Welcome aboard. Join us on our adventure of a lifetime as we tackle new challenges and new views.

So we bought a boat. It wasn't the plan, but here we are! This is a whole new adventure for us. We have never owned a boat of any size before, so we jumped in boots and all.

Life has some funny twists and turns and it seemed like the perfect time to step outside of our comfort zone, take on some new challenges and enjoy some quality time as a family.
How we came own a live-aboard boat is a lot more involved, from a ripped tent, to multiple open homes. We thought upsizing our house was the only choice, however the realities of a pandemic and the opportunities that bought to our business and schooling presented multiple new options. All of a sudden the realisation that we could be digital nomads began to unfold!

Living on board a 57 foot / 17.4 metre boat with 2 adults, 2 teens, 2 young boys, two old little dogs and a couple of birds is going to be interesting, and pretty noisy, but the ocean is our highway and the wilds of the Marlborough Sounds our playground, office, studio and classroom for the immediate future. Fire up the engines and let us push off!!!!
But how did we get here? Why a boat, and why such a big boat when we had never owned a boat before?
Isn't that just crazy??
Our family is a family that tends to live outside the box. Time has always been precious to us and we have constructed our lives accordingly. Haylee and I moved to Nelson in the top of the South Island of New Zealand several decades ago with the intention of finding a place to settle down and raise a family. We loved the outdoor lifestyle that the region offered and spent a lot of time sea kayaking, camping and tramping and exploring in the national parks pre children. It was our happy place and one of the favourite things we did in our spare time.

Photo : 2007 - a tramping trip deep into the Abel Tasman, including a stop at Anchorage [in the main photo] - one of the most popular spots for parking up in a boat. We sat on the beach and talked then about what it would be like to travel on a boat.......

As the years flowed by, we set up a business and it grew along with the size of our family. We own a marketing and brand development studio where we work with businesses and help them communicate with their customers and the wider community. As the internet has evolved, so has our business. One child soon turned into 4 children and the fine lines and grey hairs started to appear - not only as a result of the children, just as a marker of time!!! Lack of sleep and living a totally deadline driven life make for a feeling that there is never enough time in the day. And then COVID hit. 
In the days before New Zealand headed into the first severe lockdown, I like many other kiwi men, headed to the hardware store to load up on supplies to finally tackle several big house jobs that had needed attention for many years, but I never really had the time for. 13 bags of concrete later I was prepared. A garden shed and then some house painting. But then the phone rang, and didn't stop ringing for the next few months as many of the businesses we had worked with over the years discovered they needed to expand their online presence and pivot to do things differently. 

Photo : 2021 - suited up and at work creating content as a part of a marketing campaign for a client.

Our business, The Big Picture Productions Ltd, continued to thrive during 2020 and into 2021 as business pivoted to the online model.
At the start of the Covid impacts in March 2020, our three school aged children were forced into home learning. The two eldest girls, Sophia, then 12 and in her first year of Middle School / Intermediate; and Maia, who was then 10 and in her last year of primary school, were now learning at home with our input and total awareness. This was an eye opener for Haylee and I as parents. The girls were amazing. They were determined not to fall behind so they cranked up their discipline into overdrive and set about achieving high standards in their academic subjects. It became apparent very quickly that we could expect positive educational outcomes within the framework of home learning. The online tools we found were amazing, and over the Covid experience they have only got better, with a lot more of them becoming available. Alex had just started school so he was easily moved into a different framework. 
As the pandemic developed, and various lockdowns and restrictions came and went, many activities were cancelled, and the theatre shows that had become a regular part of our lives were put on hold. All of a sudden we got to experience a much slower pace of life, a life without at least one afterschool activity for 1 or 3 of the children, each and every day! Don't get me wrong, these activities have been a fantastic part of the children's experience growing up, but it was a punishing schedule for everyone!!
An interesting reality of lockdowns was the rapid pivot to online everything. We all discovered Zoom, Google Meets, and Microsoft Teams, along with Facetime and other versions of video conferencing. The future had arrived for a lot of our clients, and schools. We all had no choice but to Zoom into a meeting, planning event or strategy brainstorming session. Can we all remember the flurry of learning around how to get a "cool" background, and how many times during an introduction the inevitable focus would shift onto that one person on the group chat that had the funky background? Lets hold that thought for later!

