Haul out

We've had lots of action on the boat since we got back from our honeymoon! We sailed back to Golden Bay for Easter, and I'll chuck some pics from that up eventually. But we hauled her out 2 weeks ago, and have been working nonstop since then. Well I have anyway, Garth has been doing actual work during the day, which he gets paid for. I've been doing mass amounts of unpaid manual labour. But hopefully it will all pay off in the end.

Our original plan was to haul out, wet sand back the antifouling to prep for new antifouling, and then repaint the bottom. So it should have taken a weekend or 2. And we wanted to sand and repaint the deck while it was out, if we had time - we can do that while it's in the water but it's better to do it out so as not to make a mess in the marina. If you have somebody following the sander around with a handheld vacuum cleaner it's not so bad, so the deck wasn't high on our list of priorities. So far we've had the boat out for 15 days, and it's going to be a long time before it's ready to go back in the water.

The process of hauling out was quite frightening, having never done it before. This massive thing that we've invested all of our time and money from the last few years into, the culmination of a lot of effort and planning and the thing which the next few years of our lives depend upon, is safe and strong in the water. But it's delicate and fragile out of the water and watching it hover over concrete was quite unnerving. Especially after  a once in 50 year weather event the week before had destroyed quite a few boats, one of which was still on it's side a few boats down from us, with half of it crushed in on the concrete from when it fell out of it's cradle.

So the image of what happens when a boat hits the land was still fresh in our minds. But everything went smoothly, we water blasted it and it was given a nice new home. Although hopefully it's just a temporary home.

We spent that weekend wet sanding, with mass amounts of help from Dale, Becca and Craig, as usual. Then I came back on Monday on my own to finish off the sanding and met with George Saunders, a boat builder who was fixing up some little things for us. He took one look at the boat and went 'Oh hell no, you have to strip it.' My response was 'no...no... it's fine... we'll just antifoul it.' He was adamant, and told me that I absolutely had to strip it. I really didn't want to. But he explained that the mass amounts of antifouling and the overall bumpiness all over the boat from dodgy repairs and uneven antifoul would be making it much slower. We'd also found a lot of osmosis in the gel coat, which I'd spent the entire day before sanding back and prepping to cover up, and I suspect he thought there was probably more underneath the paint that we couldn't see. I felt like he just knew it had to be done, and he was right.

Osmosis is water bubbles in between layers of the paint, and the gel coat is the layer over the top of the fibreglass which is formed when the boat is made. If the bubbles get bigger and infect the fibreglass, that's really bad. But they were minor and just in the paint and gel, so fixable. But he eventually convinced me that it had to be stripped, especially after he said I'd 100% have to do it in the next year if I didn't do it now, and it would cost twice as much in Australia. So I gave in. Thank god I did, because we've found lots of surprises underneath the many layers of paint and I'm very glad to have found and removed them.

I'm not sure if it was because I was doing it on my own, I'm a girl, he's a really really nice person or if he just knew exactly how much work I had ahead of me and took pity on me, but he was amazing. He drove me down to a secret marine shop I didn't know about that charges trade prices, got me a paint scraper and blades, saved me some money on all future purchases, and took me back to the boat and showed me how to strip off the paint. It seemed easy enough. He even loaned me a heap of extra scrapers so people could help me, and was pretty much amazing. So he left me to it.

It was not easy. I'm going to rename the boat Patches, because that is primarily what it is comprised of. And getting the antifouling off the patches is really really difficult, because they're a much harder surface and the scraper doesn't dig in very well. Then I found that a lot of the patches were on top of antifoul, so they had to come off anyway. So I spent Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday scraping off the paint. Dale actually took a day off work to come and help out on Thursday, because he is amazing. After I had Thursday and Friday off, I went back Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. It's still not done, even though over the weekend we had Dale, Becca, Craig, Josh, Johnny, Will and Garths cousins Kim and Lindsay all helping. We could start sanding it on this past weekend, but the paint is just so horrible and thick it takes a long time to get through with the sander, even though everything is now gone but the primer. We're aiming for the gel coat, which is under the primer. It's scary taking the primer off with the paint scrapers, because when they dig into the glass we have to fill in the holes with an epoxy filler. So sanding is slower but safer.

