Reisepräsentation am 14.9.2014, 16 Uhr im 089

Es ist amtlich. Am 14.9.2014 zeige ich Fotos auf Grossleinwand und erzähle dabei von unserer wunderbaren Seereise von Gran Canaria bis Neuseeland. Ihr seid alle eingeladen in unsere Reisewelt mit den Geschichten einzutauchen. Kommt um 16 Uhr ins 089 (http://www.089-bar.de/) am Maximiliansplatz 5 in München. Beginn Vortrag ist 16.15. Dauer. Ca 2h. Spätestens um 18.10 müssen wir die Räumlichkeiten verlassen. Wer Lust hat, kann im Anschluss mit mir wa essen gehen. Getränke gibt es vor und während der Veranstaltung an der Bar zu kaufen. Ich hoffe, ihr kommt zahlreich und bringt Freunde mit. Ich freue mich!

Michaela

Return

The time for my return to Alitania is coming closer. While Marcus is enjoying the peace in the most beautiful anchorages in Tonga, relaxing and writing a book, I am jumping around here, collecting everything I think we need for onboard,  work, try to see all my friends and go sailing, so that I won't loose it ;)
In 6 weeks, on octber 6th, the three of us, Marcus, Alita and I, finally will be reunited and we are looking forward to our next adventures. From Tonga, where I board, we will sail to Fiji and then back to New Zealand. This NZ summer we will round NZ completely. We'll start in Opua, round NZ at Cape Reinga, sail down to fjord land ("little Patagonia"), up the east coasts and end in Whangarei. The plan will be online soon, we already have the first reservation.

But, not only in New Zealand and Patagonia do they have beautiful mountains. I have them right here in front of my door, half an hour ride by car away.

Ok, I am off to go sailing with my godson and his mother, my dear friend. Have a great day everyone!

Neue Alita

Dear bog followers, 

it has been a long time since I have posted. The reason is that I am still not back on Alita. I left Marcus and Alita early January and wanted to come back in July to continue our trip. However unexpected happenings force me to postpone my trip back. While I enjoyed my life in LA, went home to Munich to get a surgery done and work, now had a second surgery and will work a bit more, Marcus has worked very hard and spent lots of money to make our beautiful home even more beautiful and exceptionally comfortable and safe. Alita now is an even more precious jewel. One can see how much Marcus loves her and put into her to make our life and the life of all the guests even more comfortable. Alita is like new. Marcus and Alita are now in Tonga ready to accept more guests. I September they will sail to Kiribati and I will meet them back in Samoa in the beginning of October. From there the trip continues to Fidschi via Wallis&Fortuna. In November we will sail back to New Zealand and start the round-New Zealand tour, which will be very exciting!

Here is a picture of our new Alita: 

Hope to see some of you soon!

 

Sailing in Santa Monica Bay

26 (!) years have passed since I last sailed in the Santa Monica Bay. It was a very moving moment, when I sailed out of Marina del Rey and the California Yacht Club as crew on a J24 for a 3hr Regatta. To top it all, the husband of the Skipper Susie is German and has the same name as my dad.
It was a great sailing day, average 10kn wind and 0,75m sea, blue sky with some clouds. Just perfect. My job was weight for the most part and flying the spinnaker when we were sailing downwind. It was great fun. Not too many boats were racing today, I enjoyed that as well. Maybe 5 in our class, 15-20 in total. We all had a good day. By the time the boat was back out of the water and all cleaned and packed away it was already a 6 hr "working" day.

Here are some pictures of the day.
Follow the link to see all: http://sailing.smichah.de/#!album-88

Mary and ? (sorry, I forgot the name ;-( )

 Susie, the skipper

 Werner

 Mary

 A close start….The boat at the right is the jury boat

 Everyone comes close the closer it gets to the start

 These guys were just inches away from hitting us.

 Chips and drinks to the races end….

 So nice, when you can just quickly lift your boat up…That's the J24 "Take 5"

And since that all went so well, Mary (my friend who is a crew most of the time and who took me along) and I were asked to crew for the regatta in Ventura next week. It's a 2 day regatta. We agreed, that's going to be a lot of fun as well, way more serious than today and I get to see a new place. Cool to be on a boat again with no engine - so sail out of the box and back into it. Just like I do on the lakes in Germany on the same size boats.

Long time....

...has past since I last posted.

While Marcus is busy working on ALITA I am enjoying my time in LA with dancing and holding presentations about our trip. I love sharing our experiences with people who don't have the chance to go out and live all this themselves. I especially loved speaking in a photography class for kids. Tomorrow, thursday the 30th at 12 noon I am holding the presentation at the California Yacht Club in Marina del Rey. Come, if you can! It is public.

On feb 8th I will be sailing in a J24 Regatta and on the 9th just an afternoon relax sail in the bay of Santa Monica. This is especially exciting since my first ocean sailing experience was in LA in 1986 and I have not been sailing here since 1988!

