The Great Barrier Island

I learned how to clean scallops. Eating them was even more fun than cleaning.





We climbed a very steep mountain with a 360 degree view and raced back down the mountain so I could be reunited with my baby.

Great Barrier Island

I don't even know how to summarize our experiences here. This large island is 33 miles from where we usually moor the boat. It feels like a sailor's playground. Dozens of coves face many directions and provide flat calm anchoring in any wind condition.

My favorite place so far has been Smokehouse Bay. Years ago, the family that owns the property ashore envisioned a place for boaties to build fires for smoking fish. The idea blossomed and grew into an area that has a bath house with a small woodstove outside to heat the water for a shower and a tub inside. There's also an outdoor shower/tub combo that has ho water plumbed to it. In the center of the clearing is a fire pit with picnic tables around it. On the other side of the clearing is the large fish smokehouse. Right next to shore in amongst some flax bushes are sinks with plumbed water and old-fashioned laundry wringers attached. Clotheslines are erected on a small rock outcropping nearby. Hundreds of people use the facilities here every week during the summer but, despite the absence of garbage bins, the whole area is tidy and well-kept.

Brian gave Eloise a swim lesson in the warm water of the outdoor tub a few days ago. She splashed and smiled and performed her drills with him quite happily.

Pictures are coming soon.

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My Baby is pretty darn amazing.

Well, the world might be all excited about a new year. But, for me the fireworks should be for my little one's giant grins or her little milestones. Brian, Eloise, and I have spent the last couple of weeks aboard Nomad with only short forays ashore or to town. We go to the beaches around the area and have Eloise splash in the quiet shallow spots. It's a far cry from Brian's solo days of chasing surf, but this family life stuff suits.

The week before Christmas, found us down in the Coramandel peninsula region exploring anchorages tucked in cattle grazing lands.

We spent Christmas with our good friends John and Annette and their family. One of my highlights was seeing octogenarian, Grandma Sheila, sitting on the floor next to Eloise, playing and chatting with her.

With the new year we have a friend from Santa Cruz, Tiffany Harmon, aboard for a few days before she heads off to road trip through New Zealand. She brought us a fresh infusion of diapers! ... as well as a few other treats from home. We're also really grateful to have Tiffany teaching us how to teach Eloise to swim.

Eloise continues to be a very contented baby. Her first tooth is still working its way in and upsetting her nap schedule a bit but all in all, she is happy. She delights in splashing water so hard that it covers her face makes her sputter. She figured out how to sit up (when we place her) right before Christmas, and now she plays contentedly on her own, sitting with pillows around her under the galley table. She inchwormed herself one morning about 3 inches. That was a big deal to me. ;) In the cockpit, when she's on her back, she can push her self backwards a few feet. And she continues to delight in bouncing in all forms. The term "bouncing baby" really is accurate. But her biggest accomplishment is to charm the hearts of all who meet her. She spreads smiles wherever she goes.

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Food Log

I never feel as if I've got a true mental picture of a someone's trip, whether to a restaurant or to a foreign country, unless I've heard what they ate. Here is a culinary image:

Fish Stock:
1. catch some fish (or have friends catch fish) and fillet it.
2. Save all of the viscera, bones, scales, entire head (including eyeballs!)
3. Toss the above parts into a pressure cooker and fill with water even with the top of the mess.
4. Optional: add a bay leaf
5. Bring the pot to pressure and cook for 20 or so minutes.
6. when pot is ready to open, do so and pour the entire brew through a very fine strainer.
7. Keep the juice and use as the base for soups and chowders.
8. Toss the particles overboard after picking through the head for choice scraps of very tasty meat.

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Life in New Zealand

View on a hike from Lagoon Bay. We took a short dinghy ride from Scott's Landing to this bay.



This is Eloise trying out her high chair and wearing the excellent sun hat she wears almost every day.





John Carr frying freshly caught snapper aboard Nomad on Thanksgiving weekend

Newsflash: Eloise banished to mucky stable

I’ve been thinking about Christmas from a different perspective lately. Though she’s only been in our lives for five quick months, Eloise’s presence has been life-changing.

Verses I’ve heard all of my life mean so much more. The idea of God as a Father has become three-dimensional. I wonder about the deep well of emotions that I have for Eloise. If I feel like this about her, does that really mean God feels that way about insignificant me? The delight I have when Eloise acquires a milestone as little as pushing herself up with her arms must equally translate to the God levelIf that’s the case, then he must feel that same immense delight when he sees EACH ONE of his millions of children developing as he planned. On the flip side, when the day comes for Eloise to first be cruel or hateful, I will be sad because I see her as a beautiful, perfect creature. I think about God carrying the weight of that type of sadness for all of us unique and individually created people when we choose to be hateful or choose our own path away from him.

Then images from Bethlehem pop into my head. The Son of God transmogrified from the celestial dimension into a grubby, murderous land. That would be far worse than if I decided to drop Eloise off in the home of known child abusers. How could God have been willing to rip himself apart like that? The only possible answer is that he so longed for the hearts of those murderous grubby people that he was willing to carry the sorrow of Jesus’ absence. And so God dropped his beloved Son off at a stable in a cold, tiny town in the middle of the night.

But the loving daddy in him couldn’t just leave it like that. He had to tell people about it. As any devoted father would do, God hired a choir and sent birth announcements to whomever in the area might listen. As it turns out, it was some shepherds and some “heathen” stargazers. They left their sheep and their telescopes and headed to visit the baby, bringing gifts. Reminds me a lot of the friends and family members who heard of Eloise’s birth and took off work and traveled to come ooh and aaah and take pictures.

So this Christmas I plan to make the effort to oooh and aaah over Jesus, take pictures. But that’s just the beginning. Many of those same people who came to ooh and aah over Eloise follow her life closely. They want updates. They want cuddles. They want to know every drooling detail. But really they want her to come home, because they love her.

There’s more to Christmas than the snapshot of a mucky stable. It’s really the on-going story of a daddy aching for each one of his kids to come home.

family life

In the month since we arrived in New Zealand, Eloise has practiced sitting up, growing hair and getting to know new people who love her and treat her like she's just the cleverest girl ever. Brian and I have practiced cleaning out the boat's nooks and corners and sailing (did some zig-zagging across the Mahurangi harbour this past weekend), and we bought a station wagon, complete with a "baby on board" sign suction-cupped to the side window. Unbeknownst to us, the words "Subaru Legacy" are code for "break into me and steal me". A week after purchasing this 1994 wagon, it was taken for a joy ride and relieved of our belongings (they didn't take the car seat!). Thanks to friends and strangers, it's back on the road and we're being careful to remove all objects of value before parking it anywhere.

My favorite times of the day are still the moments when I peel back the blanket over Eloise's bed. Her face lights up and her whole body wriggles with joy. After the initial reaction, she sometimes pulls her crocheted snuggle blanket over her face and then peers out again with that same enormous gummy smile.

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