A new look to the blog

We thought it was about time to give the blog a little makeover, ready for our return to the Tropics in a month or so. The main change, apart from the new photo at the top, is to put the archive list (of previous posts) at the bottom of the page so as to allow the main text to occupy a wider section of the screen - which, in turn, allows us to have the photos bigger.

Hope you like the new look - any comments please let us know!

Oh, and by the way, there's also an option (if you scroll right to the bottom of the page) to sign up for automatic updates of the blog via email. Don't worry, you won't get anything else unwanted arriving in your inbox but it allows you to see updates as and when we publish them, without having to revisit the blog page to see if there's anything new.

Happy Easter!

We've had the loveliest Easter weekend with Shona and Malcolm Thomas aboard. The weather has been superb, we had some lovely sailing in the Bay of Islands, climbed a couple of (smallish) hills, swum in clear waters and seen dolphins. Plenty of good food and drink in great company, what could be better?

Dawn on Good Friday as the fog burns off

Dianne's wonderful Simnel Cake, baked on board

The view from Motuarohia Island

The anchorage in Urapukapuka Bay

Looking east from the top of Urapukapuka Island

Happy Hikers (sorry, Trampers, as they are known here) 

Close reaching with the Parasailor - Shona enjoyed the challenging steering as the wind increased

Malcolm and Shona in charge

"Look no hands" - Shona's first time climbing a mast

Dolphins, as requested

We'd like you to meet the neighbours

Just as in any harbour, there are boats here in Opua straining at their moorings, just aching to go out to sea, out into their proper environment rather than sitting, tethered, waiting for their owners to pay them a visit. 

An ever, though, there’s a fairly large proportion of boats that get out maybe only once or twice a season and, unfortunately, a few that look as though they’ll never sail again.

We thought you might like to meet some of our neighbours. First the not-so-fortunate boats:

This is 'Lindy', a once-lovey little wooden cutter

..her cockpit gives just a hint of what she must be like below. A forgotten and abandoned project it seems.

Another boat in similar straights. So sad.

Even the relatively modern, racy trimaran looks unloved when close up..

The 'Titi Nui' now seems to be just a roost for seabirds

One boat has certainly gone beyond the point of saving. This old sailing ship is beached at a deserted boat shed and it seems miraculous that her foremast is still standing:

From a distance it's hard to see what she was

Closer up and the remains of the deckhouse can be seen, slowly drooping into the water

What tales could this ship's wheel tell if it could speak?

Happily, the deserted vessels are in the minority here and there are some very interesting boats around us:

An old day-sailer, probably a traditional fishing boat for the Bay of Islands,has a very distinctive bow...

...which also features on this pretty wooden yacht.

She may have a startling paint job but 'Blazing Shadz' shares the same bow shape

...and a funky modern version of a schooner's rig (the rear mast being taller than the foremast).

Some boats are less attractive than others, it must be said...

The 82ft superyacht Houbara

We loved the token greenwash of the two tiny wind generators! which probably just abut power the bar fridge.

But others are very pretty..

The beautiful American yacht Nirvana

 and a smaller, New Zealand boat

Opua’s place as a main port of entry and exit for boats travelling to and from the Topics means that there are a lot of ‘live-aboard’ Blue Water cruising yachts here and people are getting ready for the annual migration north; it typically starts around the end of April. These world-girdling boats are usually fairly easy to differentiate from local, coastal-cruising yachts.

'Beez Neez' from Plymouth sports all the 'must-haves' of a Blue water boat - solar panels, wind generator, water generator and cockpit cover. The dinghy hoisted out of the water is a trick we all use to reduce weed growth and, unfortunately in many places, to reduce the risk of theft.

Not quite sure why this boat needs so much power! 

The South African 'Sheer Tenacity' built by its owners Rod and Mary and looking sparkling after a repaint and new sail covers. Note the cockpit tent to give shelter from wind and sun and the extra fuel tanks lasted to the rail.

We’re pleased that Maunie’s internal storage space and her pilothouse main cabin mean that she doesn't carry many of these cruising ‘extras’ to spoil her lines, though the solar panels and the Windpilot self-steering gear at her stern clearly show she’s a Blue Water thoroughbred.

Now we may be biased, but we love Maunie's lines!

Anyway, we hope your enjoyed our little tour of the anchorage there! It was really an excuse for Graham to play with his birthday present, a new lens for the big Canon camera; he's very pleased with it!

