VOYAGE FOR VOYCE: WELL UNDERWAY!

Last night I had the opportunity to speak to a lovely group of young sailors from the Mercury Bay Boating Club in Whitianga, our second port-of-call on our four-month figure 8 voyage around New Zealand. It warms my soul to see a young person’s face when they step inside Windfola for the first time. Their eyes widen as they imagine what it would be like to sail across an ocean on a small boat, alone. You can see it stoke the adventure in their heart and broaden their understanding of what is possible in this life.

Love, love, love sharing Windfola with young people and their families!

When I imagine a perfect future for youth in foster care, I picture every young person having the safety to dream, the self-confidence to pursue their dreams, and all of the necessary support to carry them along into a successful adulthood. In democracies, we have an obligation to youth in state care — it is our government and our laws that govern their childhoods. That’s why I think we all need to step forward and pledge a commitment to lift up the foster youth in our communities, and that’s just what the Mercury Bay Boating Club has done. I’m so thankful to their Commodore, Jonathan Kline, for acknowledging that there are young people in his community that may need additional support to join their youth sailing program, and committing to helping them to participate. He is fostering a beautiful, kind, and inclusive sailing whanau here!

Whitianga is wonderful, but I’m excited to carry on with our journey down the east coast of the North Island, to meet and welcome aboard more young people in Tauranga. Tauranga is where our sailing family is — the people who welcomed and cared for us during lockdown, and encouraged and supported my figure 8 dream in its most nascent stages. I can’t wait to reunite with our community there, and to connect with even more folks who are championing our Voyage for VOYCE.

I’m also looking forward to sailing on to new ports afterward, like Gisborne and Napier. If you are interested in having me speak with youth in your community as I sail through, please get in touch!

You can follow our voyage on our public tracking map, and enjoy photos and videos of the journey on social media. I hope you’ll also take a moment to learn more about our awesome partner organizations VOYCE - Whakarongo Mai and Spirit of Adventure Trust.

Some of you have asked how you can support us directly, and I’m so thankful to you for that! The number one thing you can do to make my heart happy is to help our Voyage for VOYCE be a success by donating through the Give A Little Page to create a new scholarship fund for youth in foster care to go on the Spirit of New Zealand tall ship’s 10-day, life-changing journeys.

But if you really insist on helping Zia, Windfola, and me sail on, there are a few things you can do:

• Share, share, share! Tell everyone you know about what we’re doing, and encourage them to share with their friends, too. This is truly a grassroots campaign, and getting the word out is key to its success! If just 5% of kiwis gave $5 to the fundraiser, VOYCE would have $1.25 million, enabling them to send 500 youth in care on the Spirit of New Zealand! Please, help us reach enough people to making a lasting difference in the lives of teenage foster youth in this country.

• Supply us with helpful things. We could use fresh fruits and veggies when we get in to ports along our route, as well as slips, moorings, cooking fuel (methylated spirits), diesel. There are some other small things we could use — like, Zia really needs a new life jacket, and in this cold climate I could really use a hair dryer! Follow our track and get in touch if you’d like to help out… or just simply show up if you spot us coming to your neighborhood.

• Help us financially by donating. I am now subscribing to satellite coverage so that followers like you can track us as we sail, and also still paying off our new rig. We are motoring more than usual in order to visit youth around the country, which means we are consuming more diesel than usual. Your contributions will help cover these (and other) costs.

• Sponsor the purchase of a major item. We could use a high-quality spare inflatable kayak, a regalvanized or new 8mm chain (minimum 45 meters), a full replacement of Windfola’s degrading original 1985 indoor upholstery (both foam and fabric), and to replace two solar panels that are no longer producing power with one much better panel. You can ship items directly to us at any marina along our route, or to our sailing whanau at Tauranga Bridge Marina, c/o Windfola.

