One year ago on the 15th of February I landed here in Auckland. One year ago I was set to start my new life. I was excited and full of optimism. One year ago. Unbelievable!!! It is a new year to me. Time to sit down and reflect. Somehow – I am not so keen to do so. I have not written for a while – not that I have nothing to write about – its more like I have been waiting for something to happen. Maybe I am going to celebrate my new year in February from now on.

I have been doing some fun stuff since new year besides getting another speeding ticket etc. I went to Tongariro National Park for a Heli Hike tramping. Groups of us flew into the mountain region and started the hike down on the river bank. It was not very difficult but it let me experience a hike on which we crossed the river at least 50 times over 8 hours. Essentially walking in the river for period of time. The water was not very deep only knee high but it was fun because the weather was hot and river kept us cool. The wet boots were the perfect air conditioning system.

Then I sailed few more times racing overnight and went sailing with bunch of friends to Coromandel area (Te Kouma Harbour) and that was absolutely stunning. Everything that nice sailing gives. So much fun and laughter. I have posted some pics on my flicker. We arrived just as the sun was setting down and went for a swim, diving off of the sailboat into perfect water. We were swimming for a while and just having a fun. Then we ate and had some wine. Couple of us just lied on deck watching incredible amount of stars. I have seen at least 15 shooting starts – so many wishes, so little time. That is the most amazing about night sailing too. If the weather is great there is so many stars falling. It is so humbling to watch that speed, to feel the power of the wind, understand the strength of the ocean and be with absolute unity with the nature.

I have been racing on a Stratocaster (sailboat) finishing the Nexus Gold Cup Race first in the ORC division. Yeah baby! Here is the official page. Stratocaster is the blue boat on the left with the spinnaker being blow off to port side. I am there with the white hat. Oh well picture is too small. Never mind – this is really why I am doing sailing – to get my pictures out there It was a nice race but we did not have wind for few hours early in the morning. We started 19:30 and finish 13:40 next day. On the way up – that boat to the right of us was pushing us out of our course and since we are on the leeward side (the boat being covered up with a boat that is exposed to the wind directly – or as we say they are stealing out wind) we have the right of way and they should give way. They were unfortunately just a bunch of roughnecks and touched our spinnaker with their boom first time already at the start line. We could have protested and they could have been disqualified. The skipper decided to give them a pass and not to call protest. About 3 hours later they were coming close to us and kept on trying to bully us into giving them some space so they could stick to their course and not give us way. There was lot of shouting and swearing going around. We would not budge and they had to eventually jibe and change the course. The guys that I am sailing with are familiar with the Waiheke channel and we knew the reason why we did not want to change the course. So after the other boat turns away from us and we keep the course. Then about 45 minutes later they are about 500 meters from us (it is dark at this point and we can only see the navigational lights of other boats) we hear this “thum” deep sound of a boat hitting the rock. The Waiheke channel has few hidden surprises if you do not study your charts – well, these other boat that we had screaming shouting match with found one of those surprises. We were watching them (from far away at this point) and kind of just guessing it was them and what happened. We turn the radio to channel 16 – which is the emergency communication channel, to see if they require help. I guess they did not. We saw their steaming light come on (a light that boat is turns on at night when it is using the engine power) and watch them (or rather their light) to turn around and start heading back to Auckland. Later I have learned that they were taking on some water but nothing too serious. Iolanthe II – the boat I went to Port Villa with last year had hit the rock the race before on the other side of the channel. They just bounced off of it with no damage at all.

So thats what I am up to. Work is going great and I am starting to get hang of it. We are rewiring our whole rack mounted servers and switches and I actually spent a night fixing a server that went down. Since it was a fileServer I had to make sure that all the data were recovered ok. Long night it was. I will post the picture of before and after it looks when we finish.

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