Friends

Tam Chi Kim was a guest on my first boat, Kestrel, a 19 footer. We visited Lake Arapuni. On another occasion we visited Lake Rotoiti; it was raining heavily. We did not enjoy the trip at all.

He came back for another ride when I upgraded to a 22-footer, a Noelex. His wife and daughter came also for the ride.

Sherina Lim was the unlucky one. She came on a day when there was no wind at all.

On her second try, she had more luck. There was a slight breeze at 4 knots!

Yuan was a friend who really enjoyed sailing with me. He lives half the time in China and the other half in Hamilton.

Shaun He and Rebecca. They were students at the Waikato U, now back home in China.

Teng and his daughters, Ruth and Rebecca

Yeo Geok Hoe came all the way from China to go sailing with me in NZ!

He was dressed properly too.

ESOL students

May, one of my students at ESOL on Wellington Street.

May and Margaret.

Relatives

My sister, Cecilia came all the way from Brunei to help me raise the centre board!

My son, Eugene and Erica came for a sail at Tauranga harbour.

Alex Chow, my nephew came all the way from Holland to try out my yacht. He helped me explore Lake Tarawera.

We went to hot water beach, dropped anchor and spent the night on board.

Albert Chow, the other twin and his children also came for a ride at Lake Ngaroto.

Kevin and mum came for a test drive in the 19 ft Kestrel, my first boat in NZ.

Shou Shan, Mei Shan and Pei Shuan came all the way from Kuantan to try their hands at sailing a yacht on a small lake nearby.

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tai-ko

Pei Shuan

Cecilia and Mei Shan

A great way to entertain all my relatives from home. They arrived all at the same week in NZ; standing room only in the boat and inside the house!

Total strangers

Josef Shable was a total stranger to me. He was a tourist from Germany. I came ashore for lunch and noticed from far that he showed some interest in my boat. Out of the blue, I invited him to come aboard and he did! There was a reason for my strange behaviour. Before I became a sailor, I have always wondered and dreamed about being invited by a boat owner to go sailing. It never happened to me.

After I bought this sailing yacht in NZ, I imagined that it would be nice to invite total strangers to come sailing with me. So, I did just that on several occasions!

This young lady was another stranger who came sailing with me. She was a GP working in Tokoroa, a small country town. She was jogging around Lake Ngaroto. She stopped to talk to me and I invited her.

Gabriel Phang is a Singaporean staying in Auckland. He wished to buy a trailer yacht and he googled [Noelex]. He saw my blog and contacted me. I invited him to come for a test drive in my boat. He gladly accepted. He has since purchased his own Noelex-22. Happy sailing!

I met this couple at the Hamilton Lake. The man spoke putong hua very well. His wife is Chinese and they have lived in Beijing for many years!

This family from China was very suspicious at first. They kept asking me: how much? I told them it was free and they could not understand why I don't accept their money! Apparently in China you need to pay. No one gives away any thing for free.

Brennon Boase and his little girl were my last guests on the Nanook on Hamilton Lake. I have since sold my boat.

Malaysian guests

Alice Lu was my neighbour in Miri. She came for a visit and I invited her to come for a sail. She accepted!

These are friends of my son, Kevin, from Miri. I helped to entertain them by taking them on a cruise of Tauranga harbour. That is Mt. Maunganui in the back ground.

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Orchid farmer

This Taiwanese gave my wife some orchids from his farm near the zoo. I invited him to go sailing with me. He brought along a friend.

Golfers

I tried to convert golfers into sailors. The first one was David Jin.

Orrin was the golfer who helped me stop going to the driving range. He invited me to play a round with him and his coach David Jin, at the Narrows golf course.

Kenny was another golfer that I met at the Narrows golf course. His handicap was 14 and he could draw his tee shot with the driver.

Charlie played golf with me at the Narrows. He has two children. He is now training his daughter to play golf at St. Andrews.

Horace Ng was a golfer and an ex-colleague from Sarawak Shell. We went sailing at Paihia, Bay of Islands.

I invited John Huang to come sailing with me one day. He brought his whole family! Luckily it was a calm day and there was plenty of room in the large cockpit of the Nanook.

Crew

This Brazilian man stepped off the plane at Auckland at 9 a.m. and he was crewing for me at 2 p.m. the same day, at a regatta on Lake Ngaroto!

Father and son crew

Alex was my crew during a Sunday regatta. He kept on asking me why I was going so [slow]. A displacement mono hull yacht cannot overtake its own bow wave; it cannot plane the same way as a Laser dinghy or fly one hull like a catamaran.

Alex normally sails a catamaran, a Paper Tiger. He enjoys running circles around us as we raced on Sundays in our mono-hulls.