I didn't want to have to continue studying after my A-levels straight away, I thought. So go as far away as possible - new Zealand was then at the top of my wish list. But that goes also along with getting up at 5.30 in the morning and being the only cyclist in the traffic chaos in Auckland. I worked in a shipyard there for three months and got a small insight into how boats are built. What the car industry is to us, boat building is to New Zealand.
Overall, I learned a lot about wood, glass fibre and carbon processing. But most of all about working in a team. Five to 15 people work together on a boat at any one time - until it's finished. As a trainee, you first have to show what you can do and help out everywhere. Sanding was right at the top of the agenda. I was fascinated by the absolute precision involved: to get the perfect rounding on the hull, for example, six of us worked with a seven-metre-long sanding block together. In total, we sanded down around 500kg of filler off the boat in one go. No wonder the New Zealanders are way ahead in sailing.
Fortunately, pretty much everything at Lloyd Stevenson Boatbuilders is made by hand. For example, I was able to see how a hull is built from the ground up. We started with milled MDF panels, which were positioned in the room with millimetre precision. It took a week just to set up the panels. Then, layer by layer, the panels were built up, laminated, sanded, levelled, painted and each of the thousands of screws sealed.
But it's also quite ridiculous when you consider how much hazardous waste is produced to build such an adult toy. On some days it was several hundred kilograms of plastic and epoxy resin. But you forget about that pretty quickly because the joy of building is the main thing. Also working in a team and the evening get-togethers, barbecues, etc. My absolute highlight: once the owner invited us to go fishing on a brand new yacht that we had built. We cruised around for a day, filled the oversized fish box on the deck and organised a fish barbecue the next day.
After a quarter of a year in Auckland, it was time to set off and get to know the country. Off to the south! Via: Tongariro National Park, Rotorua, Lake Taupo, Mount Taranaki, Forgotten World Highway, Wellington, Christchurch, Westcoast, Pancake Rocks, Queenstown... I spent Christmas and New Year in the hippie village of Raglan trying to learn what every New Zealander absorbs with their mother's milk: Surfing - at least it was a welcome change from grinding in the shipyard before.
