SPLASHED – FEET WET as Fighter Jocks call it when over water.

In other words we (ORCINIUS and her owners) are back in the water and she is loving it and so are Lisa and I.

OK, OK, OK, we should have blogged yesterday when we actually went into the water but there were more pressing things that needed to be taken care of. First we had to make a little jaunt out to Marsden Cove after we went feet wet to check things out then come all the way back up river, cross under the new Hatea River Bridge and come to rest at our berth at Riverside Marina where we started this whole catastrophic adventure rebuilding ORCINIUS.

Still no excuse? Wrong, we had to go pick up our laundry, stop by the grocery store for a chilled bottle of champagne, a 24 pack of beer and head back out to the yard where the boys and Helen were just about ready to have the normal Friday afternoon beers. Can’t blog while reminiscing. Then it was back to Riverside Marina where we had to get our bed made up and prepare some dinner so we could continue to celebrate being back in the water with our best buds Bob and Ann of Charisma. By the time that was over it was way too late to sit down and blog this out. So there is our reason.

Now for the good stuff. She really floats with all our crap onboard and I would say very evenly and well above the waterline. She looks well balanced as the waterlines all around appear to be equal. The engines purr like kittens, two of the three heads work and I know the reason for the third not working…. It is the brew house and I don’t need that head working until my granddaughters show up in July.

Although Riverside Marina is both a marina and a boat yard, it is quite different than all the others around here. Where we were and their competitors at Norsand are strictly boat yards where work gets done on boats. There are differences but the main thing is you can live aboard your boat if the work is not too extensive like ORCINIUS'. I lived aboard for most of October and November last year when I was getting her ready to splash for a test run and most of the dirty work had already been completed. When we returned to New Zealand the first part of March we moved directly onboard and proceeded to get things move around and reduce our holdings to lower our gross. We probably still have way too much stuff (and we aren’t hoarders) but we (or I) may be too cautious to have just about anything I might need to fix any kind of problem. So back to Riverside, It is a marina for the purpose of having enough boats in it to attract work for the boat yard and they do a good job of that. The boat yard portion doesn’t really have and tradesmen for working on boats but outside contractors. That sometimes creates a problem because most of the other yards won’t let outside tradesmen into their yards so they keep all the work for themselves or their favored tradesmen. Once you are in one of those other yards you are stuck with their people and fees. At Riverside, if you have your boat hauled then you pay a yard fee per day plus the tradesmen you have working on the boat. If you are at Fraser Foote’s Cat yard where we were, we can hire outside tradesmen to do the work that their yard people can’t do and if the delay is because of his people he doesn’t charge additional lay days.

So we still have some work to do before we move on. There is still a lot of cleaning, some sewing and just getting everything back in order not to mention laying in some provisions for the next 5-6 months. Hopefully after next weekend we will be clean and ready to head for Auckland. We have gone to the local market here and stocked up with some very nice local meats and pork. Need to get some boneless chicken and hopefully a lamb chop or two a couple blocks of cheese. By then the freezer should be chuck a block with a small amount of space for fresh caught fish.

Will post some additional pictures tomorrow but for now it is what it is.

Cheers

John