As for Matt, he just steered. He loved it. For about eight hours—though I admit I lost count—he wrestled that helm on course, steering us back and forth through angry seas as we tacked our way south to Gisborne. He refused to give up the wheel, helming in a 25-knot headwind , wearing nothing but shorts and a windbreaker. It was all we could do to keep handing him granola bars, watching anxiously for signs of hypothermia.

Then, at seven o’clock in the evening, we made it. It took us ten hours to travel twenty-five miles, but we tucked into Gisborne marina, just steps from the sportsfishing club, where bacon double-cheeseburgers and cold draft beer could be had for the asking.

“WHY are you sailing around New Zealand?” people ask us, and sometimes I have the same question myself. We’ve been cold and miserable. We shower infrequently, there’s mildew on the ceiling, and sometimes we wake up in the night, afraid.

But then, the window opens. We sail through a wilderness that most people can’t begin to imagine. The outlines are crisper, the colors are finer for the fear we surmounted to get here.

And I'll make sure we keep extra bread on board, and every few days, we'll toss off a slice for Tangaroa.

Renewable Energy

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:14:00 +0000

When you start your day coated in vomit, you know things can only get better. This was a comforting thought for me, as I pushed aside a foul-smelling baby and heaved mightily into a red plastic bucket.

“Oooooh,” said Silas, impressed at the volume.

“Sit back and observe, youngster,” I told him. “You’re learning from a pro.”

“Da DA!” Silas crowed, then lunged at the bucket. “Di di di di di !” He flapped his hands, hoping to splash in the nice warm sauce his mother had made. When I yanked it away, he looked at me inquisitively. Where’s my rubber ducky? he seemed to be asking. Where’s my toy boat?

“Cool it, kid,” I told him. “It’s five o’clock in the morning. We don’t splash in our vomit ‘till at least lunchtime.” At the thought of lunch, I heaved again, then handed the bucket up to the cockpit so I could set about cleaning up the mess.

Sereia can be a tough boat to sail on. Though the winds never got above twenty knots on this last leg to Tauranga, they were right in our face. The water was tossed with a short, steep chop, the sort of conditions that make Sereia jerk to a halt, like an angry horse bucking her bridle. There was no question of cooking bacon and eggs for the crew, or even a hot cup of coffee. It was all I could do to roll up our curdled linens, get out fresh clothes for Silas, and pour myself into my foulies so I could stagger out on deck.

Poor Peter, with his cast-iron stomach, entertained the seasick baby down below. I stood on deck, breathed deep, and tried to collect myself.

It’s amazing how seasickness will change your perspective on things. Rolling green hills become nightmarish cliffs of desolation and despair. A delicate pink sunrise looks tawdry and fake. I concentrated on the horizon, imagining a cool glass of ice water, and swallowed to push down the nausea.

“Do you want me to helm?” asked Matt, and after awhile I was grateful to give over the wheel.

Every boat should be powered by eighteen year-old. They are cheap, enthusiastic, and apparently indefatigable. Matt’s our latest crewmember, a high school swim athlete from Connecticut. He’s good-natured and easy-going, both crucial qualities on a small boat. Also, he has British parents, so he sounds like a world-weary aristocrat in a Henry James novel. This is very good for Sereia’s rep. It makes us look yachty.

He can also sail. While Peter read stories to Silas, and I lay like a wet washcloth on the deck, Matt took the wheel, helming for at least eight hours straight with nothing to sustain him but youth and a small bag of trail mix. Even after the waters calmed, even after everyone felt better and Silas could be left alone for a few minutes without fear of projectile milk vomit, Matt still wouldn’t relinquish the helm. Peter finally had to wrestle it away from him so he could pilot our boat into the tide-ripped entrance, and find us a safe place to anchor.

Now that we’re safely moored in the shadow of Mt. Maunganui, we’ve been coaxing Matt to stay with us. We discovered the farmer’s market, and began plying him with fresh strawberries and asparagus, hearth baked breads and local artisanal cheeses. He’s agreed to help out while we round East Cape, but after that, he says he’s got to go. He’s got some lame excuse about wanting to “travel” and “see the South Island.” I don’t know what it was exactly. I didn’t really listen.

And so we sit in Mt. Maunganui, waiting for our weather window to Gisborne and pondering East Cape. Our cruising handbook isn't helpful. The section for our next passage has a particularly shrill introduction:

"PASSAGES ROUND EAST CAPE SHOULD ONLY BE UNDERTAKEN BY WELL-FOUND YACHTS FULLY EQUIPPED TO OFFSHORE STANDARDS AND MANNED BY EXPERIENCED CREWS. TIDE RIP…OVERFALLS … DANGEROUSLY HEAVY SEAS.. THIS WHOLE AREA CAN BECOME EXTREMELY TURBULENT. .. HEAD WELL OUT TO SEA TO AVOID THIS TURBULENT AREA.”

“Why’d they have to write it in all caps?” Peter asks, looking up from our laptop in disgust. “They just write it like that to scare people.”

“Well, we’re a well-found yacht, fully equipped to offshore standards,” I counter. “We should be fine. And we have experienced crew.” I smile sweetly at Matt, heaping a little more French toast on his plate.

“Yeah,” Peter mutters. “Except for Silas.”

Except for Silas. And that’s what it comes to, always. When I wake in the night, fear squatting like a toad in my throat, I touch Peter’s hand and I know he’s awake too.

It’s not us. We’ll endure just about anything to cut through the ocean, feel the stars at our fingertips, sail a stiff breeze. It’s Silas, our little boy who cracks his head against bulkheads and cries when his milk comes up the wrong way. He doesn’t understand. We are fearful for him.

When we round East Cape, we hope to do so at dawn. Because of the way the world’s time zones are drawn, we might be the first people on Earth to see the morning. I’ll bring Silas on deck, and point out the rising sun.

If he’s not too sick, he might even enjoy it.

Then there's the fact that Silas enjoys poking Matt's face when he's asleep. Maybe this is why our crew feels the sudden urge to travel.

Pleasure Kittens

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:07:00 +0000

More than 100,000 pleasure craft are registered in the Auckland City Harbour, which why this town is “The City of Sail.” There are also more than fifteen hundred prostitutes working here, from brothels and massage parlors to well-trafficked street corners—but they don’t have a snappy slogan on the tourist brochures. At least, not yet they don’t.

Like most Americans, I’m a bit of a sex and violence snob. When Kiwis get upset about the kids who drink beer and forget to brush their hair every day, I smile tolerantly and point out how nice it must be not to have crack in their fourth-grade classrooms. And as far as high-profile sex goes, I’m from San Francisco. I was cheering Dykes on Bikes in the Gay Pride Parades before I was exactly clear on what a dyke was, or why they were so fond of leather.

