Boat Chores & Life Chores

Since we got back on Christmas Eve from our trip out to the Coromandel, we've been working on getting various boat chores and life chores ticked off the list. And there is a lot to do to move onto your boat full-time and become official unemployed vagabonds!

As we've given up our apartment, our belongings have had to be dealt with. We've taken the last bits and bobs to the charity shop and moved the rest of our stuff onto the boat and arranged to put some other stuff in storage for the summer. Although, I'm pretty sure I still have way to many clothes on board and could have given even more to charity or put it storage. Time will tell. Scott of course seems to get by with just a few t-shirts and shorts so he really can't understand why I need more options to choose from. We've also organized for mail forwarding and a mail box at the nearby NZ Post Shop. I'll need to figure out what to do for a more permanent solution once the summer is over here and we head back to the States.

But probably our biggest life chore has to do with our passports. And it has proven to be a real chore. We went to pick up our new passports at the American consulate in Auckland yesterday. Then we headed over to Immigration New Zealand to get our permanent residency stickers transferred over from our old passports to our new passports which allows us come back to New Zealand to live whenever we want. (And who wouldn't want to - it is an absolutely fabulous country!) But of course, Immigration New Zealand turned out to be closed over the holiday period, as so much of New Zealand is. That actually turned out to be a good thing, because once we got back to the apartment and had a closer look at our passports, we found that they spelled our last name wrong despite the fact that they had our old passports and our application forms with our name spelled correctly. You would of thought they had systems in place that would have checked things like that before printing new passports. Apparently not. So we trudged back to the American consulate and now we have to wait at least another week for them to get reissued. {Sigh}

You kind of forget how expensive it is to have documents which allow you in and out of different countries until it is renewal time. It will end up costing us around NZ$500 for the new passports, passport photos and the New Zealand sticker transfer before we are good to go. Cha ching! We also renewed our Irish passports a couple of months ago (and that was another few hundred dollars), so we'll be set to sail around the world on a sailboat for the next ten years or so.

In terms of the boat, she has had a thorough cleaning and we've reorganized stuff in order to make everything fit. I have to say that I am surprised how much room there is on this particular 26' boat. We've managed to get everything on board and we still have room to spare. And of course, what would boat maintenance be without some shopping at your local marine store? We've crossed a number of things off of the list such as a new strap to tie down the battery, hardware to secure our propane tank, an extra diesel can, a hacksaw, some buckets and a headlamp to be able to see at night up on deck whilst keeping your hands free. Scott has also given the engine a thorough once over. (I just had a terrible feeling that I shouldn't have written anything about the engine as that is likely to jinx everything. She works perfectly fine now. Fingers crossed it stays that way.)

So it looks like we're all sorted for now. But of course, the thing about chores is that they're never truly done especially when it comes to passports.



Boat Chore - cleaning mud off the anchor