Gresham Family Exodus

One quiet afternoon, I was just relaxing on the boat.  Then, all of a sudden, I hear a yelp come from outside.  It turns out our friend Camille dropped her phone in the water and needed help diving for it.

Because we were in New Zealand at the time, the water was supposed to be really cold, but when I dove in it was actually refreshing.  We had masks and fins already, so I slipped them on quickly and started diving.  Also, I couldn’t see anything because it was so muddy, and I accidentally slammed into the ground.  Luckily, the ground was soft and didn’t hurt that bad.

After diving with Camille for a little while Alex got out the Huka and we took turns using that.  When I got to use it, it seemed like I was never going to find it.  All I wanted to do was get out and dry off, but I really wanted to know if the phone would still work even though it was sitting on the bottom for an hour.  Then, after all this time, I see it, and so I grab it and shoot to the top.

That night as I lay in bed thinking about what happened earlier that day, I realized that as long as I keep trying, anything is possible.

Originally posted on January 19, 2015, by cruisingrunner

Day before yesterday we did some crew swapping with Iguana (our buddy boat). Tim went with Jack on Iguana on an overnight passage up to Three Kings Island, which is north of North Cape and a notorious fishing spot. Camille stayed with the boys and me on Exodus in a nice protected spot in Mangonui Harbor. There is a cute little tourist town here with a few restaurants and shops and a community cat that keeps them “mice free,” at least according to a little sign on one of the shops.

Yesterday, our friend Briana drove up from Opua to join us for some wine drinking, window shopping, cooking, and general female camaraderie. I joked with Tim before he left that he should take the boys too, since they would be seriously crashing my girlfriend time. It turns out to be a really good thing they were here with us.

After a shore excursion, we were arriving back to Exodus, and as Camille was climbing out of the dinghy I caught a brief visual of her phone teetering at the edge of her pocket. And while I’m yelling, “Your phone! Your phone!” I watch it fall out, splash into the water, and quickly disappear. I had that sick feeling when it really hit me what had happened, but I’m sure I didn’t feel half as sick as Camille did when she realized it was her phone that took the plunge. We called the boys out to quickly get in the water to help find it, and we dropped a GPS waypoint on the chartplotter so that we would maintain a rough idea of where the phone splashed down as Exodus swings about her anchor. Brenden was in the water first. He dove down and came up with a report that it was only about 10 feet deep, and he was yelling for someone to toss him his gloves, because his hands were freezing. You’d think 10 feet would be a piece of cake for them to recover a dropped object, because I think Brenden’s record is 42 feet to salvage a wayward plate. But the problem was the visibility, which was so bad Brenden said he almost hit his face on the bottom.

Camille was quickly behind Brenden into the water and the two of them tried for a while, but both became discouraged. It was just too hard to search for it while free diving when you had to be right on the bottom to see anything. So, Briana and I became convinced that we needed to get the hookah out it order to find it. Camille wasn’t totally on board that it was worth the effort, since she was the one that already had the first hand experience of trying to find that needle in the haystack, but Briana and I persisted. Especially Briana. She had used our hookah before (at Minerva Reef) so she was willing to be the one to use it. However, Camille is a diver and after a couple of questions about how the hookah works she decided she was comfortable doing it.

The hookah is basically a gas engine that drives a compressor. So, instead of carrying a tank of compressed air on your back like regular scuba diving, when you are using the hookah your air source is at the surface and you are connected to it by a long hose. Alex became a really important part of the process at this point, because I had never set up the hookah before, and because Alex is often Tim’s helper in all sorts of things, it turned out he had a good idea of how to set it up, start it, and operate it. One of Camille’s questions was, “where is the air intake?” since she was rightfully concerned about the possibility of breathing in the engine exhaust fumes. Alex remembered that the flag pole doubles as an air intake pipe so that it’s pulling in air from further away from the engine. So, he got that out and quickly attached it.