So all in all, I thought the Kiwis were rather sweet and naïve, with all their fluffy sheep and their endless chit-chat about the weather. I was in for a rude awakening.

Prostitution has been legal in New Zealand since 2003, when Helen Clark helped push through the Prostitution Reform Act. Sex workers in New Zealand get free condoms, regular health care, and legal protection—as well as job training and financial assistance if they decide to leave the industry.

As for the leaders of the free world, Americans don’t have anything remotely resembling the Prostitution Reform Act. We can’t even manage affordable health care for citizens in straight jobs, let alone our dirty whores.

Then again, we haven’t elected a female head of state either. New Zealand did that a decade ago.

So when Sereia dropped anchor in Auckland, my mission was clear. I needed to chat up some whores.

I like to think of myself as a modern, liberated woman. I should be able to use phrases like “anal play” in a sentence without blushing furiously and stumbling over my words. But when I started calling brothels last week, in an attempt to meet up with some real, live sex workers, I came up against a lifetime of good girl conditioning.

The first brothel I rang was The Establishment, which charmed me because their website didn’t talk about “escorts” or “ladies.” Instead, they call their workers “pleasure kittens,” which is a delightful phrase that makes me think about soft things I can pet. It made me homesick for Quiznos, the American fast-food chain that coined the phrase “sandwich artist” for the guy who slaps roast beef on your Toasty Torpedo.

Heart pounding, mind racing, I actually wrote out a little script for myself so I wouldn’t go blank on the phone. “Hi my name is Antonia Murphy I’m writing a book about New Zealand and I’d really like to have the chance to talk to some of your sex workers when you’re not too busy if that’s OK,” I babbled, terrified that someone might yell at me or hang up the phone. They didn’t. In fact, the guy on the other end seemed a little bored.

“Sure. You can talk to them. I don’t see why not,” he yawned. And just like that, I had an in.

From the outside, The Establishment looks like a big house in the suburbs. Inside, it’s got high ceilings, lots of natural light, a beautiful wood bar and a fish tank. It’s the sort of place you’d expect to order a cappuccino or a glass of chardonnay, not a blow job from a pleasure kitten.

And the girls I met looked like… girls. Rein was tall and voluptuous, with a pretty, freckled face and sharp green eyes. Her dress was short, and her boots had stiletto heels, but she didn’t look like a working girl. She was dressed like my friends and I dressed in college, when we went out on a Friday night. Veronica looked more Maori, with dark, wavy hair, and big gold hoop earrings. Neither was wearing much makeup.

“So what do you think about prostitution being legal in New Zealand?” I asked, trying to sound breezy.

Rein’s green eyes narrowed. Veronica didn’t look up from her Jack and Coke. “I reckon it’s what you think,” she muttered.

There was a pause. I stood there, a nervous smile twitching on my lips.

“It’s gonna happen anyway,” Rein pointed out, giving me a sideways glance. “You might as well make it safe.” She fiddled with her riding crop, which she’d set on the bar, between her purse and her drink.

I saw my opening, and jumped right in. “It must be so much safer now,” I coaxed. “You can go to the cops if someone gets rough, right? And you get… what? Health care?” I smiled confidingly. “Lots of people can’t even afford to see a doctor in the States.”

Rein stirred her drink, then pulled out her straw and pointed it at me. “That’s right! You have to buy that stuff… what’s it called?”

“Insurance,” I told her. “It can be really expensive, unless you work for a big corporation.” I changed the subject. “I used to think New Zealand was more conservative, but—”

Veronica interrupted. “No way, we’re heaps more liberal,” she corrected me. “It’s the Bible belt out there. Don’t you lot, like, pray before every meal?”

“Not exactly,” I told her, and pulled up a stool. Clearly, we had a lot to chat about.

Stowaway

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:03:00 +0000

Our ad was very clear. I specifically asked for ONE crew member, because this a small boat, we live in close quarters, and there’s no room for a whole mess of people.

So I was pretty annoyed to find out we have a stowaway. And this situation’s been going on for weeks. More than three months, from what I can tell.

I smelled a rat when our food started disappearing. Sour pickles, chocolate, salty nuts. Whoever this bum is, he or she’s got a hell of an appetite.

And he’s not pulling his weight, either. If I’ve got extra mouths to feed, I want a little help around here. Doing the dishes, standing watch, or just picking up Silas’ Legos off the floor. I don’t ask for much. But this joker just stays in his comfy little dark place, taking warm baths and eating my food. Getting fat on my dime. By May, this guy’s gonna be huge. Eight, nine pounds at least.

It wasn’t easy catching the rascal. For one thing, he’s only about the size of my thumb. Plus he’s pretty wily, and he never makes a peep. We finally snapped a picture using sonar. And here’s the proof:

Look at him. Lounging around. Relaxing. Sipping amniotic fluid, with no thought for the future. I can tell you right now that when he comes out in May, things are gonna change around here.

For one thing, a good night’s sleep will be a thing of the past. And then there’s the diapers. The long, dark tunnel of diapers, from which we may never emerge.

As of next May, we’ll be a family of four. And Sereia’s gonna need more bunks.

Serendipity

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:51:00 +0000

Sometimes, things just fall into place.

Take Tim, for instance. It takes a special kind of person to wake up under a pile of baby diapers and not run screaming from the room. But Tim retained his good spirits, even when Silas rubbed premasticated cheese chunks in his hair, then woke up howling like a feral cat at three o’clock in the morning.

Tim crewed with us from Whangarei to Auckland, and therein lies another tale of great good luck. On the evening of October 30, we dropped the hook in a small bay just north of Auckland, hoping for a rest before dealing with the heavy boat traffic we’d find in the City of Sail.

This bay was ringed with thick green bush, twisted beech trees and giant mamaku ferns. There were a few homes along the shore, set at comfortable angles among the trees. We did a short circuit around the anchorage, looking for a good place to stop.

And that’s when we saw it.

Is that….?

It IS.

Taleisin belongs to Lin and Larry Pardey, two of our heroes in the sailing world. They started voyaging in a boat they built themselves more than forty years ago, circumnavigating the globe and writing stacks of books about their adventures. They belong to a sailing world that has mostly passed, one in which they navigated by the stars and sailed without an engine, through storm and silent calm.

And here they were.

We’d heard that the Pardeys had purchased some land on one of the islands near Auckland, but there are dozens of islands out here, with countless bays to choose from. We didn’t have any real hope of finding them, let alone meeting them in person. And here, it would seem, we’d not only stumbled on the right island, we’d sailed right into Lin and Larry’s bay.

And that’s not all.

The next day was October 31st. That night, on the beach, they were hosting a massive party for Larry’s 70th birthday. Needless to say, we crashed.

