We sailed into Opua NZ last night and tied onto the quarantine dock around 2am. It was a long day. We had expected to arrive early evening but things didn't work out so smoothly.

Mid-morning the winds picked up and turned against us. The sea became very choppy. We ran into an adverse current. We were still making progress motor-sailing when the wind shifted again. As we went midway through tacking, Dana yelled out that the genoa had a major tear along the sun guard near the leach. We rolled up the sail and decided not to switch out the sail with our backup because of the rough conditions and being fairly close to our destination, so we just motored the rest of the way.

We had the engine at 2000 RPM and were only getting 1-2kts because of the wave action, current, and winds. Normally, at 2000 RPM we would be moving 6kts. So we revved it up to 2400 RPM, which we normally never do because of the increased fuel usage, and got a modest 4-5kts.

At any rate, we eventually made it in very late. The customs and biohazard officials showed up in the morning and were easy. We thought we were going to have to throw out much more of our food than it turned out; we just had to toss the rest of our meat and a few other items such as honey, eggs, and a little fresh vegetables we had.

The marina is quite nice in a beautiful setting. Not much is here as far as a village, but there are a wide range of boating services. That is good because we have lots of things to fix/replace: wind gauge, anchor chain, gypsy, generator heat exchanger, genoa sail, etc...

We had a couple of drinks visiting with new friends on Bamboozle and then had a pleasant dinner at the Opua Yacht Club. We are looking forward to an early evening to catch up on our sleep and then get to work tomorrow on our various projects and perhaps take a bike ride to a nearby town.