NOALANI
NEW ZEALAND TO FIJI
I
Final Preparations.
Saturday, the night before leaving.
Noalani is almost ready. We have been working on the boat the whole day. The main sail went up and the lines are checked. Our kayak got fixed on deck. It is red, the exact same colour as the boat. The kitchen is being finished right now. I can feel that my body demands food. It has been some intense weeks. Everyone is buzzing. We have skipped some nights of sleep. We might cook or first crew dinner on the boat tonight.
Dinner will be amazing. Yesterday night we went on a dumpster diving mission. We drove to a supermarket and rescued a whole car full of perfectly fine food. Now we are wondering why we bought food in the first place. The wastefulness of this society is ridiculous.
7:45pm
The sun has gone down. Inside the boat. On one side we sit with rainbow family, next door, in the kitchen, they sit exhausted from work, leaned against each other, with tired but satisfied faces,dreaming.
Shift of mood.
Things are moving again. Working energy out of nowhere. Tony grinds the kitchen next to luna, who lies, exhausted from being sick and on antibiotics on the bench. We have decided not to leave tonight but tomorrow morning. Our first night on the boat all together. I am excited and calm. It is hard to imagine what there is about to come in the months and years ahead.
It starts.
The last preparations.
After 4 months in Whangarei the Alternative Sailing Community has left for Fiji. We grew from one to five boats. I am sailing on Noalani, one of the boats that joined from Whangarei. She is a 42-foot ferro-cement sloop and we built her whole interior in 2 weeks. Now she is ready to sail and at the end of June we left New Zealand from Marsden point in the direction of Fiji.
In the words of the customs officer that cleared us: “No offence but other boats look better organised than you guys.”
This is the story of our journey.
On board are Tony, the captain, Sanne, Axel, Kat, Paul, Luna, Chante and Ramin.
We come from 7 different countries.