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us"

As possibilities attached to a "new normal" became apparent, we went into planning overdrive. Our previous summer holiday "go to plan" was camping at a local, family focused campground, just a hop skip and a jump from world famous Kaiteriteri Beach, on the edges of the Abel Tasman National Park. Our summers with the kids have always been about the water, and the sea more specifically. It got so extreme that we would load up both our vehicles with children, mountain bikes, a large 3 room "apartment" tent, sit on-top kayaks (X3) and an assortment of boogie boards and inflatables for playing about in the estuary and beach with the kids. 
We absolutely loved this summer life, and constructed our summer school holiday to be maximised with weeks on end at the campground. I would sometimes commute the 2.5 hour round trip back to the city for meetings and a resupply. It was a fantastic summer routine, full of friends, fun, sunshine and the sea. We would have other families visit us, and the kids had friends join us for a mini camping holiday amongst our longer holiday. Running our marketing company from a tent in a campground became easier and easier, and kind of a funny juxtaposition. The summers rolled by, technology improved and the internet became stronger. And then the tent ripped. 

Photo : 2013 - the traditional family summer camping holiday when there was just 4 of us, before the arrival of the boys.

With no tent we started the conversation about what our future holidays would like. Many of our friends had caravans, and we were endlessly jealous of the speed at which they would set camp and retire to chairs with a gin in hand watching us spend hours erecting our tent and setting up the camp kitchen, the office and bedrooms. We got it down to a fine art, but the packdown was even more arduous. So after the tent catastrophe in February of 2020 we started the caravan conversation. What a conversation that turned into. 
It started earnestly with looking at large caravans. We looked at the setups of many friends, all with less kids than us. We started getting serious, but the logistics never stacked up with onboard services -  like the ability to hold fresh water, grey water and black septic tanks. Six humans of any size tend to use and make a lot of liquid that needs to be carted around when living in a caravan. We decided to park the caravan idea and started looking instead at a holiday house in the Marlborough Sounds.
This was a big turning point in our journey. We were now taking another look at an area we had spent a lot of time in pre children. We had history with the area and the opportunities to be back out on the water were exciting. We started thinking about summers spent living coastally, on the beach for hours on end, and sunsets over the water. We had some time over the first lockdown amidst the heavy workload to talk about a holiday house in the Sounds. We spent too much time online looking through slim pickings on offer. Covid had presenting all sorts of challenges. People were not listing their properties and those that were listing you couldn't visit anyway. We kept our eyes open.
The winter of 2021 was very wet with a series of significant weather events, one of which severely impacted many of the roads into the Marlborough Sounds, removing road access in many areas. No road access meant many of these properties could only be viewed via boat access, but we didn't have a boat..... 

Photo : 2020 - the spring after the first covid lockdown saw us heading into the Marlborough Sounds, and back to one of our favourite spots - Lochmara Lodge, for some time by the sea.

The boat shopping experience started in earnest for us during the winter of 2021. What a lesson in project slip that turned into! I honestly started out looking for a small boat that could get us around the Sounds to look at properties with a view to it eventually becoming the boat we would commute to and from on. TradeMe had other ideas and started showing me other kinds of boats. Big boats. The kinds of boats you could comfortably sleep a family of six. The penny dropped. We needn't look for a holiday house anymore. We could own a holiday house with stunning views of the water AND have the ability to move our view around depending on what we felt like. We had absolutely zero boat ownership experience, but being the ever optimist, that was not going to be a barrier to finding a new pathway through a newly complex Covid impacted life. As a nation we were being told to "pivot" and accept the "new normal", whatever that meant. For us it meant a totally new set of opportunities. All of a sudden the watchlist moved to boats of a size that could accommodate all of us and provide us with a layer of services that could support extended periods living on board. The shows we watched as a family changed to include some youtube channels of other families living life on the seas. It was all very inspirational and all of a sudden it became very achievable.
Then came the prospect of actual boat shopping!
We started off with a list of 4-6 boats to look at within the region, most of which were located in the Queen Charlotte side of the sounds. We arranged to meet a local broker over at the Waikawa Marina in Picton to start this journey. Over the course of a full day we checked out 4 boats - all very different, from flat out 17 metre 25 knot fast sport fishing boats through to an older twin engine very beamy 1972 Grand Banks full displacement Trawler that would crawl along at 6 knots through any kind of seas with an amazing salon complete with wooden blinds and a totally authentic vintage boat feel. They were all so different, and the varied configurations offered up very different living aboard experiences. That day of "open homes" gave us a real wakeup call, we had some huge gaps in our knowledge. It become very clear then that all boats are made for a variety of different end uses with very different sea conditions in mind and are all set up very differently. The weekend sport fisherman is very different to the family that wants to explore the world. What were we after? What setup would suit us best? What was the purpose behind the hull design of a sport fishing boat compared to a trawler? These were all very relevant questions for absolute novice boat shoppers!

