Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We are settling into marina life at Riverside Drive Marina in Whangarei (pronounced: fong a r=E1y). Whangarei is located up a river and is boater heaven. There are many companies clustered here building boats and specializing in assorted trades from mechanical to rigging. Many big name builders in New Zealand are located here. We chose Whangarei for this reason. We will get caught up on assorted projects where we can easily get parts and a bit of assistance. Also we are actually tied up to a dock with all the amenities. We are even in fresh water! It is a nice change to have unlimited amounts of drinkable fresh water and being plugged into shore power. Let the boat projects begin! We are busy pulling the sails off the boat and sending them to the loft. We are beefing up a few chafe prone areas and the sail maker is kind enough to let us keep them there until next year. We are also working with a rigger here and will be replacing all of the wire standing rigging. We're not sure if it has ever been replaced, so we are assuming it is original. That means it is 23 years old, long past its replacement date. The mast will be coming down for this project. This is the top of the priority list for sure! We will also be fixing the electrical wiring and hopefully switching to LED running lights. The anchor and all the chain is gone getting regalvanized. It sure needed it. We are hoping to add a new anchor this year so that we have two main anchors of different styles to accommodate different seabed situations. We also want a primary anchor back-up in case we lose an anchor. It could be just a matter of time with some of the coral head situations we have been in. Chuck is busy working on the stainless steel, and I need to start working on the woodwork. We will definitely get a lot accomplished here.