Aotearoa

Aotearoa. Land of the long white cloud. I have been living in Auckland, New Zealand now for almost two months. It's wonderful. I arrived three months early for my Fulbright Scholar Award to begin field work on Little Blue Penguins. I'm working with Dr. Todd Dennis and his PhD student Jingjing Zhang on a colony of blues at Matiu/Somes Island in Wellington Harbor. When I arrived in Auckland October 22, I didn't yet have a place to live but I had spotted my dream house on the NZ Real Estate website. I'd been tracking it for weeks and was a little concerned that no one had snapped it up when it was so clearly paradise. Knowing enough about how pictures and descriptions can make a place look much more attractive than it is, I didn't want to commit to it until I saw the competition in person. The best place I saw in the CBD (central business district, an easy walk to the University of Auckland campus where I am based) was attractively furnished on a high floor with a partial view of a park. It also had a partial view of the neighboring building and was 40m2. I didn't really have an appreciation for square footage (meterage in this case) before apartment shopping. I felt like I was bumping into myself. I'm pretty sure my closets and bathroom back home are more spacious than that little apt, and they're not big. There is pressure to build more housing in the CBD and these dog-boxes (as I heard them called) will be more common.

Suffice it to say that I'm living in my dream place across from the CBD with tremendous views of everything. I'm actually quite the cliff-side spy with my long lens camera and binoculars, watching every bird and sailboat that flies by, as well as the considerable commerce going on: container ships, huge cruise ships, ferries to numerous islands in the gulf, fishing charters, and superyachts being field tested by boat-building companies in Auckland.

View of sunrise and the NZ Navy station (left) from my living room.

Christmas colors on the Skytower, Auckland CBD.

Ohana superyacht, 164ft, FitzroyYachts. The Auckland Museum is on the hill in the background.

This is one of my favorite sailboats. Beautiful lines and sails. 

Ethereal superyacht, $60 million, 190ft, Ron Holland (NZ) eco-design

Sun Princess. 2-3 cruise ships per week dock at Princes Wharf.

I was lucky enough to see a pod of orcas swim by. I had just seen them on the local news. They were at a nearby beach eating sting rays in the shallows. One orca even had the long stinger dangling out of its mouth. My neighbor clued me in to their presence essentially in our front yard by jumping the hedge and knocking on my sliding glass door. I happened to have my computer in front of me, focused on writing a letter of recommendation, so I missed the telltale sign of whales in the harbor: ferries going in circles to make sure the passengers get a good look (probably the only time the ferries aren't right on time to the second as they usually are).

I don't have a car. I commute to work by walking 10 minutes to the Stanley Bay ferry, then going across the narrow strip of water separating me from the CBD (7 minutes), then walking uphill through beautiful Albert Park to the university. No traffic jams, no buying gas (NZ$2.21 per liter which is about US$7.30 per gallon!), and I get some much needed exercise. Good stuff.

During my commute on a particularly windy day I had the chance to document a capsized catamaran, the Ninja. See the Bugger! post. I also have watched the America's Cup super-catamarans: the Kiwi entry and Luna Rossa, the gorgeous Prada sponsored Italian boat, made to the same specs as the Kiwi boat and here to race with a top competitor for training. The December issue of the Auckland magazine Metro has a phenomenal picture (1st one at link below) of the Kiwi 72 (feet long) with BOTH hulls out of the water, grounded only by a curved dagger board. Stunning. The article is interesting too. Additional pics here. I really want to go to the America's Cup next year in San Francisco to see them push these cats to the very limit. These boats absolutely fly.

Emirates Team New Zealand AC72

The Luna Rossa AC72. This picture was taken January 22, 2013 - finally got one of it flying by. Gorgeous.

Another  pic (taken with my iPad) of the gorgeous Luna Rossa. I watched for about an hour as it was lifted by a crane and tucked into its shed at the end of Silo Park. 

On January 15, 2013 the training catamaran for the Italian team lost the lower half of  its wing in high winds. A small tending skiff towed the floating wing back to the storage shed while the larger skiff here towed the cat back. Luckily they were still able to train on the full-sized cat (see above - flying shot).