All day long, sailboats arrived in the bay, multicolored flags snapping in the rigging. By nightfall, the seashore was teeming with space aliens, pink bunny rabbits, and a Rastafarian beaver. It was, after all, Halloween.

Jittery and star-struck, we weren’t sure how to approach this famous pair. Our dinghy bounced along the dock, and we scrambled up on shore, juggling the baby in his awkward PFD. Larry is an enormous , regal man, with a snowy beard and clear blue eyes. He wore a thigh-length purple velvet tunic and a lace ascot at his throat. Lin was his queen, in a sparkling rhinestone tiara. They peered at us with curiosity.

“Um, hi.” Peter stuck out his hand. “I’m Peter, and this is my wife Antonia, and we’re huge fans!”

“Happy Birthday Larry!” I burbled. “I wrote you a poem!” And I shoved it into his hands.

The Pardeys weren’t sure if they should be frightened at first, but I think Silas broke the ice. Dangerous terrorists don’t accessorize with toddlers.

Lin’s face broke into an easy smile. “What’s a party without gate crashers?” she declared, and waved us down the dock.

“You’re very welcome to be here,” Larry assured us.

And so, we partied with the Pardeys. Two people who spent a lifetime doing what they loved, then shared their adventures with the world—and managed to make a living at it. Not only that, as I watched them dancing, I saw something even better: after all this time, they still love each other’s company.

Someone, hand me a wishbone. I wish for a life that’s half as rich as theirs.

Here’s our birthday poem for Larry Pardey:

Across the Prime Meridian
And all the seven seas
Lin and Larry Pardey
Have caught the slightest breeze.

They’ve sailed on waters halcyon
And raging with Typhoon
And if their boat had rocket fuel
They might have reached the moon.

But sailing to the stratosphere
Is not their cup of tea
Instead they wrote some damned good books
And set some sailors free.

They taught us not to muck things up
With gadgets, toys and tools
Like watermakers, GPS
And engines guzzlin’ fuel.

They taught us we could set sail now
Or just stay home and buy
So when time came to stock our boat
We stopped, and wondered “WHY?”

We saw those shiny Yanmars
And the new hot water showers
But figured we’d just ride the wind
And rub our skin with flowers.

We sailed across the ocean wide
Through gale and calm and storm
Grinding coffee beans by hand
And drinking cocktails warm.

We thought of Lin and Larry
As our food began to rot
We thought of all they’d taught us
And we muttered, “THANKS A LOT.”

But truth be told, having less stuff
Means there’s less stuff to break.
While other sailors ordered parts
We left them in our wake.

And so we honor Lin and Larry
Sailors without peer.
You showed us we could see the world
WITHOUT THAT SILLY GEAR!

Crew

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:49:00 +0000

It’s amazing how many young people want to get abused in the name of adventure. We posted this ad on a local backpackers website, and instantly we were flooded with responses. Travelers wrote us long letters, attached their resumes, brought us excellent bottles of wine. “Wow!” they wrote. “This is the opportunity of a lifetime!” “It’s always been my dream to live on a sailboat!” “How soon can I come on board?”

I know how they feel, because I used to be that young person. Specifically, I was twenty-four when I started prowling the docks in Fort Lauderdale, two years’ worth of savings in my bank account, hoping desperately that someone would ask me to crew on his yacht. During my searches, I met a French boy named Jean-Christian. “Eet ees so easy for a girl to find eh boat,” he moaned, with typical Gallic melancholy. “For a boy, not so easy.”

It was easy all right, especially if you wore a short skirt and a pretty smile. But there were other challenges for a girl looking to catch a ride at sea. Fresh out of a lifetime of private schools, I was clueless about the way things worked on the water. When an eight-fingered captain named Bob asked me to join him on a weekend trip to the Bahamas, I had to ask around for advice.

“He says he wants to show me how to sail,” I asked my hosts at the crew house. “Do you think he wants something else?”

Harry looked up from the television, where he was watching Animal Planet, a can of beer balanced on his gut. He looked startled, then burst out laughing. “COURSE he does,” he guffawed. “Cap’n Bob wants to get LAID.” Then he schooled me, as gently as he could, about “gas, grass or ass—no one rides for free.”

For the most part, he was right. There was the Captain who inquired, in an interview, what size bra I wore, and then there was the really creepy one—Captain Joe, who kept telling me how important it was for a captain and cook team to act like husband and wife. “It makes the guests feel right at home,” he explained, snapping pictures of me for his charter brochure. Later, while dusting behind the bar, I found a small pile of photographs. It was a stack of heads—my head—carefully torn from the prints and tucked behind the bottles, like a rat might hide a stash of rotten food. I cleared off that boat without even saying goodbye.

There are exceptions, of course. We’re not asking our crew to put out free sex, or pay for our gas, or supply us with drugs. We really are just looking for help. It’s a lot of work to go to sea, and with a toddler on board, it’s too much for the two of us to handle alone.

And that, I fear is where we may shatter some youthful illusions. When I was twenty-four, going to sea represented freedom, a red-blooded life in nature’s pulse, a long way from heavy books and dried-up, intellectual theorizing. Pushed by the wind, buoyed by the sea, illuminated by moon and sun, we were utterly independent of the world and its cynics.

Then I bought Sereia. And now that I’ve owned her for six years, I know that ideal is both true and illusory. We touch that sense of freedom at times, beam reaching on a moonlit sea, phosphorescence in the water, a magic carpet ride of stardust in our wake.

The rest of the time, it’s a hell of a lot of work.

Sailboats are powered by the wind, it’s true. But they also need tons of stainless steel, fiberglass, teak, epoxy, solvents, electronics, and thousands of square feet of sail. They need a crew, all of whom must be fed, clothed, cleaned and entertained. And in order to learn the skills that are necessary to pilot a sailboat effectively, the crew must delve into mountains of heavy books, then spend hours on the docks with other sailors, trading dried-up, intellectual theorizing.

Tim has joined us for this next leg, from Whangarei to Auckland. He’s laid back, he works hard, and he’s eager to learn. He’s also twenty-four years old.

I hope we don’t teach him too much, too fast. And I hope there’s lots of phosphorescence, lighting our way down the coast.

There's magic at sea, even when you're anchored in town. Here's some genuine Kiwi dolphins, cruising past Sereia.

Tips n' Tricks

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:04:00 +0000

We’re back in Whangarei now, since we’re giving up on this whole sailing around New Zealand thing. That’s a crazy idea anyway. What we really need to do is sell the boat, get jobs, and live like reasonable grown-ups for awhile.

The only problem is, we’re not reasonable. Or particularly grown-up.

