Saturday, December 22, 2012

Merry Christmas from Ocean Beach

Summer Solstice

Today it’s summer solstice in New Zealand, as well as the end of the Mayan calendar, and my ‘office’ hiked to the top of Mount Manaia for our Christmas party. Just across the road from our house, we have an unobstructed view of this spectacular rock as well as McLeod Bay below. I use the term ‘house’ loosely though, as in reality we live in a trailer, and progress on the building this year amounts to a concrete basement, which we variously refer to as our 85 square meter mooring block, the bomb shelter, or simply the bunker. Blue Moon sits patiently bobbing out in front, waiting for us to find the time to go sailing again.


I have been a Personal Trainer at Anytime Fitness since February, and find it both challenging and heaps of fun. Rob is busy with the building project, and we both spend most of our spare time turning the rocks, clay, weeds and bits of old farm rubbish around our place into a magical garden full of tranquil spaces for contemplation. Although we also use the term ‘garden’ loosely -  years at sea have done nothing to improve our green fingers. We have found this special area to be a very healing place for body and soul, and hope to share this through the new Yoga Studio and Health Retreat that we are building here. It’s been great to see some of our friends here already, although the accommodation leaves something to be desired at the moment. We hope to have that end of things up and running by this time next year.