After 4.5 years, 38 countries and around 36000 miles, our next adventure will be to go back to land life.

Kleiner Bar, over and out!

The day after we arrived, Scott, Fiona, Islay, Faye and Glenys came to welcome us. We had a lovely time together. Having our friends around made us start to feel that it is real that we are back home.

This time of the year there are a lot of boats in this area coming from New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji and Tonga. It's nice to meet the new people, some of them we have been hearing on the radio/net during the passages but we never met. Everybody is curious to know where the others are coming from, how the last passage was and how long and where they have been cruising. So we have been sharing a lot of stories in the past week. We are happy that our boat arrived without anything breaking, so we don't have a lot of work to do. More time to be social! School also finished this week so we have being celebrating several achievements last week. When the weather improve we are planning to sail to Whangaroa. After that we will sail slowly to Auckland.

It was really foggy and rainy so we had to keep a good watch when we sailed into Bay of Islands. Just like when we left. It was pretty exciting seeing land. Mum was on watch and everybody else was sleeping (since it was 6 am) when she came in shouting Land Ahoy! and waking us all up. So we had breakfast and tidied up the boat. We tied up at the quarantine dock just before lunch. There were a bunch of other boats there so we walked along the dock waiting for the officials to come. When they did we filled out the paperwork and declared all of our stuff. A sniffer dog came on-board and she had cute little shoes. Cool thing was that I got to keep my worm-ridden piece of wood I got in Patagonia. After getting of the Q dock we decided to go for a couple of nights in the marina. We went for a walk (Lucas and I were the first people to step on NZ, the dock doesn't count) and met other Brazilian boat here, Santa Paz. We walked with them to the Coffee shop and Lucas, Clara, Julia and I went to try and find other kid boats. Since we didn't find any, Dad Lucas and I went up to General Store and bought pizza for dinner. I hope Alouette arrives tomorrow.

We are arriving today after a 'shaking sailing' tonight without our main sail. Yesterday in the afternoon we discovered the top car that holds the sail in the track of the mast was broken. We drop the main sail and we are using only the genoa and the boat is less steady. We are glad we saw the problem and we were less than a day to Opua. Other than the sail problem we had a great day yesterday. Nina baked again and Lucas plays with the LEGO. Werner and I were able to rest and get ready for a night arrival in New Zealand. Getting closer to the coast we need to be more careful to spot other boats and also to maintain the course.

Getting close to Opua is strange, we had a dream to cruise as a family and we finished going around the world. It's a big accomplishment and now we are going back to the land life. Every time we have big changes in our life is always challenging but we follow our dreams and I feel proud that we did it.

What next? It's time for us to go back to land life. Werner is getting back to work and Nina and Lucas are going back to the school. I'm not sure what I'll be doing yet but I have plenty to do until we all get organised back in Hamilton. Werner will start to work only in January and the school are in holidays until February. We will spend some time in Bay of Islands enjoying our last days of our cruising life before we take the boat to Auckland. I'll try to upload more pictures of the trip since Chile when we get a good internet connection.

15 miles to GO!

We have 200 miles to go to Opua, we are sailing with the spinnaker but the wind is slowly disappearing. Last night we had good wind with some change in direction but we were able to sail all night. The forecast is for light winds this afternoon and we are seeing that. Our first trip to Tonga was with strong winds and we are very happy with the weather window we are having this time.

We still have at least 42 hours to go. Arriving in Opua we will go straight to the Quarantine dock to do the paper work to be cleared into the country. This time of the year all the officials are very busy with several boats arriving every day. We cannot take any fresh food to New Zealand and the only fresh vegetables that we will still have are onion, cabbage and capsicum. We still have beacon and eggs and Nina is going to treat us with an English breakfast tomorrow morning. After that no more meat, the last sausages we had for lunch today and the cheese is also finishing. It will be nice to go to the supermarket and buy some fresh food and also some treats. A Brazilian barbecue is on the list, the last one we had was in Chile.

Position: 32° 21.8S: 176° 05.9E Course: 186° Speed: 4.5-5.0 knots Wind direction and speed: NE 7 knots

We are going very well. Yesterday we turned on the engine and only turn it off this morning. We are making water and with the sea so calm we can have showers everyday (yes, cruisers in general don't have this luxury, especially during a passage). Today we put the spinnaker up and we keep going well. We have very light winds, we are not complaining, we prefer to use the enginel than have too strong winds. Sunday is pancakes day and we were able to make them, a nice treat for a passage. One interesting thing we are seeing is the sea is full of pumice from a recent eruption of a volcano in the Kermadec Islands, around 250 miles southeast from us. Life is good.

Position: 28° 59.0S: 177° 26.6E Course: 192° Speed: 5.2 knots Wind direction and speed: NW 9 knots NZ Time: 2:00 PM