3Eight years ago I experienced the world in a radically different way. A door in my mind opened. I was cycling through the countryside, the wind in every breath, rather like on this sailing trip.
I had been living on the fringe of society for many years, away from the city at a seaside village, Orere Point. I was a serious meditator, yogi and solo mum, happy in the small world of my children and my glorious garden. I had returned without a plan after seven months travelling through south-east Asia and Nepal. Emily, then sixteen, had a new blue mountain bike. I had just enough money to buy one for myself. We crammed a tent, cooker and sleeping bags into our panniers and set out for the coast road between Whitianga and East Cape. That cycling trip changed me forever.
I stagger into the ga
