Water water and more water

Dear Readership,

Now the weather has kicked into gear here I've been a busy boy with lots to tell!

The Ocean Swim across Auckland's harbour I've been telling you about went pretty well. I'd spent 10hours in the pool playing hockey in the day and a half before hand at an NZ Men's training camp so perhaps not the most ideal preparation. The 2.8km swim started off in calm water but the wind and waves picked up in the middle of the harbour and the last 800m or so was a bit of slog. I finished 108th out of 1269 people who finished (over 1400 started...!) So I'm happy with the 44mins I did it in and getting into the top 10% but I think I can improve on a few things next year. The major improvement I could make is my navigation skills. I used the Auckland Skytower as a marker to swim towards but realised halfway across that it's actually round and looks the same from every angle. I realised this as I took a moment to look around and discovered that the main pack was about 100m to my left and taking a better line to combat the current than I was...!

Also on the fitness front I've entered a few events called the Stroke and Stride series here in Auckland. They consist of an ocean swim followed by a run and take place in either St Heliers or Mission Bay every other week. The first one I entered was a 750m swim and a 4k run, I finished 6th out of 20 in my age group and beat the four other people I knew in the race including two guys from my swim squad. About 500-600 people enter each event and it's a great atmosphere. I've just completed my second event this evening and although I won't find out my placing till it's posted on the Internet tomorrow I think I did alright.

Hockey is taking up most of my life at the moment, I'm doing a lot of fitness work outside of the two games we have a week and although it's early days I feel a lot better for it, although I tend to fall asleep after 9pm now! We've got another training camp on in Auckland this weekend, I'm hosting two players from other towns for a few nights and I've even managed to convince work to let us use a meeting room for one of our sessions!

Last weekend I kayaked to and camped on an island in the Auckland Harbour called Motuihe (pronounced Moto-hee) with five friends, two from work, one from swimming and an old school friend from Fortrose and her husband Adrian who were staying with us last week. We had amazing weather to say the least, clear blue skies and the wind on our back on both trips. We slept on a tarpaulin in our sleeping bags under the stars and dined on freshly caught mussels (and some sausages and steak we took with us!) After a few sociable drinks we went for a night time dip in the sea and swum in some phosphorescence (sp?) which were about the size of snowflakes and lit up when you disturbed them in the water (which was bloody cold even after a few beers!)

There was one slight mis-hap on this trip, on the way over we were fishing off the back of our kayaks when I noticed that one of the lures trailing behind another kayak had hooked a lump of seaweed. Being helpful I told them to stop while I removed the seaweed but whilst doing so our boats drifted apart, the slack was taken up and the lure slipped from my grasp embedding the treble hook in my left index finger and dragging me behind the other kayak! On the off chance we caught a fish I had popped my dive knife in my lifejacket so I was able to cut the fishing line pretty quickly. I paddled over to the other kayak which happened to be a double, Adrian removed the lure from the treble hook and we decided to paddle to the island and sort out the hook there. It was about a 3.5k paddle during which time I developed quite an appreciation for my index finger whilst paddling using just three fingers on my left hand (and my right of course) this also happened to be the choppiest paddling we had to do all weekend!

Reaching the island I made my way to the rangers hut with my friend Kieran dancing around like a child in a sweet shop proclaiming he knew exactly what to do. The ranger was nowhere to be seen so in the presence of an elderly volunteer who hadn't come across this predicament before I opted for Kieran's method of hook removal (luckily only one barb was embedded in my finger) The theory went like this; twist the hook in the direction it went in so that the barb comes out of your finger in a different place than it went in, snip the barb off and pull the whole thing back through the entry hole. In practise it turns out that the skin around the joints on your finger is incredibly tough and it took ages to push the tip of the hook through, Kieran was dying to have a go at it just like mum used to always want to pick my spots for me, luckily I learned when I was very small that other people have no sympathy for your pain so I didn't let him pull the hook out for me! when it finally did emerge though we had to then work the skin over the hook till finally the barb 'popped' through and we were able to snip it off with the multitool that I'd brought! Another stroke of fortune was that Adrian happens to be an outdoor instructor back in Inverness and had brought with him a first aid kit that your average paramedic would be envious of. Between the first aid kit and the fact the hook was brand new I was pretty lucky to have minimal infection in it and it's almost back to normal now!

Work is chugging along nicely, I've floated a few of my ideas with the bosses and they have gone down well so far, our project is throwing up a few unexpected challenges but it's keeping me on my toes. At this point I'm learning a great deal so staying on top of it is occupying my time rather than playing with ideas for future roles and opportunities within the company.

It's almost Christmas and I'm looking forward to the break although I'll still have to train for the hockey team. I'm off to stay at Evelien's family's beach house for a few days then hoping to go camping and fishing for a few days over New Years. This has been a monster of a journal so I'll sign off here and get some sleep! I hope this finds you all well and will talk to you all soon
Lots of Love
Nick