Wet weekend

It was wet because I spent a lot of time in the water.
On Saturday we took the scout up to Goat Island. It's been a long time since I was there last and it was good to go back. There were plenty of fish to see and David took some bread in a bottle to feed them. The scouts all had a good time and I got to swim around the island.
On Sunday I swam a (supposed) 3km sea swim at Red Beach with Vic, Sheryl, Pam & Helen. Took it really easy and swam with Pam as she was a bit nervous, but got round pretty easy. I was wearing an Orca wetsuit and have decided to buy one, it felt so much better than the Blue Seventy.

Queen Mary departure

The Queen Mary was departing and I wanted to see it. But I knew that the rest of Auckland thought the same and there would be traffic mayhem. So I managed to convince Kevin to take his (Wayne's) boat out and watch the departure from the water. In the end only Kevin, Duncan and I went on the boat, everyone else either had other plans or didn't want to be on a boat at night.
We launched at about 8 p.m. from Waiake beach and motored over to the harbour. Duncan was fairly nervous but Kevin kept the boat at a reasonable speed and we got there no problem. We did get spoken to by the coastguard as we weren't showing a stern light, but we managed to get it going.
The queen Mary herself is an awesome spectacle, especially at night when it gets lit up like a Christmas tree, and on the water we had a fantastic view. We had a great view of the firework display as well, although it was a bit further away than I had anticipated.
By the time we followed the liner out of the harbour and into the gulf it was completely dark, a new experience for myself and Duncan. Duncan struggled a bit on the way back, he didn't like the unpredictable manner the boat moved in with the various wakes coming off all the other craft, and being dark it was not easy to see the water surface. However, once we were on flatter water he regained his confidence and enjoyed the last part of the journey.
By the time we got the boat back onto the trailer and to Kevin's house it was after midnight, a long and tiring night for a 10 year old (and his dad).
But all in all, a great experience and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Whale Island swim

On Friday I left work at 1-ish and headed off to Whakatane to attempt the "Whale of a Swim". Quite a pleasant and uneventful drive the weather was pleasant and other than the inevitable roadworks nothing much to talk about. When I arrived at Whakatane I went straight to Piripai beach to see Whale Island. My first thought was "Damn, that's far away". I carried on to the 'motel' where I was staying, which was about 100m from the finish line of the swim. Motel may be generous, it was a flat at the bottom of the house, but was lovely and I had a good night there. A short walk into the town and a pasta meal at the local Italian restaurant and I was ready for bed.

I was up bright and early (5:30) and ready to load kayaks and be briefed at 6:30. Whale island was hazy in the morning behind the statue of Wairaka, but 9.1 km is a long way. But as with many events like this is was a case of "hurry up and wait". A combination of large swells and a very low tide meant that the harbour master had not opened the bar at the river mouth for general traffic and the coastguard was not prepared to take us out until it was 'opened'. It was fine for swimming as there was very little chop, but the briefing was delayed until 8:30. This did not really help my growing anticipation and nerves.

But at 8:30 it was all go, so the kayaks were loaded up and off to the island we went. My kayaker was a great chap called Jim Robinson (so there was a lot of "Hey, Jim", "Yes, Jim", "How are you, Jim", "Good, Jim") who is a multisport enthusiast. He had swapped his normal kayak (which he was told would be too fast) for a sit on one so it was easy to access the bag of powerade and water he was carrying for me.

The swim started at about 10:00, and was quite enjoyable, the water was a tremendous blue colour and as there were not that many swimmer (< 40) and kayaks it was not crowded. The first half or so was plain sailing, I went past the half way marker at about 1:35 but after about 2 hrs of swimming my shoulders started aching. Unfortunately it didn't get any easier from there, the more I swam, the more I felt it and the slower I went. I needed more short little breathers but Jim was always most encouraging, although he did tell me that 3 successive buoys were the '1km to go' buoy! The shore seemed to take ages to get closer, but eventually I was in the surf off Pipipai beach then walking over the sand spit and a final, painful, swim over the river to the finish, all in all it took me 3hr 46 min, but I finished.