I really appreciate everyone who has encouraged us in our mission to shine a light for foster youth around the world. Thank you so much for all of your support and cheer along the way! We couldn’t do this without you.

xo & fair winds,
elana, zia, and s/v windfola ⛵️💕19 October, 2020; Whitianga, New Zealand

Big Boat Projects For a Big Sailing Project

Sitting in Windfola’s snug interior, I’m staring at a hole in my roof as I write this. It’s a glaring sign of the major work we’ve undertaken since returning to Tauranga three weeks ago, and perhaps the most obvious reason why we’re not sailing right now. Windfola’s mast has been craned out of its through-deck home, and along with her mast have gone all of the cables that hold it in place.

When it comes to our rig — all of the wires and fixtures that hold up the mast — I’ve known for the last 18 months that we were on borrowed time. I’ve done all I can to take it easy while we cruise, never pushing too hard and always reducing sail early when the weather pipes up. I’ve lovingly sat outside in downpours of heavy rain so I could scrub the swages at the ends of the wires, and after letting them dry in the sun, soothed them with smelly, thick Lanacote grease, akin to balm on a baby’s bum. But even the best of TLC could not negate the fact that Windfola’s cables were 17 years old, and that is seven years of hard use beyond their recommended lifespan. They were a ticking clock. And it stopped ticking a week and a half ago.

I’d intended to limp on a bit longer with our mast’s cables, because we have big sailing plans ahead that I hoped would draw a sponsor to fund replacement. I decided to do only one expensive project now: haul Windfola out of the water. To start our upcoming sail we need to be able to travel from port to port on the North Island of New Zealand, but invasive species cling to the bottoms of boats with depleted anti-fouling paint. It had been 16 months since our last bottom repainting in San Diego, and New Zealand harbors won’t permit a boat to enter with a paint job more than six months old (unless they receive a monthly pressure washing). If we wanted to sail on, we had to haul out and repaint.

Fortunately/unfortunately, a rig inspection while we were out of the water revealed that a wire in one of the cables was broken. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when, other wires and cables would break, leaving the mast unsupported in time of need. I made the difficult decision — made easier by a kind price break from a local rig shop — to go ahead and replace all of her wires. I finished her bottom projects, and we dropped a freshly-painted Windfola in the water. The kind and competent folks at Bridge Marina Travelift immediately craned out her mast and rig, and on that rainy morning, I motored her vulnerable, naked body back to a slip in the marina.

I’ve placed blue tarps like giant Band-Aids over the holes in her deck, and now we wait together, unable to sail, while all of her new cables are fabricated. It’s strange how the moment she’s disabled by a project like this, the itch to cast off the dock lines and fly free engulfs my whole body like an allergy-induced rash.

I’m grateful for the kindness here, to be in this community while we undertake such big projects, but I long for the open water and the wind in my hair. I long for freedom. I long for choice. And I mourn their loss, a mourning that unites my heart with those of so many others throughout the world, navigating unanticipated changes that have brought on new and frustrating limitations.

And so, I recenter myself on what I can still do. I can still wake up every day. I can still tell my friends I love them. I can still set goals. I can still dedicate this journey to a purpose: to raise awareness about and hope for foster kids.

Since we can’t safely leave New Zealand, I’ve decided to take a detour in our global circumnavigation by taking on a smaller — but still majorly challenging — circumnavigation this summer, and use the trip to fundraise for a foster care organization. Once Windfola is pieced back together, we’ll set out on this new endeavor, and I couldn’t be more excited for the demanding sail ahead. Setting a goal that will enable us to carry on making a difference has brought me hope in this time of loss, given me purpose when it was all too easy to feel I didn’t have one anymore.

My wish for you right now is that you might center yourself on what gives you purpose in these times, and set that as both your anchor and your light on the horizon. We are in this together, and there is so much we can still do for ourselves and for one another. Turn toward that light, and don’t lose sight of the horizon.

xo & fair winds,
elana, zia, and s/v windfola ⛵️💕25 August, 2020; Tauranga, New Zealand

Going "Home" to Tauranga

Have you ever left a place, returned, and felt you’d come home? After three weeks out cruising the coast of the Coromandel, we returned last night to Tauranga Bridge Marina . . . and home. ❤️

Sailors always help each other, but the sailing family we’ve found here is extra special. I decided to return to Tauranga because Windfola needs TLC on her bottom; we are overdue to haul-out. I’ve been fighting an ear infection for a week, so I arrived feeling tired & nauseous, on an ebb tide with a lot of current. Though she’s away right now, the local and ever-nurturing Sonya made time for a chat to boost my confidence before I came into the harbor. Then boat neighbor Pammie — and goddess in her own right — came to catch our lines. The endlessly kind marina manager, Tony, kept an eye out for my sails, & sent me a kindly text reminder as the light waned to turn on my nav lights. He came out in the runabout to boost us into the slip if the current fought me too much.

