It's a Long Shot II

What a great week we have had even though we've been incredibly busy with school, boat stuff and general housekeeping. We spent the first few days loading the boat with fresh produce and.... you guessed it...beer. Lots of Farmer's Markets or farms selling produce at the side of the road. Loved the 10kg bag of oranges for $5. I have to say those kind of deals are few and far between. It's an expensive island by Canada's standards but it sure is beautiful here and the Kiwis are super friendly and most importantly, they are happy!

We received many thanks and hugs from the family on Wondertime and agreed to an interview with Pacific Yachting regarding our tow job. Amazing really as it was just a basic tow job and the guys at JRCC and the crews on our CCG vessels do far more herotic things and you rarely hear a word about it. C'est la vie. This marina is beautiful and it's full of boats, many who we have met before so it tends to be hard to get around without stopping and chatting for hours. The kids are in heaven here! There are easily 25 kids running around with the youngest being Saylor and the oldest being the 14 yr old on Water Musick. They all do homework until noon and then they never stop until the wee hours when the parents are begging them to go to bed.

We are getting a new mizzen sail built for us here in Opua. Our old one has been repaired enough times to grant it a final resting place. Most impressive was the fact that we could get a sail made here for the same price as one from China. Excellent! We are also getting them to reshape our mainsail. It was poorly made (before our time) and it's basically a brand new sail as it probably wasn't used much due to the weird cut. It's a cheap fix compared to a whole new sail. Next on our list is ordering new shrouds. We had replaced half of our rig before we left as the remainder looked pretty good. Now that we have 7,000 miles on them, we have discovered tiny hairline cracks forming in five of the ten turnbuckles. Time to change them out before our return trip. I was lamenting that it's too bad we didn't have the spare $4K at the time to replace them before we left Canada but Doug said if we had lost our boat getting here, we would have wasted that money. Always the optimist eh?

I'm getting marina fever as it's time to let go the lines. All the $2 hot showers must be getting to me. Many of our friends are flying off to their homelands so it'll get too lonely to stay here. Time to go explore these beautiful islands and relocate to a better excursion port. We've heard good things about Whungerai so we'll go try that area for awhile. I'm having a heck of a time pronouncing the names as Wh is F. Guess that would make a which is fich and what is fat... getting silly, time to go. Sweet As...