One of the most rewarding parts of the event was the number of texts, phone calls and comments I received before and after the event. It was that support that kept me going in the last hour when I was not having too much fun.

Campsite rain blog

Well, we came to Mangawai for some restful camping and a surf club competition. The weather report did not look too good on Tuesday, but Wed was better and we made the plunge. It's now Friday, and the rain has really set in. The kids are in the pool, as they can't get any wetter,
and I have been putting up more tarpaulin to keep the rain out of the 'porch' area of the tent. We made a decision that we are going home tomorrow if the weather does not clear up, and the forecast does not provide any hope.

I have decided that this blog will be very random, and will be thoughts of the day if they occur at a time I can get them down. I originally thought it would be more of a diary, but I am too inconsistent.

Golf with the kids

Yesterday I took Megan and Duncan to Takapuna and played 9 holes of golf with them. We had a great time, lots of hacked shots from everyone, and a couple of good ones too. Megan managed to par a par 3, but in general no one counted any shot. General concensus that this was someting to do again. I think the next trip will be to a driving range or maybe lessons for the kids.

I'm feeling quite relaxed after a few days off, hopefully I've broken the cycle I was in. Started to build the shelving at the back of the garage today, the first step to getting both cars in the garage. I don't want to be one of those people with a garage that has a lot of things in it, but not cars. The expensive things get left outside in the weather!

On leave for a few days

Its really good to be away from work for a while, the project I have been working on has been running for a long time and is so big that it is easy to get lost in it. So I have taken a few days off to try and re-enervate myself.

But outside of work the surf season approaches and we are getting ready. On Saturday we did a big clean out and re-organisation of the equipment at Mairangi bay, and then on Sunday went with Dave Vos to Papakura and did an outboard maintenance course on mercury engines. We need to see if we can get a better maintenance program going at the club this season.

Speaking of the club we now have a general manager, Ross Pounds who should be taking us forward to the clubs vision of patrolling all the east coast beaches of Auckland. I met him at the launch of the Harbour Crossing swim organised by Scott Rice. Ross seems a nice guy, let's see what comes of this.

Slowly getting back into some good swimming, I am still going to the physio, Gretchen, for my shoulder and it seems to be improving. Fingers crossed there.

GE - Dealing with conflict

Had a great GE (generating excellence) module on Friday last week. We had 2 Aikido practioners in to cover how to deal with conflict situations and talked about the way Aikido covers it and how it can be applied to the work place. Really interesting and a pair of nice guys too.
Made me realise a couple of things:

• I really enjoy the GE group as a whole, but may not get on with all the people individually as well.
  
• I have so much to learn about myself.
  
• I should look deeper at eastern philosophy as it seems to make a lot of sense to me.
  

Curtains are up

Well the curtains on the house are up, mostly anyway. They stuffed up one of the 'sheer' curtains and need to redo it, but we now have curtains and not blue surgical drapes stuck to the windows of the bedroom with insulation tape.
That now completes phase one of the house renovations. Next we need to get the builders back in to redo the upstairs bathroom. And then .........

Catchup with the Grunings

I managed to catchup with Armin & Rita Gruning a few weeks ago when I was in Sydney on my second Architecture review trip. It was good to see them them again, been about 4 years. They stay way on the outskirts of Sydney (Campbelltown) so I stayed over and travelled back on the train in the morning. They trains are pretty good, and cheap in Sydney, the english ones are SO expensive.
Their kids are looking good and growing up and they seem to have a happy very domesticated life, Armin is very handy/helpful around the house. Rita still into horses and teaching art and Armin selling seals and other technical components.
They still maintain they will come over and visit NZ, same as before, believe it when I see it.

I can't login and post to this blog

This is very frustrating, I can log in to beta.blogger but cannot access
this blog. Getting no response from the blogger support team either.