Leaving Aotearoa

Kia Ora Faithfull Followers,

Your absent narrator is back, and happy about this, to continue sharing experiences and pictures from my travels. After being in the same place for two years I am very ready and stoked to start cruising again, new places to journey to, time to be spent with friends and making new ones, waves to be surfed and beers to be drunk. I will keep this post short and hopefully do shorter more frequent posts in the future as long as I am in an internet serviced area.

My one year in New Zealand obviously turned into two, when my visa was about to expire I decided I was not ready to leave, probably spent too much time and money having fun, oops, oh well. Frantically I started researching ways to get another working visa and with the help of my employer we were able to hustle up an Essential Service Working Visa based on the demand for skilled building personnel and the specialty construction we provide. In typical Jonny fashion I left everything to the last minute and didn’t find out I was allowed to stay until after I was supposed to have left, was a bit of a stressful time.

Mostly my time in New Zealand was just living life, going to work, hanging out on weekends, doing some boat projects etc. A couple highlights were when my friend Cara from the coast came out for a six week visit and we did some touristy things, went for a sail, surfed, and celebrated my birthday and Christmas. It was very nice to have someone from back home to spend time with over the holiday season. Also my sister came out for a quick visit which really meant a lot to me; with a family she doesn’t get too much time to spend by herself so to choose to come and hang out with me was touching. We did some touristy things as well and the Waitomo Caves were definitely a highlight.

Over the period of time that I have been away now things inevitably happen back home and I miss out. There were some deaths in my family and I felt rather guilty I was not around to offer and show my support, sending e-mails at such times seem rather impersonal. On a much brighter note there were some births as well, my son Evan and his girlfriend Kayla are now the proud parents of my beautiful granddaughter Madison, so now I am not only an absent father I am also an absent Opa. For the first time in the past three years planning a trip home seems very important, sometime, somehow I will make this happen. A few close friends of mine have also added to their families and thankfully due to the internet I can still feel included in a small way.

The fluid plan for the next little bit is to sail back to Fiji where my daughter Chloe will come for a month and her boyfriend Cameron for two weeks, very much looking forward to this. After a couple months in Fiji I will head to Vanuatu for a couple months, can’t wait, have heard many amazing things, and then it’s off to the Solomon Islands to be out of the Tropical Cyclone area by December. My friends Kat and Seiorse should arrive in Fiji around the same time and we are hoping on meeting up with a few other friends we met in New Zealand who have similar cruising plans, I am hoping this all works out as it will be nice not to be totally alone the whole time.

After being in one place for so long leaving is a little bittersweet as I have made some really good friends here who are not gypsy sailors. I have worked daily with the same guys and probably spent more waking hours with them than their families have over the past two years. We have had work parties and family bbq’s on the beach, I have gotten to know kids and even met parents from overseas, we even almost went bowling. We all plan on staying in touch and hope to meet up again somewhere but sometimes life gets in the way and all you can do his cherish the memories and see what happens.

That’s the Coles notes of the last year and half, of course much more has happened but that’s going to have to do. I would like to send huge thanks to all the people who have kept in touch, it means heaps to me. As always I look forward to hearing from people and seeing pictures, if you have some time send away. The next post should be from Fiji in a couple weeks depending on the wind.

Chur