NZ Land Logs 53, Year 2: Blustery Day in Whangarei
Date: Thursday, April 12, 2007
Weather Today:
Location: Whangarei, New Zealand
Okay. It’s time to leave here. We had to dig out a heater tonight to keep ourselves warm. The wind has been blowing all day, sometimes with rain, sometimes with sunshine. But when night fell, the winds and dampness in the air made it feel downright chilly. It is probably not colder than 50 degrees, but I long for the warm waters of the tropics.
Mark continued his work today despite the weather. He painted on a last coat of epoxy and then sanded the shearline stripe. He did this in between rain showers, but he did get it done. I worked inside most of the day. We have plastic stackable bins in our forward head (bathroom). Yesterday I took those down below and washed them. Today I wanted to put them back, but before doing that I needed to clean the bathroom floor. That led to cleaning the entire bathroom, including the area under the sink. I then focused my attention on our medical supplies. Before we leave New Zealand, we need to make sure we have any medications necessary for this next cruising season. Since we are visiting countries that require malaria medication, I want to make sure that we have everything we need. We will be fine in Fiji, but Vanuatu and the Solomons are both places where dengue fever and malaria are problems. There is no preventative for dengue fever, but there are a number of different drugs that can be used for the prevention of malaria. Tomorrow I will finish cataloging the drugs we do have onboard and then we will have to decide what we need that we don’t have. Next we will have to figure out how to get what we need. There is a community health center here, so we will probably start there. It doesn’t seem like the tiny mosquito should cause so many problems.
After we sent the log last night, we got a call on our computer. Our daughter Heather and grandbaby Sam were up early and decided to give us a call so we could see Sam at his best. His early morning is our late evening, but we do better with late evening calls than he does. When we call them during our early morning, it is late evening in the US and Sam is tired and fussy. During this early morning call, we saw a completely different baby. He was happily playing in his momma’s arms and looking inquisitively at the computer screen. I’m sure he was wondering who those two strange people were on the screen. When we talked to him, he actually looked at the screen with great curiosity. Love that web camera. We got an email from his Goldstone grandparents today who just returned from visiting. Grandpa Donald reassured us that our grandson is in good hands. Heather is a wonderfully patient momma and Jed is a fantastically supportive daddy. And Sam is a beautiful little boy. How lucky we are!
