Last week has been a very busy one – our days are usually filled with little adventures of some sort and sitting still doesn’t happen very often.

About a week ago I went to the bay of Islands for a photo shoot while sailing my new Laura Dekker Minicat. We went out about 20nm on a 72 foot sailing vessel to a location where clear water rolled onto a white beach and then green hills took over the rolling. A beautifull stunning little bay! We spent some sunny hours there but at the end of that day the sailboat had to keep going to other locations – it was not returning home to where my car was. So I sailed the 20nm back to Opua. The wind was perfect. I had a great reach almost the whole way down with some bigger waves (well… big in Minicat terms) backed by 15-20knots of wind. I already capsized before I had even left the bay…

It took me about 3 hours to get back to the car. It was a fantastic sail in such delightful scenery. Lush green islands covered in fog with sun-rays breaking through to point out some beautiful details. Sometimes there is moments so beautiful that I just simply don’t know what to do with it. Do I shout out of joy or jump up and down? Do I put it on camera to capture it all? Or should I just sit and enjoy it? Mostly I end up doing it all but it still doesn’t seem enough. The natural beauty of this world is just to much to take in sometimes. How fortunate we are to be living in such a world! And what a shame that we are destroying it at a rate and with numbers we can scarcely calculate anymore..

The same evening my cousin arrived from Germany to live with us for 8 weeks. Luckily she is very easy going, because we had started to work on Guppy just before her arrival and are still eating in between tools, pieces of wood and dust. We are replacing the windows around the upper part of the deck as they were getting pretty old. So while taking out the windows we figured it was a good time to replace some of the interior wood around the windows. But I am very happy that we are doing it now as it makes Guppy even more beautiful, homey and hospitable. And well, as in almost all cases, you have to start taking things down and making a mess before it starts to become more beautiful.

A few days after my cousin, Chantal, had arrived I was asked to be an instructor at a high school camp that was orientated around sea food gathering. Now – many of my faithful supporters might remember: I don’t like killing fish!!! I love eating it, but found out that breaking its neck, breaks something in me too. So luckily my main job was watching the kids in their kayaks and while snorkeling. Sounds easy, hm?! That’s what I thought too, but I realized quickly how tiring it is to have such a responsibility and to stay focused for the whole day. Nevertheless it was great – I loved being out on the water and to see young girls learning to appreciate the outdoors and being part of a play with nature as our beautiful stage.

I am still alway pleasantly surprised by the kind of opportunities kids have in New Zealand schools. They do sailing lessons, camps, hikes – so many valuable experiences that I was only dreaming of in my class room years.

Here’s a short video of me sailing the minicat in the bay of Islands

Laura