Poor Marcus is working very hard day and night to make ALITA even more beautiful, comfortable and secure! One by one he is working on the enhancements and on fixing issues, which seem to never end popping up. One problem solved means another one coming up. And all this although ALITA is in super condition, especially compared to most of the other boats. But he says he can see the light at the end of the tunnel. ALITA is going to be even more gorgeous than she already is! I can't wait to come back.
Check out the german blog for pictures and stories (in german) of the work on ALITA.

Also, we have worked out the travel plan for this year. It is already online in the german website:
Alita Reiseplan 2014

The english version should be online soon.

I will join ALITA and Marcus in Tonga around July 22nd.

In the next days I will upload some videos from Alita sailing and Alita with dolphins. I will post the link. Enjoy!

Presentation at WSASMB

on tuesday, January 14th, 2014. You can come as guest…

Here the link to the presentation at the Women's Sailing Association of Santa Monica Bay.

http://wsasmb.org/newsletter/2014/January2014_newsletter.pdf

Look at page 1 and 2

Cheers, Michaela

Trip presentation

To all who live in the LA area and would like to hear in person some stories about our trip and see some of the most beautiful pictures:

I will be holing a public presentation at the wonderful California Yacht Club in Marina del Rey on January 31st! Here is the announcement:

http://www.calyachtclub.com/files/Yachting%20Luncheon%20JAN%202014.jpg

ALITA is becoming famous ;-)

Thank you, Marcus and ALITA, for a wonderful 19 months of sailing!!

Happy New Year

I hope you all had a as wonderful Christmas and New Years Eve as we did. 

We have been celebrating with friends on both evenings, enjoying good food and friendship that built up out in the Pacific. Inbetween these days we were able to visit our friends from Saliander (who then came for New Years) in Auckland, where they not only offered us a place to stay (at their lovely friend's home…) but also showed us around the area for sightseeing (ticky-tour, as Kiwis call this). We had a great time. 

 Puhoi Valley famous Pub

 Desperate for food

 View over bay

 Sailors at waterfalls

 On January 4th we sailed out into the Bay on State of Mind (6 of us on the boat) to watch the Tall Ship's and Classics Race (and of  course to take pictures). It was a gorgeous day, it could not have been better: blue skies, sunshine and a great wind. 

We received a surprise christmas package from our last guest, Tina, which made us very happy. Included amongst other wonderful things was some Natron and a recipe to make our home "Brez'n", which I had to try immediately. It worked quite well! Thank you soo much, Tina!

Every other day we have been just busy with the maintenance and upgrade of Alita. Marcus is working on eliminating point by point on his list while my duty was sewing of new cushions + buying of new dishes (upgrade of the cockpit seating area)

and going up into the mast twice. At first I spent about 2,5hrs up there to dismount the old HF-Antenna and install a new one (now we can den send AIS-signals) and the second time I just had to hammer the carrier of the Genua sail down (so I enjoyed the view for only about 5 min). 

My last excitement took place on the 7th. We put Alita out of the water onto a hard stand in the boatyard. Marcus let me drive, Rod played Bow Thruster with his Dinghy by pushing the bow of Alita around where needed. We had quite some wind from a stupid direction and current pushing me, so Rod was a big help. I still had some adrenalin show up in a difficult situation….But all went good, Alita was taken out and is now resting in the yard while she gets all polished up, will receive her new Dodger and Hard Top, the upholserty in the saloon will be redone, a storage with workspace installed, new fridge and freezer installed and lots more….

The new Dodger in progress

 and the hard top with Rod working on it. He is doing a great job!!

I am in Auckland now on my way to LA and feel sad to have left my two loved ones behind and to not be able to help doing more work on Alita. But, I need to do some work before I continue on the trip. I will return as soon as possible, latest in July. 

I will keep you updated on the progress on Alita. 

All the best to you, Michaela

Merry christmas

                                            Another year over,  another year gone...

I can't believe that another year is over. This last year was probably the most intensive one in my whole  life. I have seen a lot of beautiful places who are now my favorites, I met so many wonderful people, I laughed and cried, was healthy and sick, learned a lot about cultures, especially the polynesian and New Zealand one, and travelled over 10.000 nm (over 18520 km) on sea in a beautiful and safe sailboat. There were times when I thought this trip is never going to end and now I can't believe it's almost over for me for a while.  I will be leaving Marcus and Alita in a good 2 weeks for about half a year.  Just the thought of not being here anymore feels really weird and sad.

God has been very kind and protected us well from any bad storms or bad weather. Overall the sailing this year has been excellent with good winds (and the perfect decisions from Marcus on when to sail according to weather forecasts) and no (dangerous) traffic of other boats. Additionally, almost every time I visited places at land the weather was favorable for taking wonderful pictures and enjoy the nature. This year we have been in the coldest place of this whole trip (Tierra del Fuego and Chilenan Patagonia), which however was not as cold, as I expected, and we have been to the hottest place: Samoa. Also, we had our longest passage ever this year, from Isla Juan Fernandez (Robinson Crusoe) to Easter Island.