Meanwhile, a few thousand miles away from this tranquil place, the very different Volvo Ocean Race boats (65 footers built of carbon fibre and using the very latest in boat technology) have just rounded Cape Horn. Well, four of them have made it so far. Dongfen Racing have broken their mast just a day before reaching the Horn and have limped into the Beagle Channel to dock in a Chilean port whilst the girls on SCA lost power to all their instruments and had to slow down substantially until they eventually found the cause of the problem and repaired it. There is some fantastic on-board and helicopter video footage of the boats at Cape Horn HERE - it's very different from our kind of sailing!!

51!

This time last year we were in Auckland for the celebration of a big birthday. This year it's a quieter affair but lovely nonetheless.

We anchored last night in the Kerikeri inlet, at the north end of the Bay of Islands, and enjoyed a wonderful sunset. This morning dawned cloudy and drizzly but the day improved as we sailed south back towards Russell, the small port town that was briefly the capital of New Zealand and, apparently, a den of inequity back in the 19th Century. We'd planned a meal at the Duke of Marlborough, the oldest pub in NZ (1827) but the south-westerly wind made the anchorage a lee shore (the wind blowing the boat towards the shore) so we opted to return to our mooring in Opua and had a fab meal aboard instead. 

Out in the Bay of Islands

We seem to be struggling a little to get back our momentum. We guess that the trip back to Britain, lovely though it was, has unsettled us a little, reinforcing the 'long way from home' feeling that didn't bother us to any great extent before we flew back. The colds ("it's flu, I tell you") that we're only just shaking off haven't helped much.

However, we're definitely getting back into our stride and have just had a few days out in the beautiful Bay of Islands, anchored in deserted bays enjoying the wildlife and the views. On our way we passed the Cunard cruise liner, Queen Mary 2 anchored near the town of Russell; we last saw her in St Lucia so she gets about Mind you, come to think of it, so do we).

The imposing profile of the QM2

We anchored for a couple of nights in Te Hue Bay, also known as 'Assassination Cove', so named after the French explorer Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne and 26 of his crew met an untimely end (and were eaten) at the hands of the local Maori tribe in 1772. The oft-quoted reason was that De Fresne offended the Maori by fishing in a tapu (sacred and forbidden) area but, according to an fascinating account on Wikipedia, the story is more complex and the surviving crew members had to fights a battle with 1500 Maoris to escape - have a look at the story here

Sunset at Te Hue Bay

Evening highlights

Having just completed a supermarket run in the nearest reasonably-sized town, Kerikeri (population just 5,800) we're stocked up again for a few more days of island cruising. The weather is definitely a little autumnal and the first of the south-westerly autumn gales is forecast for the weekend but we're still in shorts and t-shirts in the daytime and we'll go and explore some new anchorages.

Sometime you just need a man with a huge tool

We're safely back aboard our home now, after a couple of days in Auckland - many thanks to Trish & Ian and Tony & Claire for looking after us in our jet-lagged state! Graham's cold wasn't much fun for either of us ('It's 'flu I tell you!") and in spite of our best hopes, he seems to now have passed it to Dianne. Oops.

On our last afternoon in the city we walked down to the Volvo boats again and bumped into Dee Caffari, one of the crew of the all-women SCA team. She's an ocean racing superstar: the only woman to race around the globe 3 times (twice single-handed, once each way), with four transatlantic crossings under her belt. We met her once before in the UK and she also sailed on the Challenge 72' yachts (just before we raced them around the UK) so we didn't feel too much like yachting fans when we accosted her as she walked back towards her hotel. She was really chatty and friendly and said the team was still very buoyed up by the in-harbour race win on Saturday but that the leg ahead, across the Southern Ocean and around Cape Horn, was weighing on the minds of those who'd never crossed this remote piece of ocean. We've been following their progress on the www.volvooceanrace.com website since Wednesday's start - brilliant photos and video coverage but we certainly don't envy them!

Anyway, back on our own little ocean racer, we've had a busy few days. (Sorry - a bit of technical stuff ahead.) You may remember reading that before we left for the UK we'd had some expensive engine maintenance done but that we were still slightly perplexed that the motor wasn't performing as it should. Well, long story told quickly, we came to the conclusion that our fancy Autoprop feathering propeller was set-up incorrectly (and had been since it was fitted 5 years ago) so its pitch was too 'coarse' - in other words it was like trying to drive a car up a hill in top gear, the engine failing to reach the higher revs where the power lies. Emails to the makers in the UK yielded the response that they could grind a different profile onto the blades to resolve the problem so we booked a lift-out on Friday to remove the prop and temporally fit the old, fixed-bladed one in its place.

To save a lot of money, we opted for what's known as a' lift-and-hold' with the boatyard - Maunie would be lifted out of the water, pressure-washed and then we'd have about 40 minutes to do the job before being re-launched. This would leave little margin for error and Graham awoke the night before worrying about it - what would happen if the Autoprop wouldn't come off the shaft? Would the old prop fit ok and would the newly-purchased nut (to hold it in place) prove to be the right size? As it transpired, he was right to be worried.

