Time to Say Farewll to Opua
28 November 2016 | Opua, new Zealand
Fine
The second week of the All Points Rally was filled with lots of activities including more seminars on weather, passages back to the tropics, care of your canvas, charging systems on boats and also fishing in NZ. They also had a wine tasting lunch at Omata Estate, trade day, Thanksgiving dinner, dinner and live entertainment night, BBQ night, Pot luck lunch and more sausage sizzles.
The wine tasting lunch was very nice and the vineyard is set high up on a hill overlooking the bay and islands. It was a glorious day and I caught up with Anne and Stuart from Time Bandit which was great. Neil didn’t go as he is not into wine and he wanted to do a few jobs on the boat. Thanksgiving dinner was also good with a big roast turkey meal and they also provided a women singing group as entertainment. Thanksgiving Day was also special as some of the boats who had left Minerva had started to arrive in Opua and there was a new buzz around the marina. Everyone was excited to see the new arrivals and we knew there was going to be around 20 boats arriving the next day. We had been watching out for Balvenie and they got to the Q dock in the early hours of Friday morning.
Friday, was definitely a good day as we went to MetBob’s weather seminar and so it appeared everyone else did, as it was the biggest attendance to any seminar. Many of us had used Bob to help with the passage to NZ. All day long we kept bumping into the new arrivals who had left the Q dock and berthed in the marina. After the weather seminar the rally provided a free BBQ hamburger and drink. All the new arrivals had previously registered online for the rally (which is free) and so they got to participate in the last couple of days events. The BBQ worked out well as the welcoming party to all the new arrivals.
On Saturday they had the trade day stalls and it was good. We managed to get second hand replacement blocks for our broken ones, a collapsible fishing rod with reel, some more lines and a few other things. In the afternoon, the All Points Rally had their big raffle draw. During the rally you got stickers for attending events and the more events you attended the more stickers you got. We attended a lot of events and therefore our card had lots of stickers. We were very pleased to have won one of the prizes and we got a $220 voucher from Burnsco the boating shop. There were only a few prizes and so we were very happy to have won one. Saturday night they had a band at dinner, it was a great night and it was the last time I got to dance with Ilona. I will miss my dancing partner and it will probably be a while before I get to go to a function where I can go dancing.
The final day of the rally we went to the BBQ pot luck lunch and in the evening we went to the roast night at the Cruising Club. The roast night was going to be the big celebration night and Amanda on Balvenie had made the booking on behalf of the Magnet which is their radio net. The night was to celebrate Balvenie’s plus three other boats circumnavigation and also Mark’s birthday. What an amazing achievement. Mark and Amanda had started the radio net with Andrew and Clare from Eye Candy in 2011 when they were in the Med. They continued the net around the globe and have provided a wonderful service to so many cruisers. Mark and Amanda had organized a prize giving awards from the Magnet and there were about 12 awards of bottles of wine. We got an award as being the longest boat on the net that they had never met face to face. We started checking in on the net in May 2015 in the Bahamas and didn’t get to meet Amanda and Mark until June 2016 in Tahiti. I was also apparently the most distressed at times, although Neil did ask Amanda did Jeanette sound distressed and she said maybe emotional was a better word. My voice obviously hinted at how I was feeling and many times I probably sounded distressed, as I was trying to do my radio checkin without being sick. I can still remember one day when I had just finished my checkin and then took two steps to the sink and vomited. Fortunately when we were crossing to the Marquesas they did the checkins in alphabetical order and so Echo Echo was in the first few boats out of around 20 boats to checkin. I still remember one of the net controllers who would change the order and go backwards and I used to curse him for doing that, as it meant a longer time to wait at the nav station and try to not be sick. I think I also often said how things were going and when the weather was bad or something had broken on the boat, I said how crappy that was, just like I did writing the blog. Oh well, that is all behind me for now and it was a nice surprise to win a bottle of wine. The roast dinner was great, another lamb roast and it was the time to start saying goodbye to many of the cruisers, as I would not see them again after the dinner. I had said goodbye to Ta-B the previous day before they flew out and it was very hard. Not knowing what the future holds, I think makes it even harder.
During the week, we also had Matt and Karol over for dinner and said goodbye for now as we will see them the next time we are in NZ. It was a great night and we really enjoyed their company.
Apart from rally events, we managed to get our watermaker leak fixed (or so we hope when we use it next), we have an issue with our new in August solar controller and it looks like it might need to be replaced. I hope all this can be done under warranty. We are still communicating with the manufacturer about our problem. We have worked out ways to modify our toilet plumbing, but they were too busy to do it now and so that will have to wait. We also wanted to galvanize our anchor chain, but they are too busy to do that until January, so that will also have to wait. We did make 11 hatch covers for the hatches and that was a pain in the butt to do. We made three templates first and couldn’t get them to fit properly, but in the end Neil worked out a formula and it has appeared to work. I found it extremely frustrating and time consuming, but we saved a lot of money doing them ourselves and we had a lot of Sunbrella fabric on the boat which we could use, so they didn’t cost us anything.
Yesterday, we had to do lots of final jobs before we set sail today for Tauranga. It will take us about 4-5 days to get there as we will sail about 10-12 hours a day and then anchor in a bay each night. We won’t do an overnight passage unless we really feel like it. I am looking forward to getting there and seeing Neil’s family. I think Neil is also very excited to sail into Tauranga.
I said my final goodbyes yesterday to Mark and Amanda, Tony on the radio as we missed him when he came to the boat and finally to Ilona and Frans last night as we went to their boat for dinner. Saying farewell was very hard and we hope we can see everyone again in the near future. We had a lovely dinner with Ilona and Frans and it has been great getting to know them and spending our final days with them. I will miss everyone heaps. When I have to leave the boat in Tauranga it will be very strange, as it has been my home for the past two years and I will really miss it. The only good thing about leaving is that I will get to see my daughters very soon and I can’t wait to do that.