Yeah, the generator is finally fixed, at least as good as it's going to be. We even had an expert who works for Roy Disney come and do some troubleshooting on it. When he heard the name of our boat, he asked us if we knew that Roy named his last boat Morning Light and did a documentary of young kids learning to sail /race on the open ocean. We told him that we had named our boat first to be sure and tell Roy that ther next time he saw him.
Our friends, Eric and Gisela Gosch, have been planning on crewing with us to New Zealand. We were keeping them informed as to the progress on our generator . One day they were on to come and the next day they were off. We felt bad, but up until the last day didn't know if we would even be going to Fiji ourselves. At 7pm the night before they were to fly out, we informed them that it was a go. They left Hemet at 3pm the next afternoon. What troopers they are. They threw their closes together and left. The only thing Gisela forgot was her toothbrush! We picked them up at the airport in the freezing pouring rain. Soon we would be in warm weather as we had a great weather window to leave for Fiji so all seemed just perfect. Did I mention that we were on the party dock at West Park Marina? Well, our new fellow G pier friends gave us a good send off. It made it hard to leave. It will always be a special place for us and we hope to some day return.
The next two days are spent provisioning for our trip to Fiji. We checked out on Mon. the 4th of May about 3pm. from Auckland. We were all very excited as we headed out of the Hauraki Gulf and around Cape Rodney. We had bacon and egg pie and salad for dinner, thanks to our friends on G pier. Well, about 2am as I was getting Gisela up for her watch, all of a sudden the chartplotter starts blinking and goes out. Soon after all of our electronics' went out. We didn't have any instruments either. That meant we had no wind, speed, depth, radar or autopilot. Of course being the prudent sailors we had written down our Lat/Long position that we could transfer to a paper chart and of we had a handheld GPS that we could also use. Now we decided to head for the closest harbor but because their were several island's between us and our new destination and that fact that we had no radar and also the fact that it was quite dark, we decided to heave-to (park the boat) and wait until first light to head in. Gisela was hand steering so she was ready for a break. The boat did well in the heave to position and we continued our watches for the night. On the way in the next morning as soon as we got cell phone reception, we called the electrician (sparky) who had done some work on the boat and he said he would drive
the three hours from Auckland and meet us soon after we arrived. Of course we now had to call customs and recheck into New Zealand all over again. It took two days to trouble shoot the electronics problem and by then we had lost our weather window to head to Fiji. It would be another week. We made the best of a bad situation and rented a car and did some more sightseeing. Eric and Gisela hadn't ever been up to Opua so we drove up there for Mother's day weekend. We had a great time seeing other cruisers who were also waiting to leave for Fiji. Even though it was raining we had a great time. Then back to the boat to get fresh vegi's and fruit and ready the boat for our second attempt at leaving New Zealand. We get a new weather update from our weather router and all looks good. It has gotten really cold here and we are ready for some warmth. The trip is 1100 miles and should take us between 7 and 8 days. We plan on leaving May 13th. Stay tuned and we'll let you know how our second attempt goes.