So I guess we’ll have to keep sailing. We’re just in Whangarei for a week, where we plan to tackle the endless mechanical projects and errands that keep sailboats afloat. Our month in the Bay of Islands was our shake-down cruise, where we learned a few tips and tricks for sailing with a baby in New Zealand. Curious? Allow me to share our hard-earned wisdom:

Babies Don’t Need To Be Bathed
As we’ve recently learned, the need for a daily baby bath is dangerous bourgeois propaganda. No, instead we’ve discovered a new invention, one we heartily recommend to parents everywhere: the FHAT bath. This handy acronym stands for Face, Hands, Ass and Tootsies. With a mere inch of soapy water in the bottom of a bowl, we can wash the baby’s critical systems without running an entire bath. We love the FHAT bath because it saves water. Silas loves the FHAT bath because it means he doesn’t have to get his hair washed, which as far as he’s concerned, is the baby version of waterboarding.

Folding Clothing is a Silly Waste of Time
As a hardened old sea dog, Silas doesn’t have time to fold his clothes. Instead, he has five colour-coded sea bags, into which his gear gets stuffed. They’re made out of polar fleece, which is a fascinating plastic-based material that seems to repel water.

Increased Deck Time = Decreased Baby Vomit
At first, I was so nervous having Silas on board underway that I kept him down below, in a padded room, reading Dr. Seuss books and eating snacks. Of course, that’s enough to make the toughest sailor sick as a dog. Once coated in baby vomit, I decided to try bringing Silas out on deck more. And guess what? He loves it. However, he doesn’t think Peter is a very good helmsman, and he is anxious to take over the wheel.

And While We’re on the Subject of Baby Vomit
You don’t want to take the vomitous towels and shove them in the bottom of the laundry bag until you happen to find a Laundromat two weeks later. They will… GROW things. FURRY things. I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination.

Navigational Hazard Buoys are Tasty
Not strictly baby-related, but good to know all the same. The waters around New Zealand are positively infested with delicious things to eat. With the help of our dinghy, we managed to pull bushels of fabulous green-lipped mussels off of a hazard buoy, which we later consumed in obscene quantities, with lots of garlic and lemon butter. While not strictly legal, this maneuver does save on grocery bills, allowing you to spend more money at the Laundromat (see above).

Touching the Void
Remember the story of Joe Simpson, who pulled himself down the sheer face of an icy mountain with a shattered tibia, after his climbing partner left him for dead? He didn’t do it all in one go, because that would have been impossible. Instead, he used his watch. “I just have to get through the next twenty minutes,” he told himself. “If I can get through the next twenty minutes and not die, then I can make it.” Basically, that’s our philosophy on sailing with a baby. When the kid is screaming, the boat is rocking, and the pressure cooker sails across the cabin, we just have to make it through the next twenty minutes without losing our minds. After that, we’re home free.

So: we’re not sailing around New Zealand with a baby. That would be crazy. But we’re not giving up, either. Hell no. Next week, we’re sailing to Auckland. Then we’ll see.

Nouvelle-Zélande

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 02:31:00 +0000

We’ve decided to claim New Zealand for France. It’s not just us, actually. France claimed New Zealand for France, back in 1772. But instead of raising a flag, or drafting an organized treaty for the natives to sign—as Britain did in 1840—the French just buried a bottle.

I’m sure it was a very nice bottle, probably a wine bottle, or perhaps an excellent cognac. They had to drain the contents first, so the glass would be dry for the note they slipped inside. And consequently, they would have been plastered—which makes perfect sense. No one but a drunken sailor could think any of this would work.

In 1772, Marion du Fresne and his crew were anchored off Moturua Island, woefully unaware that Captain Cook had circumnavigated New Zealand three years earlier, charting its coastline and learning how to communicate with the natives. Thinking they’d discovered a great new piece of real estate, they decided to claim the country for King Louis XV. So Marion's officers pulled out a piece of parchment, on which they wrote the following:

In the Year of Grace one thousand seven hundred and seventy-two, the eleventh of July, we Captains and Officers of the King's ships "Le Mascarin" and the "Marquis de Castries", have taken possession in the name of His Majesty Louis XV, our King, of the Continent to the Eastward of New Zealand, named by M. Marion du Fresne, our Commander, France Australe, being in a harbour to which he gave his name, situated on 35° 21 South Latitude; and one hundred and seventy one degrees of longitude observed to the East of the Paris Meridian.

It’s what they did next that makes very little sense. Even in the eighteenth century, when folks had a sort of slap-dash attitude to subjects such as hand washing and the finer points of the law, you’d think that claiming a new land was a fundamentally public gesture. I would have thought the French might have erected a flagpole, perhaps a plaque, and begun sending over boatloads of colonists as soon as possible.

Instead, Marion's men just buried their claim in the sand. Presumably, the Frenchmen expected to return for the bottle at a later date, because they wrote down instructions on how to find it again. Crozet, du Fresne’s second in command, wrote in his journal:

The bottle... is buried on the left bank of a stream where we obtained our water and fifty seven paces from the place where the sea comes up at the new and full moons in rising, and at ten paces distance from the said stream at four feet deep.

And that was it. Despite countless attempts to find it in the past two hundred and thirty-seven years, Marion's bottle was never seen again. Instead of France, Great Britain was the country to send over boatloads of colonists, and in 1840 they legalized their claim to New Zealand with the Treaty of Waitangi.

For obvious reasons, Peter and I think this is a terrible state of affairs. Just imagine how different New Zealand would be if the French had taken over instead of the Brits. There would be no limp, sliced white bread on the supermarket shelves, and the very thought of spaghetti in a can would make New Zealanders shudder in revulsion. The women would be tall, statuesque chain smokers, and everyone would smack their lips at the thought of moldy cheese.

Furthermore, all this stress about New Zealand’s endangered native birds would be a thing of the past, because the Franco-Kiwis would have discovered long ago how to braise the little songbirds in an aromatic sauce. We wouldn’t need to worry about saving the birds because they’d all be dead, leaving us free to eat snails and discuss philosophy in peace.

And so we determined to find the French bottle. If we could just locate France’s original claim to the country, we reasoned, it would be a slam-dunk in the international court system. Never mind that New Zealand is now a completely independent state, and has been since 1948. Who could resist being administered by the nation that invented puff pastry, beurre blanc, and the thong?

We began our search in high spirits, well-equipped with Crozet’s expert instructions. But when we examined the sketches he’d made of Moturua island, we hit our first snag.

We were missing a bay. Crozet had drawn three bays on the west side of Moturua, but modern charts only show two.

For a moment, this gave us pause, but we soon recovered. New Zealand, after all, is in the crossfire of every foul weather system blowing across the Tasman. It was perfectly understandable that in more than two hundred years, the coastline might have shifted and changed. Of course, it was unfortunate that Crozet’s instructions pivoted on an accurate estimation of the high-tide line, something that would have moved dramatically with the shifting sands. But our quest rose above such piddling details. We continued undeterred.

