01 NZ outrigger sailing

Outrigger Canoe Sailing in New Zealand spring 2004
Trip Log, Photos, and Digressions
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Flying from Sydney to Wellington. Passing over Cape Farewell, a long sandbar at the northern tip of the South Island.
These pictures don't do it justice. There are some immense sandbars with intricate shapes, amazing sand formations visible in the water.

Then flying over thousands of small islands just as the clouds got too thick to photograph them well, then Cook Strait, then landing in Wellington.

Te Papa,"Our Place" the national museum in Wellington. There are lots of Maori artifacts and a few sailing canoes I didn't take pictures of.
These kids are spinning a granite ball floating on water like an air-hockey table.
Wellington was chilly compared to Sydney and the trees were small. I was coming from summer and I'd need insulation. After the museum I went looking for a thrift store.
I was expecting it to be full of thick sweaters and wooly stuff. I was also expecting it to be full of sleepingbags, backpacks and other gear like I see Kiwis carrying on their round-the-world trips. No luck. It was full of the same knicknacks, cotton clothing and pressed-sawdust furniture that fund the needy throughout the english speaking world.
I wondered why I was staring at a roll of blue polyester fleece among the curtains and sheets.
While I waited for my head to turn and look at something else I realized it was my new blanket.

My equipment for the expedition now consisted of:
1. A few yards of blue fleece.
2. A "Duluth pack" which is a flat square envelope of cordura with a flap that buckles down and shoulder straps. Basically a canvas pillowcase with shoulder straps. A real one has a tump line to go over the forehead. It's made to lie flat on the bottom of a canoe and that's how wide it is. The Voyageurs used them and it's a Minnesota tradition. The tump line is safer because the bag falls off you when you trip. That's important because the food bag for a long trip weighs a ton in the beginning. If you're also carrying the canoe you're alone so the food bag is smaller but you've got the canoe over your head and can't see where you're going very well. I never properly learned to use a tump line but when my shoulders are used up I tie something on to try it.
I made this one twenty years ago when I sewed a dozen for the Girl Scouts in St.Cloud Mn. Now it's badly sun-rotted and patched all over. It's been where I've been but my skin has lasted better. Fortunately my skin is still alive and constantly repairing itself. When I had no cloth to patch this bag I pulled bark off hibiscus branches for string and started twining the rips together with a netting of string. Eventually there would be no nylon left and it would be a mani-mani, the coastal Papuan name for a net bag. Mani in their dialect means hibiscus. Doubling is plural, implying that it takes a couple of trees to make a good bag. The highland word "bilum" is better known for this type of bag. Again carried with a tump line over the forehead.
3. A zipper pull with a thermometer and tiny compass on it. The farenheit and celcius scales are handy for discussing the weather with those who use Napoleonic rather than Reaganomic units.
4. A couple of small airline blankets. United airlines are now the unofficial sponsors of this trip.
6. An Ambai island socketed adze.
7. Money. The more of this you have the less stuff you have to carry.
8. Low standards. If you can lower your standards far enough you can go anywhere, do anything, and the longer item #7 will last.
9. A couple of cigarette lighters in an empty plastic peanut butter jar with a gasket made by closing it on a plastic grocery bag.
10. A weak little folding knife. I buy a dozen for a dollar each when I find one I like. Then I hand them out to knifeless people and airline security folks.
11. A camo poncho I stole from ROTC. Instructions for four types of use are printed on it. To use it as a boat and a thousand other things consult the field manuals on the "wayback machine" on archive.org. Other marine officer candidates told me these ponchos have metal wires in them that would hide us from enemy infrared.
This false superstition persists because my country doesn't fight people who can afford infrared or the training to use it. Hence our troops believe that these magic ponchos make them invisible at night. It helps them sleep better. How is it that we get to decide who we fight? Well, it's like this.....
12. A couple of clear rubber bags made from too-heavy kite bladder film welded with a clothes iron. One would hold maps, one would keep my blanket dry.
13. Many pounds of useless crap. Besides increased exercise it also helped me feel ridiculous to lug it around. Embarrassment causes profusion to the extremities. This ballast is a form of prosthetic humility. Also I'm a product of my culture. When our misfits and free spirits go abroad to walk the earth they have to lug a foam pad, a sleeping bag, and a gigantic backpack around tropical countries where the biggest climate problem is sweat. On the way to the airport in January they step over a derelict sleeping on the pavement. In protest of this fantasy I carried no foam pad and no sleeping bag. I had plenty of less useful stuff than that with me though. I had gradually pared that down to this miraculously low level with the help of people who accepted my impedimenta all over Indonesia. Finally I was left ballasted with truly useless crap that I didn't think a beggar would accept, but I must have had plans for or I wouldn't be carrying it. Sometimes I'd read a few pages of something or start fires with it.
14. Sunscreen, bugspray, brim hat, sunglasses, a pound of miscellaneous pills and medical-looking stuff, swim mask, an extra poly/cotton shirt with the cotton worn out of it, boxer shorts ditto with the fly sewed shut, the sleeves from my zip-leg pants. Blue dandruff shampoo for washing clothes and sometimes myself. The blue shampoo kills mildew fungus. I learned that from my ex the jungle girl. I had one shirt to wear and one to wash, just like Mother Theresa. If you sleep naked or can put it on wet you can be less of a consumer than she was.
15. A dry bag with shoulder straps that's now full of pinholes because I use it as a book bag etc. Get the kind with two straps. The one-strap kind tear the lip buckle off. Buy it from Hilton's Tent City in Boston. That's the only outdoor store that doesn't give me hives. Other stores creep me out with beautiful healthy people selling expensive plastic clothing on commission.
16. Books, guidebooks, notebooks, free literature, funny bilingual magazines, see item #13.
17. Canon S30 digital camera in a Canon underwater housing, battery charger, roundpin socket adapter. A couple of bare wires for other foreign types of outlet, extra flash card. Friends are buying various vendors' new waterproof models that are smaller, don't need an underwater housing and cost less.
18. A shopping list of food and other items to fill out the remaining blank numbers on a 66 line page.
19.
etc. etc.

