We’re catching up on sleep now and finished cleaning up Charisma today. The usual after passage work-do four loads of laundry, clean the foul weather gear before tucking it away and put away all the crap that ends up thrown on the floor in the cabin during a passage. Plus…put away storm sails and sheets, properly folded sails and covered them, and, Bob’s favorite…repack the V-berth that was pulled apart for customs questions.

Ann also dragged the Sailrite sewing machine over to Cornelia to help Mark sew a tear in his mainsail. Saved him at least a few hundred bucks on sail repair. Should be worth a beer or two, eh Mark?

We also got a chance to catch up with our friends on Blue Rodeo and Evergreen who got in from New Caledonia yesterday. Haven’t seen them since June. And we’re looking forward to seeing others (Bright Angel on Friday) who will straggle in as the week goes by.

We’ll be here in Opua until a week from Monday, then we’re going to do some New Zealand cruising. Bay of Islands (it’s crab season and we’ll hope to catch a few), then down the coast toward Whangarei and if the weather cooperates, we’ll go out to Barrier Island for a few days before coming back in to Marsden and Whangarei where we’ll base Charisma during the Cyclone season (now until May).

We’ll go back to the Bay Area December/January to catch up with family and friends, then boat work and touring the South Island in Feb, March, April.

So…keep checking in. There’s more coming up between now and December 9th when we’ll fly home. Hopefully we’ll get a few pictures posted, but tomorrow, we’re taking the ferry across the bay and then a six mile hike through a nature reserve to the town of Russell. Lunch in Russell, ferry back to Pahia and then either walk (probably not) or take a taxi back to Charisma and collapse, er, MAKE, dinner.