Hello everybody! After three months held captive by a spiderweb of lines and immobilized by a lack of sails, HAWK's back in sailing shape. We've been off the dock twice in the last ten days, and plan to head out tomorrow for six weeks of cruising around the Hauraki Gulf. By Northern hemisphere standards we're just coming into March, but one of New Zealand's coldest winters seems to have broken, and we're eager to get out on the water and enjoy the spring.

We've spent the winter as we have spent the last three winters, with Evans engaged in boat projects and both of us writing. Evans did manage to get to the tropics briefly in July when he crewed to Fiji aboard a 103-foot super yacht. They dined gourmet-style every night on such luxuries as ostrich steaks and strawberry ice cream, and he had his own stateroom with a double berth and a private bathroom. They sailed the 1,200 miles in four and a half days - almost twice as fast as we could have done it aboard HAWK. Though he enjoyed the experience, he was glad to get back to HAWK where if a line parts or a piece of equipment fails no one's likely to get seriously injured. Evans has also written quite a few articles again this winter, and he has just been commissioned to do a one-year column with a British magazine, Yachting Monthly, on safety at sea.

My time has been devoted to the revision of The Voyager's Handbook, which has turned into much more of a project than I had originally envisioned or intended. Only when I started writing did I realize how much has changed since we left aboard SILK twelve years ago. So many of the topics I need to cover didn't even exist back then - high tech materials for lines and sails, the Internet and satellite communications, onboard weather forecasting tools, and watermakers and generators and other conveniences that make life aboard almost like life ashore. I start each chapter thinking it will be just a revision of the material and end up re-writing it completely. But I am making headway, and with any luck the revised book will be on the market by Christmas 2005.

HAWK's got newly anodized portlights and a touched up paint job, as well as two brand new sails. We probably wouldn't have gotten her back together so early this season except that we had a friend from Australia come visit last week to sail her. We first met Steph and her husband, Chris, last winter in Fremantle, Australia. They had just returned from a year's sailing adventure aboard a Vancouver 27. Steph was very pregnant, but in spite of that they were wandering the docks and talking about building an aluminum boat and leaving again in five years' time. We never did get out sailing with them in Freo - just as we got HAWK re-commissioned in the spring, Steph delivered their twelve-pound, six-ounce baby by Caesarian. The delivery took a lot out of her, and she had not recovered when we left for Tasmania. We've continued to correspond, and when Steph worried about double-handing a boat HAWK's size in an e-mail, we suggested they come spend some time aboard. Chris couldn't get away from work, so Steph committed to six hours of flying time each way alone with Silas, who had just turned one year old.

Having a baby around was a new experience for both of us, but it worked out very well. We got out sailing the day after Steph arrived, and turned the cockpit into a giant playpen for Silas. Though it was blowing 20 knots with gusts to 25, Silas had a wonderful time, cooing with pleasure at the water racing by HAWK's side and laughing up at us from among the makeshift toys littered around the cockpit. He didn't mind a stranger taking charge of him, or the fact that his mother routinely disappeared to try out the sail handling for herself. The last evening they spent with us, Evans converted HAWK's main saloon into an amusement park complete with bright orange ball fenders dangling on long lines from the handgrips and his bosun's chair as a makeshift swing. But when I asked him if he wanted one, he said, "Are you kidding? What a lot of work!" Though I enjoyed Silas tremendously, I'm at an age where I have to agree.

This has been a tough winter for New Zealand with flooding and earthquakes in the Bay of Plenty south of Auckland and severe winter storms throughout the South Island. The small city of Dunedin toward the southern end of the South Island was cut off twice this winter by snowstorms, and there were several serious avalanches in nearby ski areas. Yet this was the warmest, driest winter we have had since the Caribbean in 1999/2000. We're hoping the summer weather will be more cooperative. We plan to head down to the South Island in December and spend several months there before beginning the 8,000-mile run catty-corner across the Pacific Ocean to Vancouver.

Hope this finds everyone well, Beth and Evans s/v HAWK