The hookah definitely made the search easier, but it was hard to stay on the bottom, so Camille asked for a weight belt. It turned out that Tim took our weight belts with him, which seemed reasonable to me at the time. We had absolutely no intention of doing any diving while he was away. So, Alex dug out one of the weight belts that actually came with the hookah, but then we realized we didn’t have any weights either. So, Briana and I searched around and the only thing we could come up with that would fit in that belt was some galvanized shackles in the linen closet, a.k.a. Tim’s spares locker. It wasn’t much weight, but it helped a little bit. Brenden was very interested in the status of the search and kept an eye on Camille hoping she would come up with the phone. I asked him if he would get in and help some more, and he slowly moped over to grab his gear as if I was forcing him to. I quickly said, “well, you don’t have to, of course.” But I had put the thought back into his brain, and I watched him continue to think about it and go over and test the water again to try and decide what he was going to do. When Camille gave up the search, and I started to tell Alex to shut down the hookah engine, Brenden made it clear he was getting back in for one more go at it. We all cheered him on, and I speculated that he had visions of being the hero dancing around in his head. He was in the water just a few minutes when he came up with a carrot stick that he found on the bottom. We had tossed a bunch of dried out carrot sticks overboard the night before, so we got a chuckle over that find. He kept searching and searching and we were all getting a bit defeated when we saw Brenden’s arm extending out of the water holding the phone. It was such a triumphal moment and we cheered and high fived and joked how Brenden could pretty much name his price for his recovery reward. Chocolate or ice cream? We still aren’t sure what he’ll choose.

Later I asked him what he was thinking, that is, what made him get back in the water and keep looking for it. I sincerely think he was motivated by those visions of being the hero, but he surprised me with his response. He said he was just really curious whether or not the phone would work again. I have no idea if it was a genuine response, but either way, I am pretty happy with it. He wasn’t flashy, and he didn’t play up any drama. And then there’s Alex, who did so much to help us with the entire process. We joked how he had one of those behind the scenes crucial jobs that just doesn’t get any of the glory. He gave a slight grin. No fanfare there, either. They both kept it real. My dad will be proud.

-D.

P.S. We still don’t know if the phone will work. It is made by Caterpillar, and is actually a waterproof phone, but when Camille opened it up, there was still water inside. She dried it out and now it’s still sitting in a container of rice. Hopefully, this will turn out to be a happy ending.

Originally posted on January 8, 2015, by cruisingrunner

After almost two years since leaving home, I made a momentous switch during my run yesterday.

I switched the unit of distance on my Garmin from miles to kilometers.

What!?!

Friends at home might be thinking that is blasphemy while my non-American friends are probably thinking, “Well, it’s about time.”

It was actually an uneventful switch, made without much thought. Basically, I was going for a trail run and the sign said it was 4.3 km to Rainbow Falls, and since the markers were in km, I figured I’d track my progress in km as well. Only after the fact did the significance hit me. I am now officially part of the rest of the world. Soon I’ll rattle off kilometers, kilograms, degrees Celsius, etc., without that awkward pause we Americans usually have as we’re mentally doing to the conversion to our crazy, yet intuitive to us since we grew up with it, system of units.

But in the meantime, while I still DO need to do those conversions in my head, I’ll take advantage of an unforeseen benefit. You see, when the pace shows up as min/km, instantaneously I have no idea how fast I’m really running, because I need to do the conversion first. And after awhile runners mush brain kicks in and I can’t even do the conversion to min/mile to save my life. This means I can’t judge myself for running too slow, even if I want to. And yesterday’s run was most enjoyable. It was along a track (aka trail) from the Kerikeri basin to Rainbow Falls passing Wharepuke falls along the way. The track is well maintained and there aren’t too many steep sections, so it was perfect for a run. The canopy was pretty thick, though, so my Garmin kept losing lock on the GPS satellites. For long section of the track I only got credit for the distance as the crow flies, but I’m trusting the signs: 4.3 km each way.

-D.

Preface by Mom: We went to the Kawiti Glowworm Caves the other day, and this is the resulting writing assignment. Homeschooling on a boat, one of the things the boys miss out on is group projects, so I’m going to start having them do some projects together.  This was our first experiment with this concept.

Glow Worms

Glow worms aren’t exactly worms. They are the larvae of a fungus gnat. The glow worm likes to live on the ceiling of a cave so if you go spelunking, watch out! They might fall on your head.

Glow worms are small worms (2.5 cm) that have the ability to make their tails glow. They glow for a reason, but we’ll get to that later.  Glow worms eat insects that fly around in the cave while it rains outside.  That’s right Glow worms live in caves, how else could you see their glow.

The glow worm starts out as an egg laid by a fungus gnat.  Then the egg hatches into a larvae after about two to three weeks. The larvae catches food in a web that it makes and lives like that for three to six months (depending on how much food it gets). After the elapsed time spent as a larvae ,the glow worm spins itself a cocoon, and staying like that for about two weeks before transforming into a fungus gnat. The gnat doesn’t have a mouth, so it has to find a mate and lay the eggs in about three days before it dies.

