After nearly 5 years, here is the short version of a long story.
In March 2015, Mark took a job as Corporate Treasurer at Broadcom and moved back to Silicon Valley. May 2016 we moved Gray Matter with professional crew to New Zealand.
Having a moveable vacation home in New Zealand is definitely one of life’s great luxuries, and we explored from Bay of Islands to Auckland, including some of the offshore islands (Hen and the Chicken Islands, and Poor Knights). We tested our coldwater scuba gear, realized we are warm water divers. And like Australia we now leave New Zealand with a list of places we feel we missed and can’t wait to return to: Great Barrier Island, Marlborough Sound, and Milford Sound).
Gray Matter continues her upgrade journey, and several major projects accomplished while in New Zealand. Ten plus years of bottom paint were soda blasted to bare fiberglass, epoxy coated and new antifouling paint applied. In addition, Gray Matter has overhauled stabilizers with new bearings, seals and hydraulics lines, and a freshly serviced Caterpilar, with value adjustment, new injectors, and all new filters. After 7 faithful years, the house and start battery bank needed replaced, and we continue to appreciate how power efficient Gray Matter is with solar, and low draw refrigeration. Polished fuel tanks polished and fuel, before taking on 1200 gallons of duty free fuel on departure; Gray Matter is ready for more adventure.
We are now 150 nautical miles north of the North Island, skirting a bit of weather in the Tasman to the north, we plan to run 50 miles southwest of Norfolk Island before turning west for Brisbane arriving sometime March 23 – 24 (2018!).
Christine continues to hold her academic position in Brisbane, and Mark is now working as a CFO at a start-up in Napa. Returning to Australia provides an opportunity to use the boat more as we hope to see more of the Great Barrier Reef and make a trip to the Kimberleys before venturing either north to Asia, or back east for a loop through New Caledonia, Fiji and Tonga before heading north.
We’ll add pictures when we have more bandwidth.
Hello Gray Matter looked great yesterday on the Gold Coast Broardwater , I always stop and admire Nordhavns , especially 62 s , I was on the Jet Ski taking some gear over to our Stradbroke Island house when I saw you , at first I thought it was Celebrate , which we are considering purchasing then I saw the name , are you guys on the GC for long ?
regards
Shane Young
Hi Shane
You might saw our new post today — We were taking GM down to Newcastle for loading/shipping back to the states. Had a bit drama.