Happy New Year

Happy New Year from Auckland. We hope that your celebrations were fun. We spent the afternoon of New Year's Eve walking around Devonport and up to North Head, the imposing and heavily-fortified hill which stands at the northern entrance to Auckland's Waitemata harbour, in warm sunshine, with our mates Adam and Cindi from the yacht Bravo. 

Looking SW across the harbour towards Auckland

Torpedo Bay in the foreground and Devonport village to the right

Looking east from the WW1 gun emplacements towards the island of Rangitoto. The island only rose above the water when the volcano erupted about 600 years ago

 As the light faded we settled in to fire up the barbie and watch the fireworks launched from the Sky Tower, thanks to Shona and Malcolm generously lending us their lovely waterside apartment for the occasion.

'Sling another prawn on the barbie' as they say in these parts

A very enjoyable day! And, true to form, Graham fell asleep at about 00.30am, still clutching his quarter-full champagne glass:

Thanks to Adam for this shot!

2016 has opened with a couple of days of rain and gales here but the sunshine is due to return in a couple of days (if only the same could be said for Cumbria and SW Scotland at the moment, where storms and floods seem to be following each other with relentless regularity). We'll be leaving Auckland on Monday and spending a few days cruising gently northwards; the very vague plan is to head back to Opua and then sail further north up the east coast of Northland to explore bays and harbours that, so far, we have only seen from the car. It has been great to have a base in the city for the last month but we are looking forward to returning to wilder anchorages.