Our hearts go out to all the families affected by the flooding in January and Cyclone Gabrielle. This was, and still is, a challenging time for many.
The Trust was relieved not to be affected by the recent weather events. We are well protected in Auckland Viaduct with strong mooring lines - of course, we also regularly checked the boats’ lines, hulls and masts for any damage.
We had an extremely busy December period with new schools and business events just before Christmas. January saw the return of another wonderful Tīkapa Moana Explorer trip full of lively and enthusiastic teenagers. February has been busy focusing on ensuring both vessels are primed before March to May - our busiest time.
Steinlager 2 was blessed with a new main sail and we thank our long standing supporter Doyle Sails -this has been a game changer for us. They have also serviced our sails on Lion NZ to be in good working order. A MASSIVE thank you to Auckland Maritime Foundation for funding Steiny’s new sail.
Kiwi Yachting were patient to work with us to get new tracks on Steinlager 2 deck. It was a journey to get them into the country and we value Kiwi Yachting for standing by us. A heartfelt thank you to the Trillian Trust for funding this.
Our new 3D videos, made with See Thru Digital, “Bringing the physical world into the metaverse with Digital Twins” is new company providing specialist reality capture services and creating user-led experiences in the metaverse. www.seethrudigital.com (launching late March). Thank you to the continued support of the Trillian Trust in funding this new and exciting media.
See Steilager 2’s video below:
And here is Lion New Zealand’s:
It is a work in progress, but, so far, we think it is awesome! A massive thanks to Barry at Manaaki Marine for putting in so much effort to get these done. See Thru Digital, “Bringing the physical world into the metaverse with Digital Twins” is new company providing specialist reality capture services and creating user-led experiences in the metaverse. www.seethrudigital.com (launching late March)
Amongst all this great work by our team we unfortunately had to say goodbye to our head skipper Andre Strez. Andre had been with us for 6 years and was a real asset to the team. We have laughed, we have sailed, we have danced (synchronized swimming) and delivered incredible programmes and we couldn’t of done it without Andre. Over the last while, he has built a new team that will continue his great work and we are in the process of recruiting new skippers, but they will have big shoes to fill!
On a positive note we welcomed Nicola Jeffery, a long time Auckland sailor and a mum of two dinghy sailors. Her husband and two boys have recently arrived back in New Zealand having sailed their yacht from Croatia to New Zealand over three years. Nicola has lots of ideas and energy, so we look forward to seeing how she casts her talents with the Trust.
Amongst all this great work and personnel coming and going we delivered some great trips in between weather events. We pushed out another successful Tikapa Moana Explorer, 5 day sail and kayak programme. We had 12 students complete this programme and all had wonderful feedback.
“The boy I collected at the end of the Tīkapa Moana trip was so different to the son I dropped off... He now has such a positive mindset - it’s awesome! I’m now thinking of signing him up for the next trip too!”
We started the academic year off with two Kings trips and a St Paul’s student leadership group - all groups had so much energy! Over the next few months we expect to deliver close to 80 sailing days so this will be a busy time for us. We are excited to see the return of two ex maintenance skippers of the Trust - Finn Prosser-Wood and Mick Johns, who return to us for ‘celebrity’ trips to help us out during this demanding time.
Let’s throw the line and show our rangatahi our incredible playground!