Gets your heart going to see a bridge that isn't on the charts. This one is being built across the river. We had to go through a very skinny pass between the unfinished sections.

Made it! At the guest dock at Whangarei Town Basin

We got a pile mooring for the first week, then we're moving to a dock.

Not a bad view from our mooring.

Yay! We’re finally here. Gnarly time getting here. 30 knot winds, made just getting out of our slip in Marsden an adventure. Also we’re waaay upriver now. The last bit to get here the water depth went as low as 9 feet and that was at high tide. They are also building a new bridge that will eventually be a drawbridge, but for now it was a very narrow slot between two half bridges that we had to thread through. But we’re here!

Tomorrow, we move from our nice “guest berth” in from of the marina office, down about 150 yards to a “piling mooring”. In other words we will be tied between two pilings in a line with other boats along the bank of the river. The only way off the boat will be by dinghy. The good news is the dinghy dock is only about 30 yards away and our car is parked just up from that. But it will be a new adventure.

Moonrise as seen from Charisma

We’re sitting here looking at a beautiful, almost full moon, rise over the cliff on the other side of this little cove. The horizontal orange streaks of sunset are fading into the blue-soon to be indigo-of night. So peaceful.

Aretha is singing in the background and we just finished a grilled steak and sautéed mushroom dinner. Not bad.

I’m now seeing the glistening, glittering, silver stripe of moonlight reflecting off the water behind us.

The Gannets are diving all around us and Ann is searching the water for sight of a blue penguin. No sighting yet, but we’ll let you know. She has seen a Kiwi, so she’s one up on me so far (not including card games in which she is two up).

Tomorrow-a little cove just out side of Marsden, then up river to Whangerie on Thursday. That’s where we’ll stay until April. In the mean time, home for the holidays, then back to NZ for some boat work and then land cruising.

It never really stops. Today we learned the super strong (cough, cough) Harken backstay adjuster has a broken roller bearing. Sounds like a defective part, but companies rarely cover these after more than a year and it’s about 4 years old. But a bearing like that should never break!

Ann did a huge boat clean up, emptying drawers and cabinets and spraying for mold and drying everything out. Huge!

I picked up our new outboard propeller. That should help a lot in the comfort department.

We’re waiting on some other parts as well. A year’s worth of wear and tear costs money and time.

Hopefully we’ll get to do some touring tomorrow, but we also have to clean up the dinghy. Inflate it, hose it out, etc. It also has a damaged tube that will need some professional care at some point I think.

Oh, and I got a quote for new sails from Doyle/New Zealand. Not too bad. They have a 25% off special right now because this is the off season down here, so we’ll see on that. Charisma’s current ones are 25 years old so she’s gotten good wear out of them. Maybe time for new ones that will be more trustworthy in a storm.

Seems like there are a lot of those 😉

But, that’s the reality of living in a boat that really sails. There is a lot of wear and tear. I’m fairly convinced that a month of cruising takes about a year’s toll of regular day sailing (the kind where you sail on weekends) on a boat.

Anyway…today we did the following:

-Ann took out all the cushions and laundered the covers and washed the foam. They all had saltwater on them and would never dry out unless we could remove the salt. Unfortunately the sun decided to hide behind some clouds so the cushions are not completely dry – here’s hoping for a sunny day tomorrow! -Ann cleaned all of the shelves on the port side of the boat. This is the side where the chainplate keeps leaking so mold and mildew can be a problem. So all shelves and the shuttered doors got a good scrubbing. -Ann did laundry -I bought some boat parts that we haven’t been able to find. Fairly trivial but very important stuff that we haven’t been able to source in Polynesia like clevis pins and cotter pins. -Had a rigger down and he did an end for end on the main and jib halyards and put new splices in them. I can splice, but for such an important splice I wanted a pro job -I re-did the tag line on the yankee jib. There was a 3/16 wire. It was fraying and I didn’t like how it chaffed the headfoil when it furled, so I changed over to Dyneema which I spent a couple hours putting two splices in (Ann says they look very professional and she watched the do-it-yourself YouTube video so she should know). It’s much softer and won’t damage the headfoil as much. -The rigger and I took off the backstay adjuster. We have a Harken mechanical adjuster and about the time we left Mexico it jammed. I’m guessing the grease inside mixed with salt and just created a glue, but will know tomorrow after the rigger takes it apart. I would have done it, but it takes a specialized tool that I didn’t want to have to fabricate for just one use when for 30 bucks (the cost in time he’ll spend opening it) I can get him to do it.

I think we did a couple other things but they escape me for now. More stuff for tomorrow. The dinghy motor is getting a new prop and I’m getting a block and tackle rig so I can haul myself up the mast. I need to change the steaming light and in general want to be able to go aloft when need be. I’m also going to have the rigger do a “one hour inspection” of the rig. They were offering this for $30. I’m going to get him to go to the top and come down inspecting all the swage fittings to make sure none are failing.

OK, enough techie boat talk for now. I WILL at some point write up a “what works/doesn’t work” bit, but for later.

Ta ta for now.