Team Radiance has FINALLY made it to New Zealand!

We arrived the night before last. Wednesday?

If you want to see a lot of happy people, go to Opua. NZ. This is where cruisers converge and reunite after taking various routes through the South Pacific. Some folks we haven't seen since Bora Bora, some not since the Marqueses, and some we've never seen, only spoken to on the radio. This year, the fleet is even happier to be here because many of the boats were caught in a low pressure system en route, (not us), and the trip that should have taken only 8 or 10 days, took eighteen. Radiance didn't have any bad weather, but we sure had a long trip, pounding the bow into steep swell, beating our way against constant headwinds, and heeling over so much that we had our caprail in the water practically the whole way; not a comfortable way to sail. Had we eased up on the sheets and the heeling, we would have missed NZ entirely and ended up far west in Australia. (not a bad place to go, but our cruising friends were all in NZ.)

Steen had fun with the calculator and estimated that since we crashed into a wave every seven seconds Radiance passed over (or sometimes through) 108,000 waves, in the 10-days we were beating into the wind. Every seven wave dumped an average 10 gallon of the Pacific on her deck; that's 154,000 gallons.

New Zealand is amazing and we are so happy to be here. The beauty is similar to the Northwest Pacific (San Juan Islands), but add green rolling hills and spectacular rock outcroppings, and the people are the friendliest, most easygoing folks you could ever meet.

We'll write more later. We have to go catch the daily shuttle to town. Be back later today.

Happy Thanksgiving America!

Radiance