I was brought up in Oamaru, on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island so I guess that the sea has always been a part of my life in one way or another…this is what Oamaru Harbour looked like around the end of the 80s. In the 60s and early 70s, it had been a busy little coastal port with (small) ships regularly coming in for loads of wool and other produce – my uncle was a truckie at the time and I remember how cool it was that he could park alongside the ship and dump his load of grain directly into its hold…

This is the feature known as Matanaka at the northern end of Waikouaiiti (keep up with the place name pronunciation, you foreigners!!) Beach – we had a bach about a mile inland on the main access road to this end of the beach and used to come here every summer in the 70s and would as often ride horses along it as play in the surf…

Cutting forward to the late 80s – I think that this is the beach at Kuantan on Malaysia’s east coast – we stopped over here for a night during the Great Thailand-Singapore Bike Ride…we arrived in Kuantan mid-afternoon and had a ball body surfing – right up to the point that we got back to out hotel and Dan Flan pointed out the big rip…uh-oh…

I spent some time in Vietnam in the late 90s – this is the famous China Beach. At the time it was still many miles of unspoiled white beach and I have been afraid to go back in case it has been spoiled by commercialisation or industry. I used to sit here all day and read my one English book (on its 6th or 7th go round by this stage) and watch the MiGs and Hips fly in and out from the airbase by Da Nang…every couple of hours, I count count on a couple of local kids dragging a bucket of ice and Coke along the sand to keep me refreshed…

Swimming with dolphins off Akaroa…sometimes it’s a bit or miss as to whether the dolphins will come out to play but that did this day – this is a must-do if you are in Akaroa…

Crossing from Stewart Island back to the South Island – don’t know why I even bothered to invest in breakfast…

Muri Beach in the Cook Islands, during our honeymoon…quite happy to spend the day just paddling around the lagoon…

Taken from the Manhattan Beach Pier in LA on one of my stopover days on a business trip to the US…I catch the tram-bus to Manhattan beach for a donut breakfast and then spend the rest of the day shopping at the malls around El Segundo, my mission being to only have enough US cash left for a chili dinner at LAX before my flight home…I love these piers that let you stand behind but above the surf line and watch the waves roll by…

Weekly Photo Challenge: Sea | The Daily Post.