Merry Christmas
25 December 2009 | Bay of Islands
Scott
Merry Christmas to the friends and family that we can not see again this year. We miss you guys and hope you are having a wonderful holiday season.
Today was a wonderful tropical New Zealand Christmas for us! We are anchored in one of the prettiest spots we have found in the Bay of Islands, in just 10 feet of such clear water that the first thing I did this morning was flip on the depth sounder and reassure myself that we were still afloat. Last night we were joined by friends on ThinWolf from PortTownsend, Wa and watched a wonderful sunset together on the beach.
Amazingly, Santa found us here on the boat, ate a couple of cookies and dropped off fun stuff for everyone (including a dive weight belt for me). ThinWolf came over for muffins and coffee after we had busted into the loot and then we went for a lazy hike on the island until lunch. After lunch, I had to try the weight belt and though it is still cold, this is the best snorkeling I have done since Tonga. X-mas dinner this year is going to be a giant squid, well not THE giant squid of Jules Verne fame, but the biggest squid I have ever seen. I also learned that Calamari still on the hoof produces gallons of the stickiest blackest ink, for much longer than you would think, and it seemed able to aim it directly at me.
This afternoon, a pod of dolphins came and played around the boat, dozens of sting rays are gracefully swimming under us, and the bottom still looks close enough to touch. We played frisbee together on the beach and returned to the boat with a couple of tired and very sandy kids. Mary wanted me to mention the trials that cruiser kids face. The boys had sand in the most unlikely places and we hosed them off with buckets of icy saltwater, forced them to shampoo up, and then sluiced them off again before we let them inside. I must admit that it was a lot of fun but the racket they made there were heads popping up in all of the other boats and had we been a fly on the wall would probably have heard terms like intervention and abuse.
All in all, it was an amazing day together and the boys are saying it is their best Christmas ever.