Now back to the glow of the worms. The reason for this glow is… wait, wait, wait.   Let’s start with the web they spin below them. It can get from 2cm to half a meter. The reason for this web is to catch insects in them.  What are the chances of a bug flying through it?  Very low, but that’s when the glow comes into play. The glow attracts the insects toward the web, and when the insect gets stuck in the web the glow worm sucks it up and eats the insect. Now that its eaten it dims its glow to save energy.

If you ever find a glow worm, do not touch it.  If you do, the sticky webs will probably stick to you and their light will dim. Same happens if you shine a bright light directly at them. Also their lights take a long time to brighten back up, which takes about four to five hours. So when you come across glow worms, please be careful for other people might enjoy them.

By Alex (age 13) and Brenden (age 12)

Originally posted on January 1, 2015, by cruisingrunner

My first run of 2015 was an 8-mile run/walk along road, trail, and mangrove boardwalk. Following along Russell Heritage Trail #4 I had no idea how far I had gone because when I stopped to pee in the woods, I forgot to restart my Garmin. On the way back I kept the Garmin running the whole time, even if I stopped to snap a photo or pee again, because let’s face it, my pace is simply not important anymore and I really wanted to know how far I’d come. Eight miles round trip. I felt exhilarated and ready to face the new year. But then I got back to the boat and the boys had just gotten up and hadn’t started their schoolwork yet. When I urged them to get started, they moaned and complained, and I tried to pass along my leftover post run exhilaration to them, but they simply weren’t having it.

When someone asks me how homeschooling is going, I usually reply that it’s going quite well. We’re pretty efficient about it and the boys seem to have a reasonable grasp on all the important skills and concepts we go over. What I usually don’t say is that there are a few things that I don’t like about our implementation, but I’m not really sure what to do about it.

The biggest thing is that my kids hate science. I can’t get over it. Science. My consistently favorite subject in school, especially the physical sciences because they actually explain how things work, and like, make predictions and have equations that you can apply to real life and stuff. I loved it. They hate it. And I can understand why. On Exodus science has been reduced to reading a boring textbook and memorizing vocabulary words. I would probably hate that too. When we do have all of the right materials on board to do one of the prescribed experiments the boys fight it every step of the way, and at first, I couldn’t understand that. I mean, this is the fun part of school, right? But then I thought about a major difference between public school and our home school implementation: Public school is for a set number of hours each day and home school is for a set amount of work each day. If the boys finish their work quickly, they have more time to play. So, at public school spending some of their set amount of time on lengthy science projects is fun because the alternative is the more boring parts of school like reading and writing. For us, spending time on lengthy science projects is a pain and boring because the alternative is finishing up everything quickly so they can go play. I certainly am NOT going to make our school days a set number of hours no matter what, so I wasn’t really sure how to solve this. I want science to be fun, but if doing an experiment adds an hour to our school day it will simply never be viewed as fun.

So, I did something I almost never do, I asked for help. While driving into Kerikeri with a friend, a former teacher actually, she asked me how school was going, and I skipped my script of how it’s going well and honestly shared with her how I was at a loss about this science thing. It took her all of about 30 seconds to come up with a great suggestion: What about saving the experiments up and then every week or two dedicating a full school day to them. So simple. So brilliant. I loved it, and it may just save science for us.

It also got me thinking about some other things, so I’ve also decided to periodically dedicate a day to doing joint projects with more of a local theme. For example, the other day instead of doing their usual school work I gave them a project choice: 1) Fill out a worksheet on glowworms and then write an essay about it, 2) Make a timeline of the history of New Zealand with illustrations, or 3) Do Russell Heritage Trail #1 and take pictures of all of the sites and then make an electronic photo album with captions. They chose #1 because they viewed it as the easiest, but they wrote a decent essay and worked together on it.

Admittedly, there’s a lot of learning that goes on aboard Exodus that isn’t lumped into the category of “school,” so even without these changes I’m sure the boys are doing fine. But there IS this thing we do called “school,” and the way we’ve been treating science within that framework has been ruining it. I’m excited about these changes and a few others I have brewing in my mind all spurred on by simply sharing my problem with a friend. I really need to do that more.

-D.