We flew home in early Dec. for what we thought would be a very relaxing visit. We had six weeks set aside and figured that we would have plenty of time to visit family and friends. We also planned to get all our medical and dental checkups done for the year as well. The checkups ended up taking way more time then we thought and to top it off, Jaime found out that he needed arthroscopic knee surgery on both his knees. We scheduled that for New Years Eve. The surgery went well and a series of physical therapy appointments followed. Needless to say we soon realized that we wouldn't have enough time to see everyone and do everything that we had planned on. After being gone for ten months we were disappointed that our trip home turned out to be way too short. Looking on the positive side, Jaime's knees hopefully will be less painful now. It seems that when working on a boat most of it is done on your knees. Ouch! As much as we looked forward to coming home, we now look forward to getting back to New Zealand and our floating home. Home for us now really is where the boat is.
New Zealand is a very pretty country and the people here have been overwhelmingly friendly to us. As an added bonus, our dollar goes a long way here. So touring the country and paying for boat services and parts is quite inexpensive. The economic downturn has affected New Zealand as well. As much as we love the Whangarei area, we need to take the boat further south to the Auckland area to have the generator repaired. We have gotten to see some of the northern part of the north island which is called Northland by the Kiwis. It is full of deserted beaches, pristine harbours, lush rainforests and boiling mud pools. The Kiwis love the outdoors and their country is full of national parks and reserves with well maintained tramping (hiking) trails everywhere we go.
On Feb. 1st, we leave Whangarei and head towards Auckland. We get a late start as we have to wait for a high tide to head back down the river. We anchor at the mouth of the river our first night out. The wind had been blowing quite a bit, but we found a pretty protected spot and enjoy a great sunset and celebrate being back on the hook. The next morning we raise anchor and head south. We had been told of this great little island in the Hauraki Gulf called Kawau that we shouldn't miss, so we decided to check it out. We loved it so much we ended up staying four days. The island is sparsely populated and covered with large pine trees, ferns and flowers. It was a great place to unwind by exploring the island and taking in the scenery. We also spent a day cleaning the river muck off the bottom of our boat before heading into another marina. The next morning on our way into Auckland we see America's Cup style boats racing in the Louis Vuitton Series race. We anchor at the windward mark and spend the rest of the afternoon watching these fast boats slide through the water, rounding the mark and then popping their spinnakers and heading for the finish line. Soon it was time for us to head into our new berth at West Park Marina.
We head under the Auckland Bridge and follow a well marked channel for quite a few miles. Again, we need to enter this marina in a fairly high tide as it is quite shallow in places. Just as we are making our entrance, the wind decides to pick up and give us a little thrill for our landing. Jaime makes a perfect landing, but before we can get the lines from the pilings tied to secure the boat, we are blown into our new neighbor's boat and end up bending some of his stanchions. Not to mention putting our first really bad ding in our boat as well. The first one always hurts the worst. Our new neighbor is really nice about the whole thing and we end up becoming quite good friends. He drives us around the Auckland area and takes us to eat at his favorite restaurants as well as gives us very useful tips on where to go for this and that. It's like we ran into an old friend. Literally!
The next morning we start organizing our repair projects. Generator, watermaker, life raft to be repacked, depth sounder to be repaired and numerous other maintenance items. Our plan is to get the chores done early and then spend time touring and seeing more of this beautiful place.