Everybody has been coming over to chat to me. I mean everybody. Again I'm not sure if it's because I'm a girl, because they're impressed with how many days I've been there mostly on my own or because they feel sorry for me, but all the boat people keep dropping by to put in their 2 cents. I don't hate people as much any more, or boat people at least. Everybody's been really friendly, and they love coming over to chat about boats. I tell them about the osmosis and how I have to take it back to gel, and there's always a sad sympathetic sigh. I wish I'd known why last week, but I can see now it's because this is a ridiculous amount of work. As in, after the 1st day it was the most manual labour I'd ever done in my life. And now it's been 9 days. I've spent a lot of time just staring at it feeling and overwhelmed by how big our boat is. George has been reassuring me when I'm not sure if I'm doing it right, and there's been a really nice boat builder working next to me who keeps coming over to chat as well. I need to get better at remembering names. I'm so socially awkward I make an attempt to introduce myself and then am so busy panicking at having to socialise that I don't pay attention to them when they reciprocate.

Now the weather has turned bad. As in it's supposed to rain for 7 days straight. Which is not ideal when it's costing me $36 a day just for it to sit there. But the port side is nearly ready for epoxy, which is the first layer on the way to painting. People keep telling me different things - Garth wants to put on epoxy and a barrier coat to replace the gel coat, then primer, hard antifoul in one colour and soft antifoul in another colour. Lots of people have said not to worry about the epoxy and barrier coat, and other people have told me that the primer won't stick to the glass without epoxy in between. So we're not sure what to do. The professional painting guys keep telling me not to worry about a barrier coat and that the 504 epoxy, which I think is just primer, will stick to the glass and be fine. They are very insistent. But Garth wants to seal it all up with a barrier coat, and that's probably what we'll do. But it amazes me that so many people can have so many different opinions on it - surely one way works better than the other?

The guys from the h20 paint place have been helpful though, they told me that usually you strip the boat when it has 5000 somethings... he used some kind of measurement that I'd never heard of. And ours has 10,000, so twice as much as it should. All that weight will be slowing us down! I filled up an entire wheelie bin with antifouling, and I'm sure a good chunk of it got away even though I tried my best to gather it all. It's nasty stuff for the environment. It's nasty for my skin too, as I spent the first few days wearing a mask and goggles, with jeans and a jumper. It got down my neck and in my eyes and up my nose - whenever I blew my nose it was coming out black.

So I upgraded to a full on biohazard looking respirator mask and swimming goggles, because my face went all red and puffy and itchy and I kept getting sent home from work for turning up looking like I was dying. My boss told me to go to the ER. Antifouling is made to kill everything that tries to attach itself to the boat, so I guess it makes sense. But a normal mask and goggles just don't cut it - my whole sinuses felt like they were on fire and my eyes were sore and itchy and messed up for days. My face is still puffy, and I've only been doing the primer for the last few days. At least now when I blow my nose it comes out white, which is primer, so that means I'm making some kind of improvement...

I kind of like that I'm doing a lot of this work myself - I like getting to know things about the boat and getting all up close and personal with it. And I'm really really glad we stripped it - we've found  lots of patches that could have gotten water under them and become bad, because they hadn't been sanded back first. There was also water in the rudder, which we wouldn't have found out otherwise. And it's good to just start clean - we know exactly what's there now, and there won't be any more surprises in the hull. I now know it very intimately.

