Graffiti

Walking around a lot here in NZ. We are a mile or so from town at the marina so we walk everyday for miles n miles. Seen some pretty cool graffiti along the way. 

Merry Christmas!!!

We miss our family but we are having an awesome Christmas Day here in New Zealand! Ty and I came up with a clever little way to still give my pops something for Christmas. He is absolutely obsessed with the movie A Christmas Story! Every year we watch it on Christmas Eve when it's on 24/7. One year we got him a leg lamp like the one in the movie for his desk. One year a tree ornament of ralphie in the bunny pajamas. One year a bobble head of the dad. This year since we are away we decided to recreate the dinner scene from the movie and take pics! We found the only restaurant open...a Chinese restaurant...and had the duck! With the head still on! They didn't sing to us but that's ok I think it's still hilarious! Well merry Christmas everyone!!! We love and miss you all!!!

Wear n tear

We knew coming to New Zealand was going to put a bit of strain on the boat but it seems like it's never ending and I'm feeling kinda defeated at the moment. 

The sail drives both need repairing. 

White smoke was coming out of the port engine at one point. 

Our wind generator got caught In the 3rd reefing line and broke 2 of the blades. Doesn't work now. 

Our main sheet traveler which controls the boom on the main sail is all sorts of rigged up since its been broken from the start. We chafed thru a few lines trying to keep it in place already. 

Today the genoa shredded to pieces!!!! We were only tacking in 17 knots of wind and it ripped so we tried to furl it away quickly but it ripped from top to bottom before we could save it. 

We have a leak in the starboard hull and have no clue where it's coming from but thank God the bilge pump is working. 

We bought a new winch handle but just realized it was broken after we left Opua. The new $600 main halyard works so much better but seems to be slipping a bit in the jammer even tho it's the right size....?

Our staysail halyard is lost in the mast somewhere cuz somebody forgot to put a stopper knot on the end of it. (I think it was one of the rigger inspectors) which by the way say we need a new forstay because its rusting through. 

We are just 4 hours away from Tauranga and will be docked there until Greg gets here. Heads are hurting. Eyes are burning. Sleep deprived and still wouldn't go back to our old desk jobs! :) 

And we are currently under attack by some creepy offshore gnats or something. Seriously just killed like 25 of them in the cockpit!

Cruising the coast

We finally made it out of the Opua marina yesterday! We didn't get to complete our work on the main sheet traveler but we rigged it up so we could sail to Tauranga where we can show Greg what needs to be replaced. It's kind of a big job so we need to get approval from him before we proceed. We left around noon with 20 knots of wind from the southwest. It wasn't working out for us and we were getting nowhere without both engines on...it was a terrible sail. There is a front coming thru an then the wind should shift to south easterly which is better for us. There are soooo many little anchorages along the coast so we just picked one we could easily get to before dark and tucked up in here at Bland Bay. We set out some fishing poles, had a beer and watched some tv before bed. This morning we looked around and it's a beautiful little secluded beach with lush green hills all around us! Water is clear and green. No fish tho...we'll be eating chicken tonight. We have some boat work to do to get cleaned up before Greg gets here so we will knock some of that out while we wait for this front to pass. 

Fiji to New Zealand

Saturday December 7th- happy Birthday mamma Julia!!!

This is our 3rd day of our passage and I am just now getting used to the sea again. As always it takes about 3 days for me to feel normal again. We caught a fish but it was a small blue fin tuna so Ty threw it back. He said that it was small and also they are overfished and need to repopulate. We motored for the fist day and a half and now we have about 18 knots of wind coming from the east which couldn't be more perfect for our journey south!:) we are sailing right along with little swell so it's almost comfortable....almost. With all the wind the water is a bit choppy. We should hit some rain n stuff Sunday and Monday if we stay on course but after that it should be smooth sailing all the way to NZ. We are hoping to get there no later than Friday so we can check in and check out the city on a weekend. Ty and I are changing watch every 4 hours and today we will have our first dinner on this passage....spaghetti! Customs will take absolutely everything so we need to eat it up. They take all your grains, dairy and meat. So basically anything not in a can. Unfortunately we stocked up on a lot of rice, pasta and oats n stuff in Am Sam thinking we were going to Vanuatu and the Solomon's. oh well. We will eat what we can then buy fresh food in NZ!:) 

Sunday December 8th-

We caught a huge Mahi Mahi!! After 4 bites we finally got one on and kept him. It was a pretty big bull and we have about 4 meals separated to eat durin this passage. We picked up a good coating recipe from Bob on Wind Witch where we use crumbled ritz crackers and all purpose season. He uses tony sasheries but we haven't come across that stuff in a long while.  

It rained a little today but the trough is supposed to hit us around 2am ...it's just supposed to be lots of rain and maybe some moderately high winds. 

Our main sheet traveler broke today so we took the main sail down:( another fix for NZ. 

Tuesday December 10th-

We are truckin along in 20-25knts of wind and we are beating into the swell on a close haul...making about 6.5knts on average I would say. I think we are going to be stuck in this low until we get there which is fine because we actually have wind and we are sailing. We lost 2 of the new baton car receptacles tho so we will need to replace those once we get to NZ. We still have the main sail up on the first reef and the genoa is reefed a little bit depending on how much wind we are getting. It's easy to adjust the genoa so we just keep taking in or letting it out with the wind speed changes. It's a little too hectic to make dinner tonight so we just snacked on Brie and crackers. I've got the dorado in a marinade so it will still be good tomorrow:)

We had a small aircraft buzz us the other day! It was crazy! At first it looked like his engines were failing and he was gonna crash because we saw smoke coming from both props but he got low and buzzed right over us. I didn't get a chance to catch it on camera and not sure what or where it was from. He didn't say anything to us on the radio so who knows. Ty said it may have been a weather plane but I think it was a bomber! Looked like something out of a movie!!!

 

Friday the 13th

I just spotted the most northern tip of Land! We have 11-16 knots of wind and we should be there in about 9-10 hrs! 

Saturday December 15th

We made it!!! This place is beautiful! There are an insane amount of boats here. I mean they are everywhere! There are so many anchorages just on the way in that we saw...we are currently waiting for customs to show up at the quarantine  dock. I imagine that this is what Maine would be like if we were to sail up the east coast. Reminds me of Popeye the movie. It's pretty cold for now but summer is coming up next month. It should be like south Africa's summer. Warm but chilly at night. I gotta say it's really nice to feel some cold weather. I was kinda missing it with the holidays coming around and all:) I gotta buy some jeans n a couple sweaters or something tho...yaya Christmas presents!!:)

Our new mattress!! And upholstery!!:)

Sunrise in Opua

Quarantine dock

Boats everywhere!!!!

One of our last nights in Fiji 

Mosquitos

I cannot believe how much noise one mosquito can make in a quiet room. It's loud enough to wake me from a dead sleep! I killed 5 Mosquitos in all this morning around 3am....:( we have rain every afternoon here which is refreshing after a crazy hot day with no breeze but we go to war with these Mosquitos every night because of it. Oh well. We will be outta here soon enough. We are cleaning the boat top to bottom today and tomorrow. We should be gettin our cushions and mattresses back today. We had new upholstery put on that is more waterproof and nicer looking. Ty is gonna get down and clean the bottom of the boat and get all of our little roommates off the boat. You can't enter NZ with a dirty bottom:) we will stock up on a little bit of food and check out of the country Thursday and head out. It should take about 9 days and weather shouldn't be bad. We are timing it so we go in between the lows.