Photo : 2020 - FREEEEEEEDOM! The first thing we did after coming out of the first nationwide lockdown was to go to the local beach - Tahunanui in Nelson. It was such a gorgeous sunset and it was so nice to have the sand in our toes and our feet in the water!

Dipping your toe into the boating world is quite the culture shock. There was so much to learn. Our "open home" day with the broker really got me thinking that I needed to do a lot more homework and get serious about what we wanted to achieve. The most important bit of research was the type of boat we needed, and what that offered in terms of sea worthiness, stability in all kinds of weather and the space to not all be ontop of each other. In hindsight, living on a boat with kids is not for the fainthearted. It is best done with a lot of consideration for what the end goal is. We were not going to be a 4 weekends a year boating family, we needed a true livaboard that could handle well far from home. We needed to have lots of water, lots of fuel and lots of different spaces to escape to for moments of peace and quiet to get work done, get homeschooling achieved, and even just to read a book without getting pestered. The boats we had physically looked at on the first outing gave us a benchmark for a set of wildly different experiences one could expect from owning each of those vessels. We came quickly to the conclusion that a trawler styled displacement, a blue water capable vessel, or semi displacement fast trawler style would suit us best. We needed the deep keel to provide for comfort at anchor and all of the extra space that came with those kinds of boats. We needed the security of knowing we could handle a surprise storm at sea that we could ride out if we had to. Speed was not the objective. Our boating journey was going to be as much about the voyage as it was the destination. These were the challenges we were seeking. The problem solving of passage making, getting to grips with mechanics and maintenance, the oneness with nature and the interconnectedness with the wind and the sea. This was the goal as much as being able to end up "glamping" on a boat somewhere spectacular.   
The actual boat shopping happened quickly in reality. From starting to look seriously in the winter, to travelling to Picton and Havelock and even Wellington to look at boats, by November it was all done and dusted. We found our dream boat, but most importantly we found the exactly right people to sell it to us! Sounds cryptic? We weren't actually just buying a boat, we were buying a massive shift in lifestyle. We were buying new experiences, new horizons and new memories to be made as a family. What we were also buying was a set of conditions that we had no experience in. We had never owned a boat before, had little experience with the sea except for holidays sea kayaking. Granted I had grown up surfing as a teenager and Haylee had grown up in a boating family, but these were things we did as kids, not things we had done with our OWN kids! We kept the whole thing under wraps, not telling family or many friends, we felt this kind of monumental shift was one best done with great thought and courage. Also one best done when we knew we had all of our ducks in a row, and had lined up what was important to us as a family, before getting too much external input sowing seeds of doubt. Sure there was a lot to consider. Max was not even 3 - an age that can be difficult when it comes to listening and learning lessons. Sophia was in her last year of intermediate (middle) school, and Maia in her first year. If we were going to do this it really had to be before Sophia started high school and we would have to apply to get exemption from the Ministry of Education to homeschool the children. What would our clients think and could we realistically run our business without too much disruption? Finding the right boat was only part of the equation. We also had to work out how we were going to operate it without putting ourselves, our children and pets, and our boat in danger. 

Photo : 2021 - the original photo Ross and Janet used on Trade Me when they listed the Oriental Lady for sale.