So we've got a bit more sanding to do. I've prepped most of the port side except for a bit at the stern, and I sanded out all the nicks and filled them with epoxy filler. I thought making up epoxy would be scary, but it's pretty easy. I felt like I actually knew what I was doing when I was scraping epoxy all over it, because that's a bit more complicated than just sanding. So I have to sand over the filler to smooth everything over, Garth has to prep around the big patches and I have to finish the keel and rudder. THEN the port side will be done. The sb side still has lots of primer on, which shouldn't be too hard to get off, and some thicker stuff over that. Plus it needs some filling. But I'm going to head out in the rain one day soon so that when the weather clears up we'll be ready to start painting, and then this whole nightmare will be over.

We've also had our first Category 1 inspection (you can read the regulations here if you're interested but they're a bit intense), which went really well. Robert, our inspector, was just there to look at it out of the water and make sure the hull and everything below the waterline was safe and sound. We've been really worried about this inspection for a long time, because we didn't know what to expect. If they found something stupid like our cockpit drains being too small or something really annoying that didn't effect our safety but wasn't to the book, they could fail us. And then we can't leave the country. So we haven't registered it yet, as only New Zealand registered boats need this inspection - if the boat is registered elsewhere you can come and go as you please out of New Zealand. So because I'm an Australian, we left it in case we had to register it in Australia to get around Cat 1. But after meeting with Robert and going through the list, we can see there won't be any problems getting it. It might cost a bit more than we wanted it to, but it was good to see just why they do it - he was telling us about lots of boats that fell apart or had dramas when they left the country and got lost at sea. I guess because the weather around here can be quite nasty, and there's nothing nearby except Australia, it's pretty important. And we don't want our boat to fall to pieces in the middle of the ocean, so it's a good thing they make everybody do it even though it's annoying.

Robert only brought up things that were legitimately concerning, and we're glad he found them. There was a hollow in the keel, where a repair had been done over the top of the antifouling instead of sanding it back to the fiberglass. Water had gotten in and it was separating from the keel. that's bad. So we've had that fixed, and it was a lot bigger than we had thought, so it's a good thing he found it. There was also a crack in the rudder we hadn't noticed, so I'm really glad he found that too. He went over the list of things we needed to do, and everything he mentioned seemed valid and important. Silly things like tying wire around the base of the engine in case the rubber connecting it to the boat wears and breaks. It seems pointless, but if the boat rolls and the rubber breaks and the engine falls through the roof (which would temporarily be underneath it), that's bad. So we're really happy about little things like that. We have a bag of wooden plugs as well, that fit into all the holes in the boat for when a valve or something fails and water starts rushing in. They have to be attached with a lanyard near all the seacocks that they fit into. Simple, but we keep them in a locker in a bag, and when water is rushing into the boat it might be a bit dangerous to go through them all in search for one that fits. So instead of being scary and horrible, he was really nice and helpful, which was a big relief. He went though the whole list of things we need, so we know exactly what has to be done before his final inspection 2 weeks before we leave.

So everything is starting to fall into place, and if we get our act together we should be ready to leave in the next 2 months. I'm hoping we won't miss the entire ski season, but until we get the boat back in the water there'll be no skiing for us.

- Monique

Honeymoon - Day 6 & 7 (Feb 1st and 2nd)

Day 6 - Motueka to Marlborough Sounds

Again my horse riding plans were foiled. We were all set to go this morning, but we awoke to some pretty miserable looking clouds. We were originally supposed to be across the strait by Saturday afternoon to avoid a weather system coming through. Which is annoying because Garth doesn't have to be back at work until Monday. So we were supposed to go horse riding early this morning, sail all day and either anchor quite late tonight or continue through the night to get home. But the weather changed, so we just had to head off. Unfortunately because of the tides at French Pass, if we'd missed one and had to wait for the next it would have made it dangerous to cross the stupid strait if the weather had picked up. We probably could have stayed, but as upset as I am about missing horse riding I'd rather us stay safe. I just wanted to canter along a golden beach... Stupid weather.