Most of our travel time this year we had wonderful guests on board. We share different, unique memories with every single one. The same counts for all the friends we made and spent such precious time with. These memories can be anything from a special food, over fish / animals that we saw, unique places, weather, events...Just anything. That is something very special we carry in our heart and that's what we travel for.

The last 4 days I have been teaching kids from other sailboats in Ballet technique and made a Jazz Dance choreography with them to christmas music. My best christmas gift this year is to have seen how these girls in the age between 6 and 14 grew in this short time. They were all non dancers (only one 13 yr old had danced Ballett 3 yrs ago) but in the end they were able to do a choreography on their own, smiling and enjoying it. Not perfect, but very good considering where they came from. One girl was frustrated the first day and wanted to give up, I helped her sustain and succeed - she was the happiest girl ever after. All of them worked hard and and did better than I every thought. What better gift could there be for me? It was really heart touching for me today. Thanks girls! That's part of sailing as well ;-)

Those of you, who followed the blog, know, that I tried to share as much of my experiences with you as I could to let you escape from the "regular world" into a different place, where the main focus is survival, getting to know cultures and places and helping each other. Marcus did the same in the german blog. I would like to thank you for "traveling" with us and hope you come back again next year. Even though I take a break I will keep you updated with news from Alita and her travel plans.

Now you can do me a favour. I have no idea, how many people really follow the blog, cause the counter counts some strange access to the blog as well. If you enjoyed reading the blog and are looking forward to more stories and pictures in the future, could you please tick "Like" on the bottom of this blog post? Just to know, you're there with us. Thank you and Merry Christmas!

And don't forget to order your calendar now. There is a good chance you receive it before the end of the year!

Travelling the South Island of NZ

On tuesday, dec. 10th, I left Marcus and Alita to fly down to the South Island for a week. After all the wonderful South Sea and warm waters I really needed to see grass, mountains and glaciers again. So I took the 4hr bus from Opua to Auckland, took the bus to the Airport, flew down to Christchurch, got picked-up from the Rental Car company, rented the car and drove to my pre-booked Backpackers. Wow, after 10 hrs trip I jumped right into their Jacuzzi, that was great. The Hostel "High Country House" was very nice, real old country houses in a nice garden setting, all rooms with high ceilings. But, I have to say, all the Backpackers I stayed in to far were beautiful. Last night I even had a 6-Bedroom for myself, with private bathroom, for 24NZD (about 13EUR). Nothing to complain about. Big, well equipped kitchens, most of them have Jacuzzis (Whirlpool), WIFI, etc. And, the best, you meet lots of nice and fun people, travellers of all ages from all over the world. Mostly of course young people, but even some around 60. Everybody has a great story.
Right now I am at Glacier Franz Joseph, named after Sissi's Husband, the emperor of Austria-Hungary.  I walked up there today with a french girl and a french-canadian guy, whom I picked up at the street. It was nice, but I am afraid that after Patagonia I am just spoiled. New Zealand is really beautiful, in many ways like home and in most parts like little Patagonia. What is very unique here and I guess only at this time of the year, are the millions of Lupinia flowers onthe sides of the streets and everywhere. You'll see in the pictures. Not only the view, but also the smell was amazing. This itself was worth the trip to here!
Here are some pictures of the last days. Enjoy.

Christchurch - not much is left here, the earthquake in 2009 destroyed most of it

 A christian college

 Love this sign

 Lake Tekapo

 The famous historical church of Lake Tekapo. Many use it for their weddings

 Merry christmas!

 And here are these amazing flowers!

 View over Lake Tekapo towards Mt. Cook, New Zealand's highest mountain, and Mt. Tasman, the second highest. Of course with the clouds you see them.

 Back to the Lupinas

 I couldn't help but to "co-photograph" this wedding couple.

 And another wedding couple, at the Mt. Cook lookout. Only, that Mt. Cook decided to hide...

 Sorry for the wedding couples: the next day the weather was perfect, so I drove back from Twizel, where I stayed, to take these pictures.

 And here he is, Mt. Cook, the highest mountain of NZ

 A good part of southern NZ is desert. Better to say, all on the east of the alps. It's funny, how the landscape changes from desert to green as you go past the peak line of the mountains in western direction. All of a sudden today there were many trees. Now it's all green here on the west coast - and rainy

 View over Lake Wanaka, where I stayed yesterday. Almost the view from the Backpackers as well.

 Lake Wanaka

To see more pix, click on the following link:
Pictures of South Island NZ
I will continue to upload more as the days go by....

Just remember, have a look at the calendars in the photo gallery!!