Last time I posted a bit about having crew aboard and the infinitely difficult task of living in really small spaces. Our most recent, previous crew member departed our boat about a week ago and is already enroute to New Zealand. We wish her well. We have also decided the 1300 NM (or thereabouts) passage to New Zealand could require a different approach, which we have taken. Previousely we were looking for someone whose principal qualities were their youth and desire to learn about sailing, how to sail and life at sea. In these endeavors we were also looking for an open ended committment on both parts, i.e. it would continue as long as all involved agreed. The downside of that is we always had someone living with us, whether we were passagemaking or sitting in a boatyard getting something fixed or anything in between. What we decided to try was to look for crew to make a specific passage, i.e. not open ended. We also decided thazt such a shipmate should have actual sailing experience in order to be more immediately useful. In this particular instance we further decided that two additional crew could be accomodated (it actually gets a bit crowded with four people for long periods on this boat) since we would basically be leaving on our passage to, New Zealand once they arrived. It will be intzeresting to see how this new iteration of living and sailing works out. We have two guys, both unknown to me except for interviews via email and phone, and one known to Charlene. One guy is flying in from New Zealand and will arrive Monday. He owns his own cruising sailboat and has a lot of experience on smaller boats cruising the coastal waters of New Zealand, has made the passage from New Zealand to Fiji and is looking for more passagemaking time before setting out in his own boat next year. Interestingly, New Zealand will not provide International Outbound clearance to NZ flagged vessels unless the captain has completed several advanced courses in seamanship and navigation which this guy has done. Crew #2 is flying in from Bradenton and will be arriving early Thursday morning. Charlene has known him from her days racing in and around Bradenton and considers him both congenial and a good sailor. Both guys are "qualifie chefs", which is a definite plus. They are also both more mature than our prior shipmates, which combined with a finite time period should make this a good experience. So on or about next Thursday, November 2nd, we will embark on our passage to New Zealand. The timing of our departure is mainly dependent on a good weather window that will allow us to sail in decent conditions for at least most of the way. Under no circumstances will we leave on Friday. One additional bit of information is this posting will be sent over our new Iridium satelitte device. I refer to it as a device as it is not the typical telephone handset hooked up so send and receive data, it is principally a device used to send data, though we can make voice calls with it. As some may recall the old Iridium phone stopped working a couple of days after we left Panama, causing much frustration. I was reluctant to simply replace it for a variety of reasons, and was equally as reluctant to either upgrade to a big system (about 3 times the price) or use the little "hotspot" so many other cruisers were using. Both the handset and the hotspot required an external antenna an d a fat, sensetive cable running about 30 feet from the antenna to the hotspot or handset. I literally stumbled across an Iridium device that solved the external antenna problem by placing the hotspot inside a 7 inch dome and using a power over ethernet cable from the dome to below. It is early days and the trip to NZ will be a better test but so far so good.......More later