The lift-out went fine but we just couldn't get the prop to come off the shaft, in spite of the fact that it slid off easily in Fiji last September; perhaps the colder temperatures had something to do with it? With time ticking away, we made an emergency call to a local business called Seapower and, thankfully, the owner, Bruce, arrived a few minutes later with a huge tool - a 'prop-puller'

Bruce and Graham apply the huge tool

With an almighty bang, the prop freed its limpet-like grip on the shaft but we found that the tool had, in the process, damaged the threads (for the retaining nut) on the shaft. Bruce dashed back to his workshop for a die to repair the threads as we studiously avoided making eye-contact with the boatyard guys, who were glancing at their watches and at the row of boats waiting to be launched. Ten minutes later, thread was repaired and the old propeller was fitted, only for us to find that the castellated nut (with slots in it to take a locking split-pin) was too long for the slots to line up with the hole drilled in the shaft to take the pin. Aaargh! Bruce dashed back again to put the nut on his lathe and finally. 30 minutes late, it was all done and we were relaunched. Phew, wouldn't want to go through that again..

The Autoprop is now on its way to its makers and we returned Maunie to her mooring for some other boat jobs. The biggest and most complex has been to wire in a pure-sine-wave inverter (which converts 12v DC power from the solar panels and batteries into 240v AC) to allow us, among other things, to run our 240v bread-maker off solar power rather than having to run the diesel generator. The results of this 3-hour job, which involved lots of 'bilge-ratting', are mostly hidden from view but Maunie has a new remote-switch in her aft cabin to show for it:

All of this DIY stuff is enough to test any relationship but we've managed to maintain our sanity throughout - Di's very good at asking the right questions before we get the drill and saw out so the project went without a hitch and, unusually, with no swear words from Graham!

Jobs completed, we're off for a few days of sailing in the beautiful Bay of Islands. Still, after the lovely time we had catching up with family and friends in the UK, we are feeling a long way away out here and would love to hear from you all back home - e mails always excitedly received!

Return to NZ (slowly)

Our final destination on our UK tour, having dropped the car off and waved a fond farewell to Karl & Jo who had gone way beyond the call of duty to help us, was near Southwold in Suffolk, reached by train. We stayed for two nights with Jenny & Richard (Jenny joined Marks & Spencer as a graduate trainee at the same time as Dianne, back in the day) and had a great time with Martha, Henry and Di's Godson Jasper. Graham was delighted to give lots of cuddles to Kipper and Chutney, the cats, too.

With (l-r) Martha, Jasper & Henry

With Jenny (photo by Martha)

We left on Thursday afternoon for the train & tube ride to Heathrow for the start of the planned 34-hour, two-stop (Abu Dhabi and Sydney) trip to Auckland. Unfortunately it didn't go entirely to plan and we had to get a later flight from Abu Dhabi to Perth instead, which added about 12 hours to the voyage; luckily the airline, Etihad, were brilliant throughout what could have been a rather stressful time and put us into a hotel so that we could get a meal and about 5 hours' sleep. The connecting Etihad flight to Perth was pretty empty so the stewardess led us forward so that we had an empty 4-seat row each and so managed some more, relatively comfortable sleep.

Anyway, we arrived in Auckland at dawn on Sunday after nearly 48 hours in airplane-land, less jet-lagged than expected thanks to the stop-over but with Graham showing the symptoms of man-flu (for the first time in 3 years!) after such close proximity with the travelling hoards. He's got it bad.

Our arrival coincided with the passing of Cyclone Pam but conditions haven't been at all bad, considering the devastation she's wreaked in Vanuatu. The restart of the Volvo Ocean Race has been postponed to allow sea conditions to subside so we walked down to the Viaduct area on the waterfront to see the boats.

The Volvo Open 60's are identical boats so it's all down to the skill and tactics of the crews to  beat their opponents, rather than the size of their team budgets

The pink boat is Team SCA, the only all-women crew, which won the in-port, round-the-buoys race on Saturday. No doubt there were a few bruised male egos!

The delayed start (originally scheduled for Sunday) must have come as a huge disappointment to the Auckland City organisers who had planned a huge razzmatazz send-off for the fleet. Inevitably a week-day restart will be a less busy affair. 

 We'll go back to the Race Village today so see what the latest news is - if the restart takes place tomorrow we'll try to find a good vantage point before driving back 'home' to Maunie on Wedneday. After 6 weeks away, we're looking forward to getting back to her.