NZ Land Logs 57, Year 2: Windbird–Looking Good
Date: Monday, April 16, 2007
Weather Today: Mostly Sunny with Sprinkles Here and There
Location: Whangarei, New Zealand
The boat work is really coming along. We waxed the newly painted waterline stripe today and then taped it off so we could start the bottom painting. Mark did some gelcoat repairs while I used Goo-Be-Gone or some such product to wipe off the stickies left by tape above the new waterline. Sounds easy, but when you have to climb scaffolding and walk on a 10-inch wide board in mid-air, it takes more time than you might expect. At least it does for me. Mark climbs around like a monkey, but I’m more like a sloth. Mark spent the rest of his day painting the bottom while I did laundry and used a new product to clean the windvane steering stainless one more time. I had cleaned all of the stainless once, but there were still some rust spots, so today I used “Grunt”. This is a New Zealand product that you are supposed to wipe on, let sit, and then spray off to get rid of any rust on your stainless. It does basically work like that and I will certainly buy an extra container of this miracle cleaner to take with us.
Before we started our work morning, we called Heather, Jed, and Sam via Skype. It was late Sunday afternoon for Sam which is not his best time of day, so we mostly got to see him nurse and sleep, but that’s good enough for us. He slept nine and a half hours last night and then took another two hour nap, so the fact that he wanted to eat non-stop for the remainder of the day was reasonable. While Sam snacked and napped, Heather gave us a run down on current US news. She also told us that Justin had a wisdom tooth extracted on Friday. This is something he neglected to mention to us. I’m still getting over the rip-tide episode and wasn’t ready to hear about any more painful episodes. We haven’t been able to make contact with him yet, but we’re hoping no news is good news in this case. We had hope to call him this afternoon, but we worked non-stop until after dark and then it was too late to call the West Coast. We hope to talk to him to tomorrow and find that all is well.
Aspect of Aaryon went into the water today. This is the boat captained by Jeff, a local doctor who spends the New Zealand winters in Vanuatu working in clinics. His wife is a local nurse mid-wife and she was here today for the launch. Tomorrow our neighbor Dave on Desire goes in the water and that leaves just Eagle’s Wings and Windbird on the hard. Rontu and Aloha are are on the hard, but they are staying there until next season. Liz and Hans on Rev de Lune are leaving in the morning for Bundaberg, Australia, and Kelly and Kelly on Moorea are leaving on Wednesday morning for Opua by way of Great Barrier Island. I think Eric on Nai’a from Nawiliwili, Hawaii, also leaves on Wednesday. The troops are diminishing quickly. We will probably go back in the water on Thursday and leave Whangarei on Monday or Tuesday. We’re not sure if we are still going south to Great Barrier Island. That will all depend on the weather. But soon we will be in the Bay of Islands waiting for that perfect “weather window” for heading to Fiji. We’re starting to get excited about the upcoming cruising season.
I’ll end tonight’s log with a funny story. When Marie of Ranger and I went shopping the other day, I was so excited to find corn flour. All across the Pacific there were no tacos or burritos to be found, so many of us looked for masa harina or corn flour to make our own tacos. This was not to be found. So when we were shopping and I saw packages labeled as “corn flour” I bought enough for me and enough for Sylvia on Windcastle. Marie bought some, too. When Sylvia stopped to visit last week, I gave here two packages. But this evening as Mark and I were working, Kelly and Kelly of Moorea stopped by to say hello at the same time as Marie of Ranger. Kelly had just been shopping at the Bin Vin and had bought some corn meal. She was saying that she would love to have some corn flour and I immediately told her that she could get some at CountDown. She then broke the unhappy news to me. Cornflour here is cornstarch, not masa harina. And you don’t want to eat tacos made with cornstarch. When we finished working and got back up in the boat, I inspected the packages I had bought, and sure enough, they were cornstarch. I searched the internet for corn flour and found the following: Cornflour may be cornmeal or cornstarch, the white, powdered starch of the maize grain (in UK usage, cornflour normally has this particular meaning) or masa harina, the flour of hominy. “In Australia the term cornflour is used to describe wheaten starch. The origin of this anomaly is not clear, but possibly may relate to the early days of the colony when wheat was the main cereal crop grown and wheaten starch was generally used by the early settlers in place of maize starch.” Evidently cornflour in New Zealand has the same meaning as in the UK and Australia. I’ll have to quickly email Sylvia and tell her not to try and make tacos with this cornflour. She’ll end up with glue!
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| 070416 New Zealand–Windbird's Neighbors on the Hard |
