We’ve been doing some more work for Andy, on his boat Baltazar, which is still standing on the yard… One of the first times we met he started talking very exited about his newborn company called “aloft alone”. As a mountaineer he’s got a lot of experience with climbing and climbing gear and being a enthusiastic sailor as well, he started thinking of a system with which people can climb their mast alone. Ideal for solo sailors! The kit includes a backup system and a griri which make going up and down super easy and a lot safer then other systems. Having worked for him for a while he offered me one of his kits to try out and see what I thought of it. Well… I think it’s awesome! I wish I would have had this one instead off the climbing gear I had on my circumnavigation, but I sure will enjoy it a lot now as well. So, Andy, thanks a lot for this great kit. I wish you a lot of success with it 🙂 Anyone that wants to find out more about the “aloft alone” kit can have a look at the website:aloftalone.com

So, let’s see, well.. Except for Hurricane Luci who just came blasting over the top of New Zealand not to many exiting things happened. We serviced all the winches of Guppy and did some little things here and there. At the moment we are housesitting at a hobby-farm just 15 minutes out of town. Looking after the cows, sheep, chickens and a lovely old dog. But with a hurricane breathing in our necks we suddenly found ourselves flying up and down from the house to Guppy. Checking Guppy’s lines and seeing if she is alright and then going back to feed and comfort the animals. I can still not understand why so many people always want to have more and more and bigger things, I mean after all you just have more and more to look after… Luckily the hurricane changed it’s tracks a little and it didn’t turn out as bad as they first forecasted. But driving around town yesterday, when the tail of the storm was still coming over we still saw quiet a bit of damage in places. The Whangarei fall looked spectacular though, bigger then I have ever seen her, such a mass of water roaring down! After the falls we drove past Guppy and back to the house to pick up Sparky, the old farm dog. We then drove out to the beach to look at the waves crashing into the rocks. We where a little concerned if Sparky might be scared, but it turned out that he loved it just as much as we did! Running up and down the beach like crazy and even jumping into the waves, courageously holding on to his stick. We didn’t think that this was such a good idea so we had to get into the water to drag the water-loving dog back onto dry land where he started rolling in the mud and sand. Just perfect, having a salty wet dirty dog in the car which we only just cleaned.. But he had heaps of fun, even wen we put the garden hose onto him after we came back and scrubbed him down he didn’t seem to mind to much.

The weather has finally calmed down and Guppy is all well, she didn’t seem to mind the storm at all. At the farm we just had some banana plants come down and lots of little branches.

Laura