Getting Kicked Out of New Zealand

JANUARY 2005

Alex and Drew met us in Denver for a quick skiing trip in Vail over Christmas on our way to New Zealand for a month of cruising in New Zealand before we put CHEWINK on a Dockwise ship back across the Pacific to the West Coast of Costa Rica. This was a difficult decision, with a lot of ego to swallow, but it has worked for a lot reasons. Mainly it was time to spend more time home and be involved with what was/is going on (I enjoy being part of the yard). We might have made a different decision if we could have left CHEWINK in NZ for another year, but we had reached our time limit (18 months) after which the NZ government wants to tax the boat with import duty. I will never understand countries spending a lot of money to attract the yachting business and then spending a lot of effort to make sure the boat leaves. New Zealand is a great place to come and go from by boat, but it is also a terrific place to leave a boat for an extended period of time.

We had a great month of cruising from the Bay of Islands down to Auckland. The Christmas rains were gone and weather was great. A lot of visits with friends and Heidi's family joined us as well. Usually we are always in a rush once we get to NZ, but a leisurely cruise in the Bay of Islands was really fun as this is also vacation time for the Kiwis so we were joined by several good friends -- in particular the Whiting family -- an extraordinary family as well as sailors.

Where to now?