If you haven't seen your girlfriend in ten months because someone determined that you aren't in a relationship, that makes me quite upset. I can let it go, but I am a man. For Molly it is even more difficult all the way in New Zealand, who misses the hugs even more.
It's one of the effects of something that's a problem for the whole world at the moment, Corona. So, the situation of Molly and I has to be seen in proportions. However, one can only enter New Zealand if you go into quarantine in a hotel for two weeks, something you also have to pay yourself.
That’s fine, I really wanted to do that to be with Molly for Christmas, but I was not even allowed to enter. Because we're not in a relationship, officially. That is how officials in New Zealand feel about it. We didn't live together, we weren't married, we didn't have joint expenses, so no ... no relationship. Make sense!
If only we had asked for receipts for everything, we already did together all these years. Explaining that we are both sailors, living a different kind of life where we need to carefully plan our time together, that didn't work. Molly and I can't settle down because our sailing careers don't allow it yet. That will all come later. We have been saying to each other for years; after Tokyo we will get together somewhere. For now, as top athletes, we have different lives than most people, otherwise we would have lived together for a long time, wherever.
New Zealand is very much a country of rules. We sent letters, got people to plead our case, nothing helped. I get physically tired of working hard in the Finn, but this makes me mentally tired. This is much heavier. It feels like the whole New Zealand bureaucracy is against us, which of course is not the case. They have more important things to do there. Just like Molly and I, because in the meantime we are sailing very fast, they cannot get us down.
But I miss Molly and that doesn't get any worse because it's bad already. It is what it is. It is mainly the fact that we have no influence on the process, because we cannot show that we are in a relationship. That we're just as crazy about each other as many other couples. But that is something that does not count for the officials.
Molly and I keep hoping for a Christmas miracle.
Nicholas