We arrived at Mangahawea Bay shortly after high tide, the sand still moist in a clear line across the beach. The sun was high, waves crashing like broken glass in the sharp New Zealand light. Together with our new friend John, a singlehander from Brazil, we stood side by side, and began counting paces.

And here, we ran into our next difficulty. For how long, exactly, is a pace? Is it a bold stride, as Peter thought, or the length of the average man’s boot, as my father had told me years ago? How long, exactly was the average man’s boot in the eighteenth century? Weren’t people small back then? What size shoe did they wear?

Then, as I soon learned, there was the problem of all the stuff in the way. Beaches are not empty places, as a rule. They are scattered with rocks, shells, and yucky pieces of rotting seaweed that you don’t want to touch. I counted my steps: sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. When I had to navigate a particularly large piece of driftwood, I stepped over it, adding half a pace to my usual stride. Nineteen and a half, twenty and a half, twenty one and a half.

No one ever said anything about fractions of a pace. I wasn’t even sure if they had fractions in 1772. We finished counting steps, and took note of our positions. I was in the rear, Peter and Silas were in the middle, and John was way the hell out front. Between us, I estimated a good two hundred feet of distance. Now what? Do we dig a trench? I cast a look over my shoulder, disappointed to see our footprints in the sand. Preoccupied with counting, our path had meandered and curved, hardly at right angles to the high-tide line. Wherever that was.

Of course, after quaffing an entire bottle of cognac, the French were probably a little wobbly on their feet as well. So perhaps we were being historically accurate.

In our favor, we were now near an actual stream, and according to Crozet’s instructions, we should count ten paces to the left. But ten paces from where, exactly? The bank of the stream? The edge of the water? How high was the stream, when they buried their bottle?

Annoyed and frustrated, Peter kicked the sand. And then he found it. A bottle, glinting in the sun.

“It’s here!” he called. “Come look!”

John and I came running, and we held the precious artifact reverently in our hands. It wasn’t a cognac bottle after all, as we’d so innocently assumed. It was an empty bottle of Nestle Quik, its plastic lid faded and worn with age.

“Are you sure this is it?” John asked doubtfully. “Did they have plastic in those days?”

“Of course this is it,” I chided him. “What else could it be?”

Peter held up the bottle, tilting it gently. Inside, some sand and a few pebbles slid across the glass. “Where’s the note?” he asked.

“Stolen,” I told him. “Obviously. By British agents who wanted to destroy France’s claim to the land.”

Peter and John nodded, exchanging a dubious look. It’s not my fault they’re ignorant. People should read more history, then they’d have a better idea of what they’re dealing with.

Take Marion du Fresne, for example. If he’d read up on Captain Cook’s voyage, he would have learned that this strange new land had already been discovered by Great Britain. He would have read, too, about Cook’s encounters with the Maori, how they had a tendency toward sudden mood swings. And he would have learned about the grisly way they supplemented their seafood and kumara-based diet.

But du Fresne didn’t know any of this. And that’s how he ended up in pieces, roasting slowly in an underground oven.

But Sereia’s crew will not fall victim to such heedless ignorance. The rest of the world may think Britain held legal dominion over New Zealand for a century, but not us. We have the bottle that held the French claim. We have the proof.

It’s right here, in our galley, sprouting lentils. And after all these years, it’s doing an excellent job.

Sources:

New Zealand in History
Kelly, L.G. "In the Path of Marion du Fresne," The Journal of the Polynesian Society (Vol. 42, No. 166)

Flagpole

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:55:00 +0000

By the time I get to the top of Te Maiki hill, I’m amazed Hone Heke had the energy to chop anything down. It’s a hell of a climb up here, a steep and winding track through tangled bush. And there’s a pretty good path for us to walk on. Back in 1844, running up this hill would have meant shoving your way through bushes and brambles, overgrown trees and angry British soldiers.

When we get to the top, the entire Bay of Islands is laid out before us. We can see all the way across to Opua, out to Cape Brett and the famous Hole in the Rock. And right here, standing firm in thirty-five knots of wind, is an empty flagpole. That's what we came to find.

In 1844, this flagpole really pissed off one man: Hone Heke, chief of the Nga Puhi tribe in the Bay of Islands. And he was the one who’d bought it in the first place. It was supposed to be a symbol of the peace between Maori and Pakeha. But the British, who had promised to raise the Maori flag, were flying the Union Jack instead. And Heke was starting to feel like that piece of paper he’d signed four years earlier—the Treaty of Waitangi—might have been a big mistake. More and more, the English were calling the shots: telling his people they couldn’t chop down their own trees, moving the capital to Auckland so nobody was making any money up in the Bay of Islands anymore. Then they hanged the Maori son of a local chief for killing a white family—something that wasn’t their business, and wasn’t their affair. Little by little, the English were stealing Heke’s rangatiratanga—his tribal authority—and it was time he taught them a lesson.

So he hacked down the flagpole. Or, depending on who you ask, Heke might have ordered one of his men to do it. But either way, the Union Jack was found lying in the dirt, and the British had to build another monument to Empire, this one at their own expense.

They did. And six months later, Heke chopped that one down, too.

The British built a third flagpole within a week. And less than two days later, it lay in splinters on the ground.

What was wrong with these tattooed savages? Why were they getting so angry, when they’d willingly signed a treaty that gave the British complete rights of government? As it turns out, the problems were complicated, but a lot of it came down to sloppy translation.

The Treaty of Waitangi wasn’t written by lawyers or career politicians, but by William Hobson, a navy man, and James Busby—a retired grape farmer. Though they did their best, these guys didn’t think about the finer points of the law. And when they realized that an English treaty would sound like babbling gibberish to a gathering of Maori chiefs, they brought in Reverend Henry Williams to translate it. Williams gave it his best shot, but he didn’t have much time. He pulled an all-nighter to crank out a Maori version of the treaty by morning.

The result was that the Maori chieftains signed a subtly different document to the one that had been read to them in English. In short, they thought they were retaining chieftainship over their land and all their treasures. And as far as the English were concerned, they’d just pledged allegiance to the Queen.

The fourth flagpole the British built on Te Maiki hill was made to last. They sheathed the bottom twenty feet in iron, and assigned armed guards to defend it. So on March 10, 1845, Hone Heke sacked the town.

The Battle of Kororareka probably wasn’t intended to be as deadly as it was. A few muskets fired, a diversion created, and Heke and his men could have chopped down the fourth flagpole, sending the English a serious message. But unfortunately, some poor jerk dropped his pipe on a barrel of gunpowder. When British troops saw the explosion, they assumed that war had begun. And from the safety of their ships, they fired on the town.

