Electrical awesomeness

It's been ages since I've posted anything - I'm sorry! After we got the boat home we were really busy for a while getting lots of work done, mostly on the engine. Then it kind of died down for a while because we got engaged! Which is very exciting.

The obligatory ring picture

Garth took me out to a lovely restaurant for dinner about 2 months ago and then afterwards we went for a walk along the waterfront to look at the lights on the harbour, which are really beautiful. Then the cheeky monkey pulled out a box of chocolates with a ring inside and proposed to me very awkwardly, which is exactly how i'd want him to do it. One thing he said that was really sweet and not at all awkward was in response to me asking him why he didn't take me out sailing and propose on the boat. He said it was because he wanted to propose just to me and not to our trip or to the boat, which was just cheesy enough to be beautiful.

So boat planning has been coming second to wedding planning lately, and it's ski season so we haven't actively been thinking about it much at all. But we have taken her out quite a few times with our friends, and have had a lot of help from friends trying to sort out the wiring, which will probably have to be completely redone (even though when we bought it, it was supposed to have new wiring). It might be new, but it's not very logical. We spent an entire night a while ago trying to figure out which lights were broken and which ones were just labelled wrong - they are now all labelled correctly, if not working correctly.

Dale being amazing with me on the boom

The fabulous Dale and Craig have put a lot of time into doing exciting things with the lights and the batteries and anything else electrical I'd ever be able to fault. If the boat crashes and we sink to a watery grave, it is not going to be because of an electrical fault, and our lights will be shining brightly under the water. They have found way brighter and more economical lights for the cabin, the nav station, the reading lamps and the mast. So we won't be stumbling around in dim lighting any more, and we'll have a better system with red lights for night vision. The compass light is also being replaced and everything onboard is going to be way more pleasant.

Dale doing Titanic in front of our giant dinghy

We're also doing lots of stuff with the rigging, making it easier and more functional. At the moment we've got our giant dinghy at the front of the boat which is making life really difficult. When we need to do anything in a hurry it becomes dangerous - its hard to reach the cleats to tie on when we're mooring, and david went flying across it when he and Mike needed to reef in a hurry.

We can't anchor easily either, making it a giant mission to actually take the boat out for anything but a spin - the dinghy lives over the anchor compartment. It's also in the way of my favourite dolphin viewing area.

So we were going to do something very cool we saw on a boat in Gisborne - make the forestay detachable, put a hole with a closing valve in the dinghy and move it back so the forestay goes through the dinghy. Brilliant!

But it turns out our forestay might not be strong enough to handle being detachable, and we need to replace it to be safe. And if we're replacing it, Garth just wants to move it forward and turn the boat into a cutter with an extra sail, which is what he wanted all along - that was the only thing we wanted in a boat that Heartbeat didn't deliver. I'm not sure how I feel about it, because it will make cruising around harder because tacking becomes more of a mission. But I like the idea of leaving the sail off and having the option of using it if we want to. We haven't made a decision yet, and have been umming and ahhing about it for ages.

Either way the dinghy will be out of the way and I'll be able to anchor and look at dolphins again, so it doesn't really matter.

We've had a few nice sails around the harbour with friends, either stopping for lunch or setting out some food while we were still going. That's been really nice and it's been great sharing the boat with our close friends.

We're doing as much skiing and snow kiting as possible over the next month, then hopefully by summer we'll be all set up for a few trips to the sounds and around New Zealand!

I promise I'll update more when stuff starts happening again.
Love Monique and Garth xxx

Becca and Dale

Will!

Becca fixing the lazy jacks

Wellington Harbour

Full moon