We left the Opua Marina a few days ago and motored all of thirty minutes over to the lovely little town of Russell. It mostly consists of a few streets of small shops, waterfront cafes, historic churches and New Zealand's oldest hotel. Russell also boasts the only French style rammed earth building in New Zealand which was built as a print shop for printing books explaining the tenets of the Catholic church in the native Maori language; not very popular with the already present Church of England. Russell was the first capital of New Zealand, (before being moved to Wellington), and was originally called Kororareka (korora - the blue penguin, reka - sweet). The legend goes that a Maori chief, wounded in battle, asked for some penguin broth to be brought to him. After drinking the broth he said 'Ka reka te korora' (how sweet is the penguin). (Steen adds: "I wonder if you can buy penguin bouillon at the market). And, yes, penguins are native to New Zealand, though we won't see any until we travel farther south.

We are now anchored off Roberton Island in the bay where Captain Cook anchored his ship Endeavor in 1769. We are still only ten miles from the Opua Marina, but when you're in The Bay of Islands, you don't have to go far to reach the next lovely anchorage.

Being in a slip at the Opua Marina (for eight days) was a luxury, (relatively speaking of course). We mainly just decompressed after the passage from Fiji, and from the whole South Pacific season in general. It is a fairly new marina with well designed facilities. There were lots of cruisers, calm protected waters and clean hot showers. They even had a self service cappuccino maker in the laundry room, wow! Even though we were relaxing, we were also very busy between laundry, shopping and entertaining - and after this Fiji passage we also had a lot of cleaning to do. The boat was a mess and a lot of our clothes were either musty/mildewy or soaking wet from touching the hull, so we did loads and loads of laundry.

We think Opua is a great place, but Opua proper consists mostly of the Opua Marina, one restaurant and one small general store, so in order to do any real grocery shopping we had to take a shuttle van to Paihia four miles away. The shuttle left every morning at 10:00 and returned at 2:30, so taking those trips took the better part of one's day. With our boat stocked up with fresh food, we had a great time entertaining friends; Radiance was the scene for a yummy sushi lunch (the yellow fin tuna Steen caught), a fondue night, afternoon tea, and impromptu visits with friends strolling the docks. That type of camaraderie is what makes cruising and boat life special, and when someone has just arrived after a bad time at sea, the camaraderie can almost immediately tip the scale from 'just bearable' to enjoyable. Cruising is so different from traveling by other means, like flying off for a vacation. When vacationing, one could be perfectly content flying to a remote location and never meeting the locals or dining with fellow travelers, but cruising is not a vacation. When you are cruising, you leave behind family, friends and colleagues for an extended period of time. Your fellow cruisers, therefore embody, in a sense, your home away from home. Of course, these are just my views and another cruiser might disagree, but I think cruising can be rather intense, and therefore serve as an interesting arena in which to study human nature. The need for companionship and reinforcement, (I can't find my thesaurus), are two aspects of human nature that could be observed among the cruising fleet.

Along with companionship is the importance of shared experiences, especially when the experiences are somewhat negative, as with the trip to New Zealand. I think everyone in the cruising fleet was strengthened by the fact that most everyone had a really crummy trip. Again...only my views - however, almost everyone we asked described their trip to New Zealand using words and phrases such as: unpleasant, rough, tiring, longer than expected, and brutal. 'Par for the course' was the comment of some of the sailors who had made the trip before. I don't think the rest of us quite understood the poor reputation of this leg of the South Pacific journey. Well, now we do.

For today, we are happy to be at anchor in The Bay of Islands, and happy that we have only small trips in front of us; just day sailing really. Our destination once we leave here is Whangerai, which is only 45 miles down the coast - what a beautiful thing. And of course, we may stop a few places along the way...

All for now, and thanks again for your comments. They are always appreciated. Take care.

Angela