The Good Coconut January 29th 2015 (Day 2,800)

Can a coconut save a dolphin's life? Or perhaps a turtle, a shark, or even an endangered stretch of coral reef? What if the humble coconut, one found on a warm beach hidden on an uninhabited South Pacific tropical Island, had the potential to help raise awareness to protect our world's oceans and its valuable marine life?

Inspired by the ocean on which Dream Time has sailed for over seven years, and the vast and treasured marine life Neville and Catherine have experienced whilst living a life at sea, zeroXTE is proud to introduce The Good Coconut, a campaign dedicated to supporting Oceana - the largest international organization focused solely on ocean conservation.

Designed and hand carved by Neville, The Good Coconut will become a series of detailed sculptures, each inspired by, and as unique as, the experiences Neville and Catherine have shared in some of the most fascinating and treasured corners of the world. From swimming with a newborn humpback whale, basking with marine iguanas on volcanic rocks, freediving with manta rays, surfing with dolphins, drift-diving with hundreds of sharks, to exploring coral reefs brimming with colorful sea life, each coconut sculpture captures the ocean's movement, an expression of the sea, and its inhabitants.

The Good Coconut sculptures, which can take Neville up to a month to complete, also feature designs influenced by the cultures from the region in which it was carved - Samoan symbols of strength, Polynesian patterns of waves, balance and harmony. Finally, each coconut is engraved with the latitude and longitude that marks the exact location of where it was discovered. These coordinates are highlighted with teak dust sanded from Dream Time's decks - so each coconut sculpture holds just a little of the very sailboat that navigated to its shores.

In addition to the money raised by zeroXTE through Dream Time's published magazine stories, Neville and Catherine hope, as they continue to sail around the world, that by auctioning off each coconut sculpture, with a 100% of the proceeds donated to support the valuable work at Oceana, that they can raise awareness and help protect the ocean they have come to love, so that others may have the same opportunities to experience and appreciate its delicate and diverse wonders.

View details of The Good Coconut's first design below, and stay tuned to learn how this sculpture will be auctioned. To learn more about Oceana and how you can make a contribution today, please visit their website at: Oceana.org

Day 2,795 - Kawau Island, New Zealand (36° 25S 174° 49E) 10:04hrs - January 24th 2015 Sailing Around The World, Phase 2

Well we are back in NZ, over the jetlag and settling into the boat again. I have to admit that the whole leaving the U.S. to return to boat life was filling me with a trepidation I hadn't felt since leaving land the first time 7 years ago, and after all the lovely stateside land life treats full of familiar comforts I wasn't at all sure how it was going to feel. 

It almost felt like we were starting again, from the beginning, with all the unwanted free floating anxieties that seem to accompany that state of mind. Except that now we are actually here, and on the boat again, I can now see that this time we are actually returning to the boat with 7 years of accumulated experience. Combined with the all the work that we've done on the boat over the years to adapt, replace, upgrade and repair various systems, equipment and creature comforts, really it's like we get to start again with almost every question that a new cruiser would have at the beginning of a long journey, answered!

Having said that, I now have a strong impulse to touch wood, which by the way I have just done, so as not to appear to be a smarty pants. I am still, after all, just another superstitious sailor and living this kind of life means that there will always be unknowables, things that we simply can't know about till we get there. But starting again from here, 7 years in, at the beginning of ‘phase 2’ I have to say, I think we are in excellent shape!