That’s a term I use a lot to describe what it’s like on one of our sailing adventures. When you get a great group of people together, you soon find out we are all big kids at heart. Life is far too serious for most of us and we forget how to have fun the way young kids do. Not afraid to be silly, not trying to impress, just taking every opportunity to have fun with the people around us.

Well! We had one of those days.

It started with a bit of a sleep in and a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs. The morning was fairly relaxed, but Tim busied himself, concealing easter eggs all over Silver Fern and writing a handful of clever clues to help each of us locate them. We discovered that all three yachts were in a Starlink black spot, so we lost our ability to download weather forecasts and post blog updates (hence the flurry of new posts now).

After a delicious lunch of mussel fritters, caught by Johnny and cooked by Ray, we rolled into the onboard easter egg hunt, narrated by Tim. The clues were well thought out and extremely cryptic. Now that the pre-hunt was complete and chocolate consumption was underway for the 2024 Easter Egg Season, Tim headed ashore with Jess to hide another 80+ eggs in the shore line foliage for the crew to scour the waterfront for.

With no fit, fast, young kids to compete with, even those a little slower out of the blocks, came up trumps (no relation to Donald) with their share of chocolate goodies. The sugar intake was perfectly timed for what we had planned next - a kayak and paddle board relay race between Silver Fern and Salt Lines, around all three yachts at anchor.

We each chose 4 crew (The Te Kaihōpara crew failed to enter, citing a lack of interest in getting cold and wet) and the race required each team to do 4 legs in total, 2 with kayaks and 2 with stand-up paddle boards.

*Nic and Ray ready to compete head-to-head*

As the official supplier of the inflatable kayaks, we decided to use a piece of nylon and attach a supermarket bag with a shackle to weigh it down, to the Salt Lines kayak to create some extra drag. We had it about 3m below the surface, but not enough for their beady eyed crew, (playing a support role in the landing craft) who spotted it shortly after Amelia set off (albeit slowly) on leg one of the race.

As the RIB’s played a role in interfering with each others competitors, by creating wake and Timmy doused anyone who got close enough to Te Kaihōpara with the engine driven fire hose, it was a sight to see. You could easily have assumed from a distance, that it was teenagers and not 30 - 70+ year olds, having all the fun. Despite the Silver Fern crew winning the race by a small margin, we had to disqualify both teams for blatant cheating, but everyone had plenty of fun.

The following day we had decided to have a fun (but actually serious) race between Silver Fern and Salt Lines, by sailing 105nm from D’Urville Island across Cook Strait, around Kapiti Island and back to Ketu Bay, in Pelorus Sound for the night

David

Join the crew for a sailing adventure

School camp for big kids

Heaven is a place called D’Urville

Motueka Roadie