So we tried to sail today, although it was mostly motoring. You don't really notice how intrusive that motor is until you turn it off and everything is still and quiet. It's just a horrible noise you get used to after a while, like living on a main road. But then when you go away from the city the absence of that noise is such a relief.

We anchored in a pretty little bay and sat on deck reading as the sun set around us. Then we heard a noise in the background - I thought it might be a power boat, but when we looked up Garth asked if it was a tidal wave, in a really confused voice. We stared at it for about 10 seconds before it became evident that about 50 dolphins were making their way across the bay. They were having a great time, either putting on a show or just playing, but they were all leaping out of the water and twisting around and generally frolicking. I saw one do a backflip, then it landed facing the wrong way and was confused for a second. They were amazing. We watched them cross the bay, probably chasing fish, until eventually all their fins disappeared around the point. It was spectacular - I've never seen dolphins being quite so crazy in the wild before.

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Day 7 - Marlborough sounds to Wellington

Our trip back was much more exciting than the crossing over. We had at least 30-40 knots across most of the strait, and we zoomed home. I prefer Garth steer when we're around land I'm unfamiliar with, and I like to take over when there's nothing around us but ocean. Ie when there is nothing for me to hit except sea creatures and other boats. So that's what we normally do - I chill out and Garth steers for an hour or 2 until there's minimal navigation to be done, and then we swap and he sleeps. I'd like to say he sleeps so much because he's lazy, but it's because he always gets up at a ridiculous hour so that when I pop my head up thinking "I guess we should head off," our anchorage is already disappearing behind us.

We had our number two genoa up (which is more like a number one, because our number one is like a giant monster of genoa goodness at around 150%). In the morning I was lying in the cockpit wrapped up in a blanket hugging my kindle, having totally forgotten what sailing is like after such a smooth passage over. That was when the first big wave came into the cockpit, drenching Garth from head to toe and rendering my blanket useless. After that we were literally ankle deep in water the whole trip back, which I suspect was due to our cockpit drainage needing to be cleaned out. But it was just one wave after another, leaving us drenched all day. Which reminds me, I should probably invest in some kind of waterproof case for my kindle...

As we got further into the strait I was in charge while Garth was sleeping in the cockpit. I could see it getting more turbulent ahead of us, with gust lines blowing across the water. I inspected it for a while before waking Garth up to tell him we should probably put in a reef (which is just reducing the sail so it's smaller, for my non-sailing friends. Which is probably everybody reading this.) He poked his head up, looked around and said "nah it's fine," then went back to sleep. About five or ten mins later I woke him up again and said "no seriously, we should definitely reef." Again, he got up, looked around and told me it would be okay. Then the wind started picking up and the gusts got stronger and stronger, and as the boat got overpowered he got knocked out of his sleeping spot, stood up and said "Hmm... we probably should have reefed." You think?!

This makes me happy though, because it does mean I know what I'm doing at least a little bit. It also means Garth is too used to sailing in strong winds and I need to remind him to be more careful now that the gear we're wrecking belongs to us and not somebody else. I should know better by now when it comes to listening to Garth if I suspect he is wrong, especially when he's half asleep. I need to learn to be more insistent that he listen to me, because every once and a while I'm right and he is wrong, which can be dangerous on the boat if we do it his way and it's the wrong one. But he's very rarely wrong.

So we had an exciting time going back, with me steering for most of it. It's silly, but that's the kind of sailing I like the most - waves crashing into the cockpit, wind and water in my eyes, and the boat flying along at ridiculous speeds. It's lots of fun to be behind the wheel when the weather is like that, but I can't really explain it. Like you're in charge of this tiny vessel in the middle of nowhere, with the wind behind you and not much separating you from this giant ocean. It's peaceful and exciting at the same time. I think the weather had a lot to do with it being so much fun though - the sky was blue and it was a lovely sunny day. I think if it was night time, it was raining and I was alone up on deck, I would be quite scared about taking on so much water and being in so much wind.