The universe came into alignment the week of our 16th Wedding Anniversary. We had looked at a vessel in Wellington a couple of weeks previously and were in the process of organising a marine survey to assess everything. We were very realistic by this stage that purchasing a boat was not going to be a set and forget process - it would be just the start of a lengthy financial commitment. The boat we had looked at was an older 17.7m Salthouse semi displacement with a draft of 1.2 metres and a beam of 5 metres. It had done some impressive voyages including a lengthy trip down the West Coast to Fjiordland. The vessel had some impressive features due to the fact that it had been an in-survey charter vessel during it's life, and was still packed with technology related to those requirements. As we were starting the survey process the Oriental Lady was listed on TradeMe. I saw the listing within the first hour and reached out to Ross, the owner, to meet later that day to see the vessel. Thankfully the vessel was located in Havelock, just an hour away from our home base in Nelson. It was an anxious wait for the kids school day to end so that we could pick them all up and drive straight to Havelock to meet Ross and view the boat. After our initial walk through we knew we had found what we were looking for. An older boat with solid bones, a large full beam aft cabin and 3 cabins for the kids up front. The bonus was that each of the 3 cabins forward all had bunks, with the most forward one having it's own wet head - a full bathroom with a toilet and shower. The Oriental Lady had some great features - a large salon for inside living with a great kitchen and a full sized 12 volt fridge, as well as a massive cockpit out the back that was fully covered providing a second all weather living space. The boat also had a large fly bridge, twin Caterpillar 3208 bulletproof engines and bowthrusters. It was also a semi displacement with a deep keel of 1.47 metres. Upon talking with Ross it became apparent that it also had the most valuable thing of all, an owner that was willing to do a long handover and provide some on water training for me so that I could learn the ropes so to speak. Over the coming weeks as we waited for a survey and "official sea trial" Ross was kind enough to take me out for a weekend trip to teach me about the boat, it's systems and how to handle it. We got to know each other over this time and he quickly became my on water mentor. It was awesome. We spent the weekend going through "drills". Learning how to leave the dock, anchor, pick up a mooring ball and read the wind and the weather. His next request was for me to pick a first mate to come along on another trip so that there would be two onboard that knew how things worked. Haylee and I discussed this at length and it was decided that our eldest daughter Sophia, who was just 13 at the time, would assume this responsibility. It was all getting very real! The survey was done, everybody was happy, money changed hands, insurance was organised and our next trip planned so that Sophia could also gain valuable knowledge. 

Photo : 2022 - a winter fire on the beach at one of our favourite spots - Long Bay in the Kenepuru Sounds.

Our next trip in December was the real test. Ross left me to my own devices and concentrated on getting Sophia up to speed. We cruised to some of the favourite places in the inner Sounds that Ross enjoyed. We anchored, we moored, we moved, we anchored some more and moved to different bays. We got used to the various systems and had the chance to work things out in the company of someone that was very familiar with the boat. It shortened our steep learning curve by an enormous amount, and for that our family will be forever thankful to Ross and Janet. However we weren't done just yet. We still had the full family trip to get under our belts, and once again Ross and Janet stepped up to make sure that we had it all sorted. We had Christmas at home knowing that we were about to embark on the journey of a lifetime! In the days after Christmas we provisioned hard and prepared for a 3 week trip as a family. We had arranged to meet Ross and Janet out on the water for our first night to make sure that we had got everything right and had settled into our new boat. The sense of pride and accomplishment as we entered Yncyca Bay and picked up the mooring ball on the first attempt as they watched on from their boat was extremely satisfying. We had done it. Successfully left port under our own steam and made our way in the middle reaches of the Pelorus Sound to share a bay with good friends. What an amazing feeling to be able to share that joy within our family with Ross and Janet. The next morning we bid them farewell and started our three weeks exploring the bays and enjoying the freedom our new lifestyle provided. During that trip we had a visit from Ken and Erin, neighbours on our pier, who found us and stopped by to check in to see how we were getting on. The sense of community within our new found boating friends was amazing and we deeply appreciated the gesture. That trip around the sounds was remarkable. We enjoyed so many new things. Swimming in empty bays in the crystal clear waters of the outer sounds, our first storm at sea, meeting and making new friends and discovering that we could actually make this new lifestyle work. Haylee and I felt brave. We had taken an enormous leap of faith to try something new and far outside of our comfort zone and we had been rewarded an amount exceeding the level of risk we had taken. It felt like we had unlocked a secret level to life and had opened a new account in the bank of memories. This would be a time that the children would remember and hopefully cherish for their whole lives. This felt epic, fresh and invigorating. This was exactly what we needed. This was the start of our pivot into our new normal.
Who would have thought a pandemic focused on locking people down would result in freedom so great.