Wilderness Cruising | Nautitech Open 40 blog

As a skipper, your number one concern is safey,  thinking always of saftey makes you think about others in distress, especially others on the water.  We have just made a monthly berth booking in Whangarei, New Zealand, and we didn't really expect to be doing any more boating adventures. When we were cruising, we often wound up in unexpected situations, but we thought this was all over after signing up for a long term berth. We decided it would be nice to go for a sail over the weekend and planed to go to Munro Bay, a favourite local anchorage, pretty and remote. There are hills, a farm, a reserve, and a couple of houses. Its shallow, good holding, muddy bottom, and good protection from North - NothEast winds. Also scallops and good fishing if you're a Kiwi.  Anyway, an hour out we heard a distress call from a boat in Paura Bay. This was sort of on the way, well its actually out of the way, but we did have to go passed the entrance. There's usually tons of boats there. The...

Taking a sabatical Our life in the UK was really good. We lived in a leafy Surrey suburb, with an active local church, a farmers market, links to London, lots of social activities, and we had jobs we enjoyed. But after two decades of work we felt the need for a sabbatical. Our dream was to explore, and to sail. So we quit our jobs, bought a boat and set off for a life of world cruising.  What happened We knew we could travel for two years, but had no fixed destination, this was the extent of the plan. It turned out that we loved the lifestyle, and our 2 year sabbatical turned into 4. Every day on the water is different, and we accumulated many stories.  The Pandemic Ultimately we found ourselves in New Zealand, and were thrilled and relieved to arrive here. We were two years in and it felt like the end of our journey. We had seen more than we dreamed of, we made it across the Atlantic, and Pacific, sailing over 20,000 nautical miles, and visiting 17 countries. Sailing into Opu...