The Karori rip was really interesting on the way back - the currents were swirling in lots of different directions, with big waves coming from every side of the boat and crashing on top of us. There was so much debris swirling all around us - giant logs, huge clumps of seaweed and who knows what else underneath it all. I have no doubt that if one of us fell overboard in amongst all that mess it would be very easy to just get pulled under and drown.

Sometime as we were going through the rip I was standing up behind the wheel and heard a little puffy noise from the port side of the boat. I looked over and there was a big dolphin swimming next to me, staying adjacent to the wheel and blowing water everywhere. I think he must have wanted some attention. For once I was the one to stay at the wheel and Garth got to run up to the bow and play with the dolphins. They were all like, what Karori rip? We're cool dude. But the sole dolphin that I'd spotted first stayed next to me for a while - he must have known I didn't want to miss all the fun.

The second we rounded the corner of the North Island, the wind completely died. As in, we were doing under 1 knot. So we had to motor the rest of the way back, which was about two hours or so to the harbour. The headsail got stuck as we were furling it, and was ragging for ages while Garth was sorting it out.  Now a heap of the stitches have come out, so we get our first chance to figure out how to fix sails. I really wish it was going to be our last, but I suspect we will be very good at it after a while. But we got back safe and sound, albeit unhappy at having to go back to work and return to reality. I think all in all it was a pretty perfect honeymoon, broken bits and all. I'm very very glad we didn't fly to Rarotonga or some island like we were originally planning - swimming naked in the middle of the ocean and going to sleep looking up through our hatch at the stars beats some fancy resort any day.

-Monique

Honeymoon - Day 5 (Jan 31st)

Day 5 - Abel Tasman to Motueka

We had a lovely day today. We picked up the anchor quite late, it was around 11 once we'd had a swim, made breakfast and tidied up. Actually I can accurately say it was exactly 11, because I've been keeping up the log book. Kind of. I'm at least putting in hours motored, destination and point of departure. I need to get into the habit of doing it, so when our chart plotter breaks I at least have a co-ordinate to put into the GPS. We actually got to sail for most of today and it was amazing. We could chat without yelling and just floated along on top of the waves. I think it's like comparing a push bike to a motorbike - they'll both get you there, they're both fun and often the motorbike is faster. But it's so much more peaceful and you feel so much closer to everything around you without the engine.

We cruised past Tonga island again to look at the baby seals then made our way to Motueka, which is near Nelson. We tried to anchor in Kaiteriteri but there were too many private moorings and no free space. After cruising the coast for a bit we managed to tuck in behind Ngiao island, where the water gets down to 4m deep at the lowest low tide, which is a bit shallower than we normally anchor in. But it should be ok. Our boat is 1.8m, but we like to be safe.

We spent all afternoon reading in the shade and jumping in the clear water when it got too hot. Garth managed to get the outboard going for our dinghy (we've had it for a year and didn't even know if it worked), and found it has 2 speeds - fast and faster. It's 8hp on a tiny dinghy, so I'm not surprised. But being mobile with no draught meant we could head out over to the island, then the beach, then to split apple rock. It's a giant rock that's been split in half, and looks pretty cool. Creative naming around here.

We also inspected sandy beach, which is where we 're heading tomorrow so we can go horse riding - the plan is to drag the dinghy over a heap of sand at low tide and leave it somewhere. Hopefully the sand doesn't go back too far... We wouldn't be able to go at all if Garth hadn't fixed the motor, so it was lucky he's so handy. We tried 2 different horse riding places in Golden Bay, but one was too far away for us to get there without assistance and the other one didn't call me back. Hopefully this one will be better than those guys anyway! It's a beach trek, which is what we wanted.