Walked along the harbor to the station and took a train north to Palmerston North.
The scenery is sure enough just like in the Shire or Scotland where the sheep are winning their battle against trees.
Dusk started to obscure the scenery just before the train pulled into my stop.
I walked around the town, ate some groceries, and ninja-camped under a lumber pile.
The next day I took a bus further north.

New Zealanders have some interesting inventions we might want. For instance multi-car parking meters.
One meter handles a dozen parking spots, so the meter-maid only has to empty one machine.
I found myself in a sterile uncrowded country where I could be ignored if I wanted. That was a relief.
Unlike Indonesia where there's a frenzy of attention from cabbies and hustlers whenever a busload of people arrive in a town.
If you wait it out they lose interest in you and go back to conserving their energy for the next influx of opportunity.

Drip-proof urinals. You stand on a grating over the drain.
There's a lot of innovative stainless-steel work here, perhaps spinoff technology from the dairy industry.
While trying out this breakthrough myself, the little boy waiting behind me said "I've got something in my pocket that keeps me entertained. Guess what it is."
"A British influence? Is this a phase for 12-year-olds here?" I thought. "I give up." I said, zipping up securely before turning around.
"It's a barcode scanner" he said, producing a handheld gadget and an explanation of why reading barcodes is lots of fun.
At Hamilton the bus turned northwest to Auckland. I wanted to go northeast to the Coromandel peninsula so I got off and started hitchiking.
What joy! I can't hitchhike in the states because we only have two types of people: sexual predators and suspected sexual predators.
Apparently fear of strangers isn't the same industry in New Zealand. I got a number of rides, and had a good time hearing about the National Character. I got a ride from a guy named Kevin who told me this story: There's a volcano with a lake in the top and no outlet. Nearby is the village of Te Araha. About 1985 the lake finally filled up to the rim of the volcano, overflowed, and the water roared down the mountain and wiped out the village. The only survivor was a baby found in a tree. The volcano has re-formed its cone and it's filling up with water again. There are a lot of sensors and gates on the roads nearby to try to prevent another tragedy. I wonder what the surviving girl is up to now?

They drive on the wrong side of the road, and sometimes put the mailbox facing the wrong way also.
American cars would be perfect for delivering the mail here, but they don't use them.
This wrong-way mailbox means the mailman doesn't have to lean across and the recipient doesn't have to cross the road to get his mail.
The whole transaction takes place off the road, so traffic isn't disrupted. Ahead of its time, since there isn't much traffic on this road.

A game of cricket. This is an actual sport. People play it. Behind the field is Hauraki Gulf.
A prominent local man fatally crashed his vintage fighter jet in the water nearby that morning.
There were a fair number of emergency vehicles about, looking for the wreckage and fishing it out.

Dinghy with handgrips in the skegs, lashed down on a yacht.

Alien spaceship and iron yacht. The green thing is a prefab (ant)arctic dwelling.
It's on stilts so airflow underneath prevents it from being buried in snowdrifts.
Snow hasn't been an issue for a few years, its current location doesn't get much.

Many people who live near the water own an old tractor with the sole purpose of putting a boat in and out of the water.

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