Kororareka burned. And Hone Heke, undeterred by iron sheathing, chopped down the flagpole for the fourth time.

Not every building in town was reduced to ashes, though many were destroyed. Christ Church still stands, and you can stick your finger in the musket holes left over from Hone Heke’s war. But for more than a decade, no one built another flagpole. It was just too dangerous.

By 1857, tempers had cooled a little, and the flagpole was replaced. This one—the fifth to be built on Te Maiki Hill—has a massive iron base, at least twenty feet high. The control lines are sealed in a locked box, so no one can raise his own flag. If Hone Heke wanted to knock this one down, he’d need more than an axe. He’d need an acetylene torch.

But it’s possible he wouldn’t even bother. On the day we visited, there wasn’t any flag flying at all.

Differences

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 22:16:00 +0000

They don’t sell coyote fat talismans at the local supermarket here in Paihia, which is a disappointment. They have other weird and terrifying products, such as pre-cooked spaghetti in a can, but no amulets, charms or magical spells.

Cruising in New Zealand is different that way.

In Mexico, you always knew your meat was fresh in the market. You knew this by evaluating the fly-to-meat ratio on the eviscerated carcass. Also, the good meat stands had packs of feral dogs hanging around, hoping for scraps. The bad meat stands didn’t have any dogs. This is because they were selling the dogs, butchered and sliced, as carne asada.

The same goes for chickens. In El Salvador, I knew my chicken was fresh, because it was waddling around in a cage with a worried expression on its face. And our Thanksgiving turkey in Guatemala was as fresh as they come. We were secure in this fact, since we’d spent the afternoon chopping its head off with a machete.

But here in the Paihia supermarket, all of the meat is in shrink-wrapped containers, cleaned and labeled and priced. There’s not a fly to be seen, not a maggot, not a dog. The only way to gauge the freshness of the meat is to read the date stamp some joker slapped on the package. And who’s to say if he’s telling the truth? Personally, I’d rather follow the swarm of flies.

There are flies in New Zealand, just a different variety. New Zealand has a teeny-tiny black fly with the scientific name Austrosimulium australense, which is Latin for “Total Fucking Asshole.” Long adopted by Satan as his Minion on Earth, the black fly is the only known insect whose bite is approximately four million times larger than its body. You can’t see them, and you can’t feel their sting. Then, hours later, as you lie snug in your bunk, a welt the size of a silver dollar will appear on your skin. You’ll start itching in your sleep, and you won’t wake up until you have the curious sensation of scratching your own fibula, ribbons of flesh formerly known as your ankle scattering the sheets around you.

Sailing in New Zealand brings another curious challenge, one commonly known as “maintaining personal hygiene.” Our lack of a shower never troubled us in the tropics, since each new anchorage offered a fresh place to swim, usually with excellent snorkeling. Whenever we got a bit sticky, we just hopped in the drink, then pulled ourselves on deck to air-dry in the sunshine. We were clean and suntanned, our skin glittering with salt crystals. It was a halcyon existence really, sort of like Brooke Shields and that blonde guy in Blue Lagoon.

Not so in New Zealand. Wishing to avoid hypothermia, chilblains, and all their attendant discomforts, we don’t swim here. We see quite a few penguins paddling around our boat, but we take that as a sign that the water’s not warm enough for humans. Instead, we stew in our long underwear for days at a time, growing cysts and carbuncles and other plagues of the medieval unwashed.

On the other hand, the water’s safe to drink. There’s Parmesan cheese in the grocery store. Unlike San Salvador, you can walk down the street without being menaced by bored teenagers with pump action shotguns.

So what’s a carbuncle, more or less? As long as we don’t have to eat that tinned spaghetti, we'll just scratch those black fly bites and smile.

Passage to Russell

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:43:00 +0000

Unlike Captain Cook, we didn’t have four or five hundred natives with “tattou’d backsides” rowing out to meet us as we rounded Cape Brett. Instead, we had a gorgeous, peaceful sail up to the Bay of Islands, with fifteen knots on the port beam and not a lump of swell. These are the conditions Sereia loves best. Silas and I took a gentle nap down below, lulled to sleep by the rushing ocean as Peter steered us north at seven knots.

And then we rounded the Cape, and it all went to custard.

Sailing in New Zealand in 2009, surfing the Internet from my shipboard laptop, it’s hard to remember that just a couple of hundred years ago, Captain Cook was the first European to chart this wild coast. But study a map, and you’ll see his mark is everywhere. We pass Piercy Island off Cape Brett, a dramatic rock formation with a massive hole in it. The name is Cook’s little joke—he named Cape Brett and Piercy Island after one of the Lords of the Admiralty, Sr. Percy Brett—only he changed the spelling in honor of the rock that was “perced quite thro'…like the Arch of a Bridge.”

Today, it’s a tourist attraction. For a hundred bucks, you can take a speedboat ride out to “Hole in the Rock,” and they’ll buzz you right through the stone archway. They’ll probably tattoo your backside, too, for an extra fifty bucks, then take you back to Russell for hot chips and cold beer.

We didn’t chance the archway, and instead steered a course between rock and cape. Once we turned West toward the Bay of Islands, two things happened in quick succession. The wind, so recently friendly and on our beam, blew right in our teeth. The chop kicked up, Sereia started to hobby horse, and our speed cut right in half. Then the rubbish bin went hurtling across the cabin, and I realized that I’d forgotten how to stow.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been in anything like a sloppy sea, and I hadn’t really bothered with the nonskid. Now the cabin sole was awash in coffee grounds, soup cans and dirty nappies, and my mistake was abundantly clear. If Cook had been my Captain, he would have ordered a dozen lashes.

As it happens, Cook spent a lot of time on this passage ordering lashes for his men, who seem to have been a ragtag bunch of ruffians. There were Cox, Stephens and Paroyra, who left their guard duty while ashore and prowled off to snatch potatoes from the Maori. Then, just two days later, Gunner Collin, Alex Simpson and Richard Littleboy got hold of the spirit cask and managed to swipe ten gallons of rum, getting dead drunk in the process and becoming completely “useless to the ship.” Those three probably didn’t feel their lashes, but they would have felt the pain of their other punishment: no more rum rations until they made up for what they’d stolen.

By comparison, the natives Cook met along the way were positively civilized. They may have sported feathers and dogskin cloaks, but for the most part “they dealt very fair and friendly .” They sold fresh fish and kumara to the English, came aboard and accepted gifts of cloth and iron nails. Every now and then they got a bit nasty, performing a war dance, tossing stones at the men, or trying to snatch a shore boat from under Cook’s watchful gaze, so he’d just order some muskets fired above their heads, or shoot them with “small shott.” For an eighteenth century white guy, Cook was pretty enlightened. He seemed to understand that the shows of aggression were part of Maori culture, a need to preserve mana by showing him they were unafraid. He wrote: “I avoided killing any one of them as much as possible and for that reason withheld our people from fireing.”