It seems really simple just going ashore, but it's not. The beaches here are shallow for quite a long way out, so we can't get near them without the dinghy. When we stopped at the marina it was the first time we'd been on land since we left, and I didn't even realize. No people since we left either, so nobody minds if I go for a swim or use the solar shower on the deck in my birthday suit. All the main towns seem to dislike boats, as there isn't really anywhere to go. We got lucky for the first few days because it was so calm and we could anchor anywhere, but now we have to be careful so I don't get sick. I've been pretty good on this trip, I've only been queasy once. We had to move last night to a spot an hour away that was more sheltered from our original anchorage because the wind and the tides were fighting each other, turning the boat side on to the waves. That's bad. I'm in the cockpit at the moment, because the boat is going crazy. I keep thinking I'm seeing falling stars, but it's just a light on the hill bobbing up and down frantically as the boat gets tossed around like a piece of driftwood.

Honeymoon - Day 4 (Jan 30th)

Day 4 - Abel Tasman to Golden Bay

Everyone says cruising is just boat maintenance in exotic locations, and I believed them. But it doesn't really sink in until you wear right through your new jandals in one day walking around trying to get boat parts.

Most of the things that went wrong yesterday probably all stemmed from one high pressure fuel pipe in the engine bursting open, but it was a pretty sucky day all in all. We had all the drama in the morning with refilling the fuel and bleeding the engine, then the pipe burst and we had diesel flowing into the cabin. Then when we thought it was sorted out, our fan belt blew and flipped over so the cabin stunk like burning rubber. Garth tried fixing it, but it just wanted to be upside down. My problem with this is that the last time the engine played up we went to buy new belts, bought the wrong one and then had to pay somebody to fix it properly because it was too stuffed for us. They replaced the fan belt when they did all the maintenance and we didn't get more. Because we're both forgetful and stupid. So no spare fan belt. I've read so many stories about how important it is to have a spare of everything, but we didn't have a spare.

So after the fuel pipe burst again, we lost almost all our fuel. There was one place on the whole coast that was supposed to have fuel so we headed there. We actually got some wind and started sailing for the first time, but had to end up motoring to make sure we got there in time.

Also, disregard what I said about liking motoring. As soon as we turned the engine off and the only noise in the world was the lapping of water on the side of our boat, I wanted to throw away the key and never turn on that blasted engine again.

Anyway, so we rocked up at the marina with no fuel, a half-fixed fuel pipe that was still slowly leaking, amid discussions of making a fan belt out of rope. We had to ask where to get fuel from and docked alongside a warf covered in oysters, which I then proceeded to slice my hand open on while I was trying to rearrange the fenders. After already dropping and retrieving one by leaning half off the boat.

So Garth wrapped me up in band aides and went looking for fuel. He called the Harbour master and was told he could get some for $2.69 a litre at 9:30 in the morning. It costs $1.50 from petrol stations, so we thought he was blatantly trying to rip us off. Considering we needed 150L, we left slightly panicked to anchor in the middle of a glassy bay, in one of most beautiful scenes I've ever seen in my life. The sunset was stunning, and we were completely alone in the huge bay aside from two kayakers who rowed out to take in all the beauty for an hour or so. So it wasn't a bad place to be stuck, but we were still stuck.

We went back to the marina this morning amidst discussions of hitch hiking to the nearest service station, which was 13km away. We only have 2 cans for diesel, which hold 40L between them, but if we did 2 trips instead of buying it from the marina it would save us $80.

The Harbour master was actually really nice, said he had misquoted us on the fuel and it was actually $1.65 (we did try to tell him he was being ridiculous the day before). So we fueled up, disposed of the bucket of diesel which had been sitting in the cockpit from when Garth pumped it out of the bilge, and even scored a berth for the day. So things were looking up. Though when we filled the fuel I took off the fuel cap inside as per Garths request to get rid of air bubbles so we wouldn't have to bleed it again, and ended up with a spurt of diesel through the cabin and all over the couch cushions. I decided this had to be the end of our bad luck, so we tied up without any more oyster attacks, removed the offending parts from our engine and started heading in what we hoped was the right direction for Takaka. To give the town credit there was one bus a day, which we missed by 10 minutes.

