America's Cup

The next America's Cup will be sailed in 70' catamarans in San Francisco.    As a build up to that event,

preliminary events will be sailed as a series called the Americas Cup World Series in 'AC45' (45 ft) catamarans.   The boats are being built as one designs here in Auckland and the teams are starting to organize and practice.   The World Series regattas will be sailed in different venues around the world.   To date, 5  of the 14 or 15 AC45s have been launched and they are based right here in the marina where we are moored.   They sail right past us each day.

Today was the first day of AC45 practice racing and all 5 boats were on the water.   Practice racing not only trains the crews, but gives the race committee a chance to experiment with varying course designs and the media folks a chance to play with all their new high tech gizmos which will attempt to make yacht racing interesting to the masses.   

Through some folks we met here in NZ I got a chance to go out on the Coast Guard high speed crash boat for the event.   Conditions ranged from relatively light air to 20 – 25kts.   We were in the thick of things.   Awesome.   The acceleration of these boats is unbelievable. 

In the final (4th) race it was blowing pretty good and one of the Team Oracle boats buried her bows and rolled over.   One support boat put a line on the bow to hold her into the wind and another pulled from the side upright.   There was some damage to the wing, but she sailed the 5 miles back to the harbor.

Very cool ..........

Eric

Looks like me in our "E" boat days

Seven Vakas Begin Historic Voyage by Bear Bloomquist

These are Vakas

A Vaka is an ancient Maori canoe with two hulls. They are 22 meters long and hold 16 people. There are 7 vakas and 2 support boats beginning a historic voyage. Their path is: NZ - Fakarava - Hawaii - San Fransisco - San Diego. They start in mid-April and end in mid-August. Their mission is to promote the awareness of pollution of the ocean. They use the wind to move and the stars to navigate.

Maori are native islanders from the South Pacific. They came to NZ on vakas. The tattoos on a Maori face (if you can read them) will tell you who their parents are and what skills they have mastered.

This is the Haka

The Haka is a dance the men do before battle. They slap their bodies, stick out their tongues and widen their eyes. Here is one version from the All Blacks rugby team(copied from my t-shirt):

 Ka mate! Ka mate! Ka ora! Ka ora!
 Ka mate! Ka mate! Ka ora! Ka ora!

 Tenei te tangata puhuru huru
 Nana nei i tiki mai whakawhiti te ra
 A upa ...ne! ka upa ...ne!
 A upane kaupane whiti te ra!
 Hi!

To learn this, we went to the Auckland Museum and went to the Vaka send off ceremony.

Back in NZed

Just a quick note to let you all know that we are back on the boat in Auckland and getting ready to launch to Fiji after Easter. Much work has been done on the boat in recent months and she's in good shape for the season. Our plan is to spend a couple of months in Fiji, then on to Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Australia. We won't experience as many miles or destinations this year but the leisurely pace will allow for more diving, exploring and wandering. We're looking forward to it!