The Antimeridian

I love Greenwich, every time we go back to the old country we visit Greenwich, the Observatory, the story of Longitude, the Harrison clocks. The sheer amount of seafaring history all in one place is a wonderful thing to behold.
Standing astride the Greenwich Meridian I had never really put any thought into what goes on on the other side of the planet at 180 degrees.
Putting our waypoints in the chart plotter for our trip north the other day we realised we would be sailing across and back over the Antimeridian going from 179 degrees some minutes East to 179 degrees some minutes West and back again.

OOOh exciting - technically we will be crossing over the date line - or where the date line should be  -I guess it got moved to allow countries to share the same day as its actually a bit over to the East of where we will be sailing.

Hurry up and go

This is the chap that we are waiting for - once he's out of the way we can shoot northwards like a pinball between two spinning weather systems towards the sun and the tropics.

Ready and Waiting

Waiting for the weather - I mean it's OK if you're out there and you get hit with 40kn winds plus and big seas, you'd hope that you and the boat would be able to cope OK. In reality it's going to happen at some stage but to sail off out into it knowing it's forecast, well, that's plain dumb. Also it would be handy if the wind was coming from the right direction - as soon as that baby is out of the way we should be good to go.
So in the meantime we have quit our jobs (till the summer), filled Wild Sweet with food, water, fuel, books, rum and clothes. We are hanging out waiting for the weather window that will see us at least until Minerva Reef, an atoll in the middle of the ocean which many yachties use as a stopover between here and the Islands.
I intend to be writing this blog and uploading it where we can get internet as we will not be online while at sea. Sharing the news to facebook as well. We will still be getting our emails at paynepirates@yahoo.com when we can access internet either through shore wifi or data on local SIM cards.

Tree Pumpkins

We found a note on our doorstep yesterday when we got home from work.

The pumpkin vine had been trained to grow up a tree (that's another story) as we ran out of room on the ground.
The tree grows out over the neighbour's driveway.

We harvested two at the weekend as Phil was getting paranoid about the pumpkins falling on the neighbour's cars as the drove in or out - the picture above was taken on Weds evening after we found the note, we didn't even realise there was one growing there when we took the others off at the weekend, everything grows so fast here!

The thing is, it's still a really young pumpkin and is nowhere near ready, hopefully the next ones can grow somewhere where they aren't a danger to passing cars!  We have now pulled the vine back in over the garden and will just have to visit it each day to make sure its behaving.

Chooks

Or 'Chickens' for those of you outside NZ.

If you've been keeping up with happenings at the Payne house you will know that we have been working on getting chickens in for a little while now. Ever since we explored the end of the garden at our new house (moved in just over a year ago) and found a bit at the end we didn't know we had.
'Ooh we can have chickens!' said Phil. We put out budding architect (Ryan) to work, to design and build a chicken house, Phil built retaining walls, and they both got stuck in & put up fences. All of a sudden we had a chicken house and run at the end of the vegetable garden.
None of this would have been possible without the constant nagging of a friend and colleague @peteinakl , support and inspiration from another friend and ex colleague @ianhowarth

Here is a video of the historic moment when our trio of Brown Shavers after having been confined to their house for most of yesterday were let out nto their new home.
They are point of lay pullets, which means that they are under a year old and will hopefully start laying eggs in the next few days (or at least in the next week or so). they are as yet unnamed but as we get to know them and their characteristics then I'm sure they wont stay nameless for long.
So if you can spare 5 mins of your life then feel free to groove on down to a bit of Diana Ross and click away....

Boys on tour

The U14 Boys Water Polo team have been away from home for one night and so far the damage toll is.

1 Mobile phone (put in the fridge)
1 Hotel room phone (put in the sink)
2 Hotel room beds (capsized and mattresses in the bath)
2 boys with new mullet haircuts (scissor attack on the B team by the A team)

The question is 'do I want him going away next year if he gets into the U16s?' - at least there was no alcohol involved this time , just high spirits!)

I'm SO glad I'm not their Manager !

Ryan's Hovercraft.

Science Fair time at school. - Ryan decides to create a trolley that would make his paper round easier - he hates lugging the huuuuge pile of papers up the hills on his round. After a lot of discussion and internet research we find ideas for a hovercraft that could be adapted for the cause.
Construction photos to come - Vid of prototypes and finished article here.