And if his men were caught stealing rum and potatoes, it’s hard to blame them. Cook mentions several times how pleased he is to see “sellery” growing ashore, “for this I still continue to be boild every morning with Oatmeal and Portable Soup for the ships companies breakfast.” Boiled celery, oatmeal, and dried soup. Every morning. It’s enough to make you want to swipe a potato or two, or a flagon of rum, and damn the consequences.

As for Sereia’s crew, we pulled into Russell at nightfall, choking down a horrible meal of rice and roasted squash because it was too late to find our bearings on shore. But the very next morning, we dashed into town, where we gorged ourselves on fresh fruit, fried eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, blueberry muffins, and great big frothy coffees. If Captain Cook had provided rations like that for his men, they would have followed him to the ends of the earth.

On second thought, they did follow him to the ends of the earth. Even without the frothy coffees. Or the blueberry muffins.

Damn, that man was a hell of a sailor.

[Excerpts from Captain Cook's Journal aboard the Endeavor come from the National Library of Australia, http://southseas.nla.gov.au]

The DIMPLER™

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 23:22:00 +0000

Is your child not cute enough?

Do you get sympathetic looks from strangers?

Try THE DIMPLER™
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Babies without dimples can be unattractive and unruly, giving them a difficult start in life. This baby refuses to smile or even open his eyes for the camera. Instead, he prefers to snarl and drool, resembling an ill-tempered ferret.

Note the precious, life-changing dimple on the right hand side of this baby's face. With his new-found cuteness, this baby now laughs and smiles, completely transformed from the repugnant devil child pictured above. In fact, his parents are now completing early applications to MIT and teaching him Japanese. Now that he's Cute-as-a-Button™, the sky's the limit for this little dimple!

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Will THE DIMPLER™ hurt my baby?
While THE DIMPLER™’s simple patented procedure may produce some discomfort in your baby, it’s nothing compared to the lifetime of pain he or she will feel for being ugly and/or not cute. Remember, THE DIMPLER™ takes a moment, but cuteness is forever!

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Before we found THE DIMPLER™, my baby couldn’t even walk or talk. He was so unattractive and unruly, we thought he was retarded! Now that he has a dimple, he still can’t walk or talk, but he looks so cute that we don’t care. THANK YOU, DIMPLER™!

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Payment plans available. Side effects may include, but are not limited to, bleeding, sepsis, and blood-curdling screams. Depending on your country of residence, children may be confiscated by Child Protective Services or other well-meaning government agency. Dr. Peter “Hookmaster” Murphy is not responsible for negative side effects, up to and including your child’s need for future psychiatric evaluation and/or counseling. Dr. Peter “Hookmaster” Murphy is not actually a doctor, he’s just some guy with a hook. Cute-As-A-Button™, THE DIMPLER™, Hookmaster™, and Cuteness Technology™ are registered trademarks, all rights reserved.

Rob

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:34:00 +0000

The first thing Rob tells us is that our fish is full of worms.

“She’ll be right for bait,” he smiles. “Barracuda. Kiwis call ‘em cooters, we don’t eat them really. They’ve got a lot of worms.”

Peter and I concede that we had seen some worms in the meat, but we’d just cut them out. Besides, surely if the fish was cooked thoroughly, the worms would die?

“Not the eggs though.” Rob takes a slug of our feijoa wine. “You’ll want to freeze the meat overnight. That’ll kill the eggs. Otherwise you’ll get infected with the worms.”

He knows about hunting and fishing and skinning. Born on the Chatham Islands, part Moriori, Rob’s grandfather raised him from the age of four months on a series of working sailboats. “I’ve got pictures of some real old men, the old cooks and that, bottle-feeding me.”

He warns us he’ll be making some noise tonight, when he’s out shooting rabbit. “Need some tucker to stock up the freezer,” he explains, with a crooked-toothed grin. He has a bushy beard and a grey Confederate soldier’s cap perched atop his head, crossed yellow muskets embroidered in the wool. He’s wearing a filthy hoody, an old pair blue shorts. I imagine he’d rather wear the same clothes every day than do the bloody laundry.

We sit in the cockpit, enjoying the sunshine in Mimiwhangata Bay, the gentle roll of our boat at anchor.

“My Dad was a writer, pretty famous. Bit of a hunter, bit of a bushman, like that. Wrote about the old New Zealand, the way it was. Pub yarns. I'm probably one of sixteen kids. That I know about. He was a dad to about 12 of them.”

“And you?”

“I was one of the lucky ones, that escaped. He wasn't exactly the best of dads. But if I could have impregnated as many women as he did, I wouldn't have minded.”

I ask him who his father was, and he tells me. He really is famous. I’ve heard of him, even with my tiny knowledge of New Zealand literature. “Is he still alive?”

“Dead now. Too much smoking and drinking and living the good life. Can’t blame him for that, I guess.”

Rob takes us on a walk around the nature reserve. We hike up a hill, thick green grass tangled in our Tevas. From the top, we see a stunning vista: jagged rocks crumbling into the ocean, the water shifting from turquoise to darkest blue as the bottom drops away. The view extends to the horizon: the crashing surf blends into rolling swell, and then the great white Pacific, glinting beneath the sun.

Rob’s lived on a boat his entire life, except when he was in Japan for ten years, teaching English. “I faked a university degree, a Bachelor in the arts. Got one printed out and sent over there, and –yeah, 'cause the money was good and everything else. Then I met a Japanese girl, and we got married. We had our twins–in Japan they call 'em "halves," but we called 'em "doubles," 'cause they got a bit of Japanese and a bit of Kiwi in ‘em.”

Since we are damn near exhausted keeping up with one toddler, the thought of twins makes us shiver. “Twins?” Peter asks. “What was that like?”

“Dunno mate,” Rob replies. “Didn’t have much to do with it.” He’s in touch with them now, though. His son’s a bush pilot, flying planes in Papua New Guinea. As to his daughter, she’s studying to be a geisha in Japan.

“It's the last path I'd ever want her to take, but she's stuck with it, it's what she wants to do. A lot of training, a lot of hard work. She's on good money yeah, for Japanese standards and everything else, but she'll never be fully into it till she's about thirty.”

He tells us how she has to study poetry and music, as well as business and the law. She has to be able to sit down with anyone, and converse intelligently on any subject. “Why in the world wouldn’t you want her to do it, then?” I ask, confused. “It sounds as though you’d be very proud of her.”

