Work is over!!!!!!!!

Well I finished work last Friday, it was a bit sad to leave. They supplied a really nice, completely Gluten Free morning tea for me. Speeches were said, songs were sung ( yes Glenn wrote me a song), a few tears were shed. I will miss my work colleagues and some aspects of my job, but I am not sorry for leaving. We have such an adventure ahead of us, how could I be sorry.

Living on the boat has been pretty smooth so far, admittedly we are still on the Marina berth which makes it sooooo much easier. We move off the berth on Sunday morning (early) back to our pile mooring. Paul will finish work on Friday (yeehaa) and then it will not be long till we go. Unfortunately a Specialist appointment as reared its ugly head for next Wednesday, but once that is out the way... off we go.
The next couple of days will be spent stocking up the boat with supplies, we need to do this before Paul finishes work, as we lose the car then. So we will be able to kiss goodbye a whole lot of money and welcome in a whole lots of cans. Naturally we have already stocked up on the essentials.....Wine.

In answer to your question Carleen, the Solar Panels charge our two 6volt house batteries, which power our lights (mostly LEDS), phones, stereo and laptop. We have invested in an Inverter (pure sine wave) which we use to change the power from 12volt to 230volt. We have discovered that the laptop is a real power drain, so we may not use it too much. We will be using Internet Cafes anyway in our travels. So hopefully I can find them all over the place, fingers crossed.

I will sign off for now, If you want to come and see the boat and you are in Whangarei, we are at the Town Basin Marina on Pier C (near old Vinyl restaurant) 3rd boat on the left.

Afloat at a Marina

things are going great. We moved Kabuki off our pile mooring and onto a Marina berth on Friday. It was a very smooth manouver. We used a rope tied from our rear pole over to the marina berth pole, and just pulled Kabuki over on the rope (the marina berth Well Paul and I have been living on the boat for 2 weeks now, and was directly behind Kabuki).

Over the weekend we had an open boat, and so lots of friends, family and work colleagues came and checked Kabuki over. Not many of them had ever been on board Kabuki, so it was nice for them to see what we are getting ourselves into. I must admit it was very nice showing Kabuki off to people, we are very proud of our boat. Kabuki's gelcoat looks a bit scruffy in places, but she looks good considering she is 35 years old.

So, I am on my last week at work, winding down, handing over. Making sure that I do not leave my job and leave things hanging for my fellow work colleagues. I must admit I will miss my job, it has been a great experience for the last 6 years, and has really expanded my talents and made me realise what talents I do have.

Paul still has one more week of work to go after me, poor bugger. I will have to find things to keep me occupied for that week. Mind you, I have to stock the boat up before we go, so that should keep me busy.

The photo above is Kabuki (as if you couldn't tell) on the marina, isn't she pretty!!!! Note the amazing sailcover and cockpit cover's, I made all of them except for the Dodger and the back flap cover (blow my own trumpet).

Splash Down..

Well we went back in the water yesterday, it was a smooth launch apparently. Unfortunately I was unable to be there as I was at work. But Paul managed the whole procedure with aplomb. Mind you the guys at Norsand Boatyard are pretty good at doing that sort of thing (then they would be).
Xavier and David have settled into their place, and we have settled aboard Kabuki reasonably well. So all is well in our neck of the woods. I have today off work, so am catching up on tidying things up and organising things on the boat.
The School Holiday Program is finished for this term. So we will be back into funtime's now at work. I only have two weeks of work to go, I am on a countdown.

Cheers For now.

The Big Move

Paul and I moved onto Kabuki on Saturday. I had to work on the Library Bus in the morning, and then in the afternoon we moved most of our stuff onboard. Unfortunately the weather did not really play the game and we had to get things up the ladder between showers of rain.
You might be saying "up the ladder?". Yes, Kabuki is still on the hardstand down at Norsand Boatyard. We have to climb up about 12 feet to get on the boat, this is no mean feat when carrying boxes etc. Just as well Paul is very agile and strong.
Sunday was spent tidying up our house ready for the handover, packing up the last of our stuff and stashing it in the roof, and getting the last of our gear back to the boat, again in between showers. But we are now installed on board Kabuki quite comfortably. We didn't even have too much drama with regards to storing all of our stuff.
It was a bit different leaving the house in our Son's hands, but I am not worried unduly about things. Some people may say this is mis-guided, some may say we are completely insane to leave a young man and His mate in our house. But we trust Xavier and feel that the experience will be good for both him and David. I have felt over the last year that I may have mothered Xavier too much, and this is His chance to grow up away from our influence. This is His chance to stretch His wings (how cliche) experience life from the Adult side. I will miss Him, but that is understandable.
So It is not too long and we will be off, I only have 2 and a bit weeks of work left. I am a bit sad about leaving my job, but them's the breaks. The last few weeks will be good, we are finishing the School Holiday program this week, and then we will be back into Funtimes for the pre-schoolers.
Boy can I rabbit on, I will attempt to upload some photo's at some point.

Cheers for now.

School Holiday programme

Well the first week of the school holiday programme ( well my part of it) is over, and it went really well. I have two sessions, one on Wednesday of 1 hour and I on Thursday for an hour. We do some dancing and stuff, read a story play around. And then we get down to making a craft, Wednesday we made flowers out of different paper etc. Today we made scarecrows out of tubes and icecream sticks. It is really fun working with the kids, they are aged between 3 and 9 years and they all are great.
Sue the Childrens Librarian is a wonder, she comes up with the ideas for the programmes. And then pulls is al together. Today she worked with older children (9 years and over) and made big scarecrows on wooden frames, they looked fabulous. Tomorrow they will be doing collage, but that will only be for the older kids.
We move on to Kabuki on Saturday, I have been busy packing up stuff and cleaning the house for the boys. I can be a bit of a neat freak, and I can't stand the idea of leaving a dirty house for them to take over. This is even though I know that 5 minutes after I leave it will be a BATCHELOR PAD. I will have to keep on saying to myself, " this is no longer my abode...this is no longer my abode........."

Anyway catcha soon