Our Touchwood Fishing Charters journey started in March of 2020, mid-lockdown, after only two months together. One evening in the middle of lockdown, Mike asked me out of the blue, while scrolling through boats on Trade Me, if I would live on a boat?
“Yip”
“Shall we buy a charter boat?” He asks.
“Why the bleep not,” I replied.
We enrolled in the skippers course that night and began trying to figure out, at the fair age of 43, how we were going to do this.
We had no history together, no savings to speak of, no experience running a charter boat and no jobs. I had to give up my 23-year career as a teacher the prior year due to a medical issue, and within 2 weeks of deciding to buy a boat, Mike quit his job to pursue our new dream.
Developing a business plan for an industry I had little knowledge of was certainly an interesting challenge.
While waiting to secure a backer, we searched for our future vessel. At one stage, we seriously considered a vessel operating out of Auckland, to the extent of designing possible logos. Then we saw Touchwood’s listing in Gisborne. Having spent several months staying in Gisborne, before going to Tauranga after meeting Mike, there was no question for me, this was the boat/business we wanted, well, I wanted. Mike, having spent most of his life in Hamilton and then Tauranga for the past 10 years, took a bit of convincing.
After quite a few months, many phone calls and a near miss with a potential investor, introduced to us via a broker, who turned out to be a con man, we finally found someone willing to back us.
Thank you Summit Finance!!
So, in early November, we sold, gifted or dumped 70% of what we owned and moved from a lovely 3-bedroom rental overlooking a kiwifruit orchard to a character-filled 1-bedroom ‘studio flat’, to begin our life in Gisborne as fishing charter owner/operators!
Well, that was the plan anyway.
We actually spent 3 months as unpaid but minimal rent-charged deckies, due to delays in finalising the finance.
On 11 February 2021, we officially became the owners of Touchwood Fishing Charters.
In March, we headed to the Maritime School in Auckland to complete the last stage of our skippers’ tickets. We both enjoyed the experience. But I have to say, considering I have a Bachelor of Social Sciences and my Diploma of Teaching, so a “professional student”, it was a challenging course. Less than half of those on the course with us passed. We were both stoked to pass. I’ve sat many paper exams before, but I’ve never had to sit an oral exam before, talk about pressure!
Our journey to date has certainly had its challenges from the second COVID lockdown, months of overheating issues, man, that took some detective work to find the cause. Then, losing 23 of the 28 trips we had booked in our first January due to major mechanical issues, it was at this point that we realised the condition of the engine was not as it had been presented. Blown turbos, cracked exhaust manifold, dodgy wiring, replacing all the batteries, and don’t get me started on the winch! Then, on the 18th of September, as we headed across the harbour with a boat full of eager anglers, a weld on a small bracket holding the coolant pipe failed, resulting in a catastrophic overheat of our engine, taking us out of action for 11 weeks.
We managed to get December of 2022 out with a lovely rebuilt engine, then Cyclone Hale and Gabrielle hit.
We have had so many ups and downs along the way, but man, we have learnt so much!
We were asked so many times during the first 2 years how we hadn’t given up and seemed to take each blow in its stride (trust me, we had our moments). But our answer was and is always the same…we are the luckiest unlucky people in the world. Every situation could have been the end of our business, but every step of the way, we have been shown so much support from our family, community, friends, passengers, and even people we had never met.
It’s hard to feel sorry for yourself when you have a community offering so much support, be it emotional, technical or mechanical expertise, financial, a text to check in, or a shout of a beer. A good man we’d only just met that day, as a passenger, heard us say our car had broken down. He’d dropped his spare car down to us before we’d even finished cleaning the boat. Ours to use for however long we needed. We have the best mechanic, John Imhof at North Harbour Imports, he has responded to every desperate, ‘do you have a……we need it yesterday’ call we have made. The work he did rebuilding our poor engine was above and beyond. Oh, and the lovely Amanda Cook, best insurance broker you could ask for!
These days, ‘touch wood’, we just have to contend with the weather gods and normal boat maintenance, wear and tear.
It’s hard to believe sometimes, when we look back, that we have come so far and achieved so much.
We came to Gisborne, knowing no one, having known each other less than a year. Neither of us had ever owned a business. Mike had always fished and owned his own recreational boat, but I had been fishing on a boat maybe half a dozen times in my life. I’d never seen a kingi or a tarakihi in the flesh, you name it, I’d never seen one. I did catch a snapper once, on the one charter I’d been on many years ago.
Now, as we approach our 5th year of operation, we have run close to 500 charters, met 1000’s of wonderful people. We’ve made life-long friends and are lucky enough to be a part of a beautiful community, in an incredible place we are so grateful to call home.
Every day at sea is an unforgettable experience. The beauty, the movement, marine life, catching the ‘big one’, no day is the same. We get to work together every day, which we love, in a job that brings so much joy.
There’s nothing more satisfying than watching a jump aboard group come on board as strangers, often quiet, bit shy, maybe nervous, definitely excited, connect throughout the day. Sharing the experience of the day, cruising up to 25km off the coast, the first catch, first kingi, catching sharks and if they are lucky the buzz of a visit from the dolphins.
Every stressful day we have experienced during our journey so far is surpassed 100 times by each day we have the privilege of taking a group out to sea, fishing, sharing a laugh, making connections, getting home safely and sending them home with a bag of fillets.
