If patience is a virtue, we must be approaching sainthood by now. It’s been a month of waiting for a weather window, a month since Geoff and Scottie arrived. Sadly Scottie ran out of time due to his other commitments, and has had to return home, so it’s back to Threecans again. Continue reading “Please Release Me – Opua, NZ”

We’ve been ready to leave NZ for the past two weeks, but the weather gods must be having too much fun messing with our heads. Just when we think there’s a window opening up, it gets slammed on our fingers. Ouch! Continue reading “Stir Crazy – Opua, NZ”

It can be very frustrating waiting for a weather window, and finding enough activities to keep ourselves occupied becomes a bit of a challenge. But when our buddies on ‘Escape Velocity’ suggested an outing to the public toilets at Kawakawa some 10km away, we thought they must have a particularly severe case of cabin fever (or something much worse). Continue reading “Skip To My Lou – Kawakawa, NZ”

We’re delighted that Geoff and Scottie have been able to join us on the passage to Fiji. As many of you know, Geoff Sherman (aka ‘Sherm’, aka ‘The Pirate’) is very familiar to Toucan, having travelled with us from the Caribbean to the Marquesas last year. Last time we saw Scottie was in 2010 when we were crewing together on ‘Secret Men’s Business’, in the Sydney-Hobart. So it was wonderful to see them both step off the bus from Auckland last Wednesday ready for the next exciting chapter in Toucan’s travels. Continue reading “On The Road Again (sort of, maybe) – Opua, Bay of Islands”

Town Basin Marina is a log-jam of cruising boats waiting for a weather window to leave NZ. Sharon and Brian at the Marina office are wonderful at being able to squeeze in ‘just one more’, including us. In fact, there’s so many big cats here it’s starting to look like a safari park… Continue reading “Exodus – Town Basin Marina, Whangarei”

Yakka noun. Work, strenuous labour, hard yakka, a common Australian phrase.

Forgive us. It’s been a long time between blogs and for those of you not on Facebook it might seem as if we’ve dropped off the edge of the world. In fact it’s quite the opposite – for the last eight weeks we’ve been high and dry, living and working on the hardstand while we grind through the seemingly endless list of boat jobs. Continue reading “Hard Yakka – Norsand Boatyard, Whangarei”