26/05/2026
๐๐ ๐ช๐๐๐ก ๐ง๐๐ ๐๐๐ข ๐๐๐๐ก๐๐๐ฆ ๐ง๐๐ ๐ฃ๐๐ฆ๐ฆ๐๐๐: ๐ง๐ต๐ฒ ๐ช๐ฒ๐ฒ๐ธ ๐ง๐ต๐ฎ๐ ๐ช๐ฎ๐ ๐๐
We were prepared.
We had studied the long-range forecast carefully. The week looked ideal โ south-westerlies to carry us on an eleven-hour sail to Great Barrier Island, then a few quiet days in our favourite bays before riding the right conditions home.
But weather patterns are changing.
Abruptly. Uncharacteristically.
The forecast may speak one language in the morning, and the sky may answer in another by evening.
This time, the south-easterlies were threatening to linger far longer than expected โ strengthening into ferocious gales, building 4-metre swells along this exposed coast. The favourable passage we had counted on quietly vanished.
Our graceful eleven-hour sail was no longer graceful. It would mean either a hard beat into wind all day, or leaving at 3 a.m. and motoring the entire way to outrun the shift.
Then, that afternoon, a rainbow appeared. ๐
To me, it felt like my fatherโs message:
Listen to the Dao.
So we changed our plans.
Instead of forcing the passage we had imagined, we went where the winds were willing to take us โ north. To a closer destination. Somewhere that would not make the return unnecessarily difficult.
Paradise Cove.
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Paradise Cove is one of those secret anchorages not written into any book.
In fact, we named it ourselves โ discovered during an early exploratory sail along this exposed Pacific north-east coast of Aotearoa New Zealand, when we were searching first for safe shelter, then for hidden pockets of playground where Arielle could take us.
This coastline opens directly to the vast Pacific Ocean. Chile lies somewhere on that far horizon. Safe shelter here is not easily found.
Over the years, we have barely encountered other visitors โ and when we do, they are almost always locals, carrying the kind of knowledge that only place can teach.
We arrived to glorious evening light pouring across the bay.
But the conditions were not quite what our charts had suggested. Wind direction, landform, seafloor, and swell combined in ways that sent motion right into the anchorage.
The first night taught us what no forecast could.
By morning, we needed a stern anchor โ to stop Arielle swinging beam-on to the swell. So we spent the morning attending to lines, angles, and the patient, practical intelligence that only the sea can confer.
The sea, as always, teaching what no chart can hold.
For the next four days, we settled in.
Not a soul in sight.
Not another boat.
Not even a distant human disturbance on the horizon.
There are still places where one can enter that quality of solitude โ far from the noise, far from the endless insistence of the world.
For a hermit-sage at heart, this is rare and quiet bliss.
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This was also our first voyage with Little Ohm โ a small Zodiac we recently bought to replace our beloved but increasingly unmanageable Little Tao, who weighs close to 500 kg and has become too heavy to beach easily in swells.
Little Ohm is light, simple, and perfectly suited to shore landings that need not become a full dayโs labour.
Each day, we rowed ashore โ having abandoned the outboard motor too โ beached her on the sand, and walked the kilometre stretch that curved ahead of us like an open hand.
That became our rhythm.
A walk along the beach.
Kim with his workouts and qigong.
Me with my martial arts practice.
Arielle resting quietly in the bay.
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What this anchorage taught us was the subtle intelligence of wind and land.
What appears simple on a chart becomes far more complex in lived experience. An isthmus, an island, a headland, a gap in the land โ all these forms can channel, bend, compress, accelerate, and wrap the wind in ways no map anticipates.
The air behaves like Qi.
It follows form.
It seeks passage.
It gathers force where it is compressed.
It reveals, through movement, the hidden influence of the land.
This is where sailing and Feng Shui meet so naturally for me.
The chart gives information.
The forecast gives probability.
But the land, the water, and the wind โ they give truth.
And one must learn to listen.
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Sometimes, the deepest wisdom is not in reaching the destination first imagined.
It is in hearing the wind change.
In seeing the rainbow appear.
In allowing the Dao to show another way โ and trusting, with open hands, that this way too is the right one.
โ Master Boon ๐๐
