Day 394, Year 1: 3 R’s–Reorganizing, Repairing, and Recovering
Date: Thursday, November 16, 2006
Weather: Overcast, Windy, and Rainy, Warmer Than Expected
Location: Opua, New Zealand
We spent the entire day aboard Windbird with no trips to land. We are both in different stages of recovery, but hopefully we will both be healthy once again. Mark spent the day doing repairs-a light that had gone out and a head that was leaking. I had very little energy, but I managed to start rearranging the food stores. Once we reach Whangarei, we will be preparing to leave the boat for two months, and I want to make sure everything is secure. In the middle of the afternoon, we had visitors. Laura and Susan from the boat moored next to us came over to visit. Their boat is Mystic Traveler. Laura is from Newburyport, Massachusetts, and even though she has not lived in the Boston area for a few years, she said she will always think of herself as a Bostonian. I think Susan is also from New England, but not sure about that. Before leaving on their round the world trip, both women worked in Delaware. This is the end of their second season in the South Pacific and we discovered that during our journey we have met some cruisers that they know from last season. They were a wealth of information about New Zealand and it was a delightful visit. As they said, it is rare to find cruisers out here from the East Coast of the US, and even rarer to find cruisers from New England.
Tomorrow morning we hope to feel up to a trip to the nearby town of Paihia. A shuttle leaves the marina at 10 am and will bring us back by 2 pm. We will do some food shopping and just take time to breathe in the local culture. Tomorrow night we hope to have dinner with Doug and Sylvie on Windcastle and Felix and Monica on Makani when we will celebrate our successful arrivals here in New Zealand. We will stay here through the weekend and decide early in the week when it is time to move on. We are looking forward to visiting the town on Russell on our way out of here and then making a few stops in the Bay of Islands before heading south to Whangarei.
At one point in the day, we heard Jonah from Araby calling another boat. We had no idea that Araby was here in port, so we called back to say hello. That led to another call. Judy and Roger of Hanoah, a boat from Brunswick, Maine, that was anchored next to us in Nuku’alofa overheard our conversation with Jonah and called us afterward. We were so excited to hear from them. They had a great eight day trip down from Tonga and are now out in the Bay of Islands. We hope to catch up with them in Whangarei. Jonah on Araby has decided to leave his boat here for the next couple of months while he goes back to the US to visit family and then return to do some land explorations. He wants to check out the South Island and see if he wants to take his boat there.
So even on a quiet day in the anchorage, the wonderful people connections continue. Cruising gives us a chance to become intimate with some very isolated parts of the world and a chance to meet and continue friendships with cruisers from all over the globe. It is a good life out here.
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| 061117 Day 394 New Zealand–Paihia |