Dock lines were secured and then a whole parade of friendly faces came by — sweet Thami, Sonya’s Trevor, and another local lady sailor/racer, Rachael. Everyone smiled & welcomed us back, with pets for Zia & hugs for me. We were offered dinner company, an invite to a game night, & rides to the grocery store.

Today, I was loaned tools for the projects ahead — like a cutlass bearing extractor! — and offered more support in the boatyard then I could ever have imagined. People here genuinely care and want to see us succeed at the big (surprise!) sailing project I have planned for the next six months. The boatyard owner has kindly squeezed us in and offered a terrific deal at one of the best DIY yards around, Tauranga Bridge Travelift . 🙌🍀

Family is something you create. Home is wherever you open your heart to others, and they reciprocate. A shepherd that I met recently on Great Mercury Island told me, “Why have enemies when you can have friends? Being grumpy doesn’t achieve anything.” In these times, it feels especially important to remember that it really is that simple.

The shepherd also said, “When it’s raining porridge, hold out your bowl!” 😂 New Zealand, and especially Tauranga, thanks for filling my bowl! 🙏❤️

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Cast Off the Docklines and Believe

After so many weeks staying put in one place and working hard, it feels so good and so right that Windfola is moving again. Tomorrow we are planning a big shakedown sail, and if all goes smoothly, we’ll depart the next day to cruise down the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand.

Sitting here by the light of Windfola’s oil lamp, rocking gently on our mooring, I’ve been remembering the beauty of long days at sea with incredible sunsets like this one. It was memories like this, coupled with a poem by Pat Schneider, that kept me going through the last few weeks of labor. To those of you who, like me, are working with a focused discipline... don’t forget the equal importance of just casting off the docklines and believing.

YOUR BOAT, YOUR WORDS

Your boat, they will tell you,
cannot leave the harbor
without discipline.

But they will neglect to mention
that discipline has a vanishing point,
an invisible horizon where belief takes over.

They will not whisper to you the secret
that they themselves have not fully understood: that
belief is the only wind with breath enough
to take you past the deadly calms, the stopped motion
toward that place you have imagined,
the existence of which you cannot prove
except by going there.

- Pat Schneider

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Day 6 of 25, singlehanding from CA to The Marquesas, French Polynesia

"Make me an instrument of peace . . . "

not every day is easy, but every day that I look into these eyes, I feel lucky. Zia loves in a way that is different from any love I’ve ever felt. She forgives quickly. She’s patient. She’s always ready to be happy together again. And when I have a hard day, like today, she comes to me to check in, and offers to wipe my tears away... (errr... but, with her tongue, so there’s definitely some room for improvement in her tissue technique).

Lately, life has been amazing and overwhelming, blessed and challenging. I’m lucky to encounter so much kindness in my life, but when I encounter unkindness (however infrequently), it still makes my stomach sink and my heart drop. I struggle to share about it when it’s happening, but I’m trying to find positive ways to talk about some of the challenges I face out here as a solo young woman.

I’ve always been sensitive, and perhaps all of the time with nature has made me struggle more with mankind. I know we are all imperfect, but I think we must set an intention to not lash out meanly at each other. I want us to love each other the way Zia loves me: with a kind and generous heart.

There was no faith or organized religion in my childhood, so I am discovering prayer late in life. I heard this one recently — perhaps known to many people — and it resonated deeply with me. Lately, no matter what happens each day, this is the prayer my soul is speaking:

“Make me an instrument of peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.

Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, and it is in pardoning that we are pardoned.”

Thank you, Zia, for being this prayer embodied. I love you.