So we walked for about an hour in the hot sun before someone picked us up, and then a lovely lady gave us a lift to a magical engineering world where all broken engine pieces are brought back to life. Or they should be, because this place was awesome. If anyone ever gets stranded near the top of the South Island of NZ and needs engine parts, these are the guys. We only found them by ringing up the service station and begging for a fan belt, so it was pretty lucky they sent us somewhere useful instead of just telling me they didn't have any and hanging up.

They found us two fan belts (I wanted five, but at least we still have a spare), took our two broken engine pieces away and told us to come back in an hour or so. Which was perfect, because we were starving. We had a yummy lunch in Takaka and went clothes shopping in one of the loveliest towns I've come across in New Zealand. It has the exact same vibe as Byron Bay back in Australia. Everybody was chilled out, there was a guy playing a recorder, and the street was lined with hippie shops selling loose cotton clothing and jewelry covered in bells. I loved it.

Garth found some clothes (that had to be tried on over my board shorts, which he was wearing as underwear) and I stocked up on summer things to laze around in on the boat. Because what I need in Wellington is more wrap around pants and sarongs. It's not long before we're supposed to be leaving though, so hopefully they'll be useful soon. I couldn't help it, I've always had a soft spot for hippie clothing.

We eventually made our way back to the engineers, picked up our parts and managed to hitch a ride in a matter of minutes. Everybody is so friendly! Apparently there are benches everywhere that come fully equipped with a thumb sign, specifically for hitch hikers. Perhaps that might have saved us all that walking.
From where we were dropped off it was just a short walk home, so we got to take in the scenery. It's stunning! There's big rock cliffs everywhere next to wide open golden beaches.

Part of the road went through a tunnel that had been carved out of a big rock wall, and I think it would be a great place to explore.

Next to the road we followed a little track through the trees to some cliffs and found where the locals must go rock climbing. There were cars parked there earlier and we were trying to figure out why - there were no beaches nearby and they'd left their kayaks on the cars. Through the path there was a giant hammock strung out in the shade under the trees and people had dragged old car seats and couches in to sit and watch the climbers. Or wait for their turn I guess. It was pretty cool.

I managed to injure myself again, ripping a bit of skin off my toe this time. I'm slightly worried that I keep getting hurt, but last trip all I did was bang my head over and over until I had a headache every day and was in tears from all the eggs on my head. I'm not sure if wounding myself constantly is better or worse, but maybe I'll just slowly learn. I haven't hit my head once this trip, which is promising.

Garth fixed the engine pretty quickly, while I washed diesel out of everything. We met a lovely couple with two kids in the berth next to us, which was pretty cool. We don't generally meet many boat people and hadn't spoken to anybody at all in four days before arriving at the marina, so it was really lovely to have a chat. Their kids were crazy and we fell in love with them. The boy shimmied up the mast like a monkey and was cruising around on a little optimist (a dinghy with a sail), and the girl was running around with a net catching little shrimps and begging to be allowed a swim in the marina. I want our kids to be like that, though its probably inevitable that they will be, as the boy was exactly like Garth. Who was just watching the optimist with delight - he loves sailboats, and the little ones are cuter.

We found a really nice bay to anchor in tonight, but it got rockier as the tide changed. I started feeling a bit queasy so we went another hour to find a better place. At least we're closer to home now, and we got to sail for most of it. We went for a swim before moving shop and the water was deliciously warm for New Zealand. Garth rigged up our new spinnaker pole as well, which we swung out over the water and jumped off. We will eventually figure out a way to rig up our trapeze and hammock off it, once we actually get something on the mast to clip it onto.

So we actually had a really pleasant day, and I'm glad we got stuck in the middle of a paradise.

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