“Well…” he trails off. “What’s wrong with being the next Jean Batten, or Sir Edmund Hillary?”

“That’s a pretty tall order,” mutters Peter.

Rob points out a Pohutukawa, a magnificent tree with great, straining branches, extended and cupped as though offering their leaves to the sky. The tree is covered with vines, thousands of tiny tendrils twisting around branches and trunk, a symbiotic circulatory system.

The Pohutukawa is sacred to the Maori. There’s a lone, ghostly tree up at the tip of Cape Reinga, at the northernmost edge of the country. That’s where the spirits of the Maori are said to go when they die, into the tree and down through the root system, and on to Hawaiiki, their mythical home.

“Do you take your boat up to the islands much?” I ask. “Fiji? Tonga?”

Rob shakes his head. “I actually prefer the Southern Ocean to be honest. I go cruising down there, go round in circles for a few months, and come back when I run out of food.”

“The Southern Ocean?” I ask. That’s sort of like jogging up Everest for a bit of a holiday. I think about his fiberglass boat, with no pilothouse, not even a dodger. “Ever see anything scary down there?”

“Ninety knots,” he chuckles. “Your rigging actually breaks 'cause it's so iced up, just goes brittle and snaps. Lost my mast and the whole lot. Got saved by some blokes at Scott Base.”

“Wait a minute,” I interrupt. “Scott Base? Isn't that in the Antarctic? What the hell were you doing down there?”

“Something about that Southern Ocean,” he recalls fondly. “You can get a month of crap, then one day, the sky will open up, you'll get a huge great big southern swell, and that southern breeze, about twenty knots, and so you'll get some of the big whales coming up, it just makes the last thirty days all worthwhile, even just for a ten minute window like that. You've got a great big whale riding up, and a bit of iceberg out the back.”

“Icebergs,” I repeat. “Jesus.”

“ You don't have to worry about mosquitoes down there,” he adds.

“No,” I say, lamely. “I guess not.”

That afternoon, he brings round a book, by his useless mongrel of a father. “Just please return it,” he asks us. “I just—I want it back.”

It’s a book of short stories, and I read several of them. The writing is excellent, luminous and spare. The stories are full of gum boots, sodden pastureland, hot bowls of porridge, and warm beer. They take place in New Zealand, forty or fifty years ago. It’s clear that Rob’s father loved the outdoor life, self-sufficiency, “a good keen man” who can stand on his own two feet in the world.

Setting the stories aside, I reflect that Rob’s father would have been proud of his son’s adventures in the Southern Ocean, his unconventional kids, his skill with a rifle and a knife.

And I wonder if he knew about any of it.

Tutukaka

noreply@blogger.com (Antonia) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 05:53:00 +0000

Flipping through our cruising guide for the North Island, Peter sighed in despair. “JESUS,” he complained. “Rangaruru, Rangamumu, these names are driving me fucking crazy. It’s a dyslexic’s nightmare out here.”

And it’s true, the Maori place names can be difficult for English-speaking pakeha such as ourselves. Take Taumatawhakatangihangakoauau Atamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu, for example. Though it’s situated in Hawke’s Bay, which is a very lovely area that produces some rather famous wines, we’ll likely give it a miss. We’d crash the boat just trying to read the place name on a chart.

So we compromised, and sailed to Tutukaka instead. Actually, we weren’t trying to go to Tutukaka. We were trying to get to Mimiwhangata (the “wh” is pronounced as an “f,” just to make things easy for you). But we didn’t exactly make it there.

Allow me to explain.

The morning dawned calm and overcast, tendrils of fog slinking over the hilltops. We were right at the mouth of the Pacific, in a lovely little inlet called McLeod’s Bay. The New Zealand landscape is like England, with a twist: you see rolling hills and grazing sheep, topped by jagged peaks shaped like raunchy Polynesian sex gods. And then a penguin swims by, and you think: “Ah. We’re not in Brighton, after all. In fact, we’re rather a long way away.”

Here’s the view from our toilet, known to salty dogs as the “head:”

For three and a half months, we’ve been working, and spending our savings, and worrying about babies and buckets and all sorts of nightmares, and it hasn’t been fun at all. Then last night I went to have a pee, and I discovered this spectacularly beautiful sunset—the kind you see so often from a boat that you take them for granted—and I thought: “OH. THAT’s why we’re doing this. It’s supposed to be beautiful. It’s supposed to be FUN.”

And today was fun. At first.

To begin with, the passage was positively poetic. We raised anchor, and found to our surprise a collection of tiny green and purple starfish, clinging to the anchor chain. This would have been especially sweet and picturesque if the chain hadn’t already snapped off several of their delicate little arms:

Silas was raring to go. In fact, he wasn’t really interested in relinquishing the helm.

For awhile, he was content with peering out at his papa from the companionway.

Then he started to yawn, and I lay down with him for a nap. And it was at this juncture that the wise words of Douglas Adams came back to me: “A towel,” he wrote, “is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.” He was right, of course, and same holds true for people who sail with small children. Only in our case, six or seven towels, and a rubber sheet, would have possibly been more a propos.

Silas, I can tell you with authority, had a ham omelette, apple juice, and water for breakfast. In copious quantities. Soon, these ingredients—in liquid form—were all over Silas, his clothes, his mother, and our bed. The poor little nipper was seasick, and everything was covered in barf.

At that moment, Peter started hollering. “FISH!! I CAUGHT A FISH!!” he crowed from the cockpit. “Wanna come up and gut it?”

“Not now,” I called, cradling my rancid baby. “Can we have another towel?”

We stripped the baby down, and wrapped him up. Then I brought him on deck, knowing—with the wisdom of someone who has been seasick for a fair proportion of my own life—that the fresh air would make him feel better. On deck, in the presence of a large, gory fish, he fell asleep.

“Do you think we’re nearly there?” I asked, hopefully.

Peter looked perturbed. “Did I say one o’clock? Uh. Maybe I mixed up kilometers and miles. Hang on.”

He went down below, and came up looking worried. “We’re just about a quarter of the way to Mimi—Mimi—Mimi whatever the fuck it is,” he admitted. “It’s actually, uh, forty miles to get there.”

I held Silas tighter. “Can we pull in anywhere closer? I think forty miles is too much for the first day.”

Peter, because he is a hero and a gentleman, plotted a new course. Silas took an exceptionally long nap, as only seasick and dehydrated babies can do. And we pulled in to Tutukaka, which is a very beautiful bay, rimmed with rocky green hills and cheerful holiday homes.

A fleet—or perhaps they were a gaggle? a pride?—of kayaks greeted us as we set our anchor. Silas slept soundly. I made fish tacos. And Peter sipped a glass of feijoa wine, practicing silently to himself how to pronounce our next anchorage.