Photo is not of Whangarei, but the badly flooded town of Edgecumbe in the Bay of Plenty after Debbie dumped her load.


We are not actually making hay, or even making way, as we are here up on the hard stand at Riverside boat yard in Whangarei, our old haunt from the pre circumnavigation days of 2004 and 2005. We certainly depend on some sunshine to make progress. Progress has been somewhat stuttering as the tropics have been sending lots of warm, wet stuff down this way.

First there were the remnants of Cyclone Debbie. It did considerable damage to the Whitsundays, then drowned South East Queensland and North East NSW in turn, crossed the Tasman and hit the lower half of the North Island, badly flooding the Bay of Plenty town of Edgecumbe. We had 2 days of heavy rain in Northland. The Hatea River turned a dirty brown and Whangarei Harbour appeared to be high tide all day and night, but nothing too serious.

Meanwhile we have been sorting out the leftover problems from the last few years of busy cruising. In turn, we checked the forestay for wear (tick), got the furling genoa repaired (tick), installed 2 new cap shrouds and bob stay (tick), fitted new dolly wheels to the RIB (tick), repaired the anchor winch which had died off Tongatapu (tick), repaired the engine cooling pump which had been damaged in French Polynesia (tick), rebuilt the wind generator which was beginning to make so much noise due to worn bearings the whole boat would shudder (tick), check the prop shaft bearing for play (tick), replace the anemometer that died on top of the mizzen (tick) and complete our overhaul of the power generation and storage system, new deep cycle batteries and solar panels which should now serve to provide us with all the off grid electricity we need for the next few years (tick).

We should be back in the water in a couple of days after giving the hull its latest cover of useless antifouling (tick) just in time for Cyclone Cook, currently brewing off Vanuatu, to come visiting.

We are seriously thinking of buying a bigger boat, perhaps in the U.S. or Mexico and bringing it back across the Pacific in stages. We won't sell Saraoni at this stage (would anyone buy it anyway?) but keep it as our NZ base, especially as we still have the very cheap and safe berth in Tutukaka. Our trip to Fiji and New Cal. this year should focus our minds more clearly on what we want to do next.



This is the 17th time we have hauled Saraoni out since we bought it in Airlie Beach, Queensland. It's no fun, especially when it's wet!



Alison inspecting the rudder



Splash time!