THESE ARE SOME OF THE ICE CREAM LADIES

It seems I was being prophetic in the last Blog:
it (Moon Rebel's gearbox) could be a nasty/expensive repair job - and hence Seapower's enthusiasm for 'doing the right thing by you' appears to be waning...I'm not optimistic that we'll be returning to find a repaired gearbox waiting for us.
...the way this Corona Virus seems to be spreading through China and out to SE Asia and beyond, we might find that our larger problem is in getting back to the boat in a month's time?

20th February: We flew out of Auckland with our bus trip from Whangarei to the Airport being our first trip outside the town since Christmas. Wow, people weren't exaggerating when they said that the North Island's suffering from a drought! The trip back to Gatwick was long (about 28 hours) but surprisingly easy/comfortable; glad that we'd chosen a flight routed through the Middle East rather than China or Singapore/Bangkok.

We got back just after the worst of what sounds to have been a very wet winter, but visiting friends around the south of the country we found the weather cold, then having driven north to Wensleydale we were quickly reminded of what 'real' cold felt like. A pleasant time catching up with friends and family for the first time in almost 2½ years - we've been away even longer since our last visit home than when we rode the motorbike to Australia in 1987-89! - but as Covid-19 tightened it's grip on the world we were unable to visit several of our friends and as we were living with my parents, who're both late-80 we were increasingly concerned about bringing the virus back into their home.

We did see a few friends at least, managed to watch Burnley play a couple of times - not the best of games, but at least they didn't lose either of them - and the family gathering for Dad's 88th birthday party was a cracking day! On the downside, we spent a good deal of time on the phone/internet chasing Seapower's progress on our gearbox repair, until eventually, though sadly not unexpectedly, they replied to tell us that the gearbox's bearings were trashed, but that they'd now remembered a completely different course of events and it wasn't their fault at all, so we would have to pay them $1800 to have it repaired. I was damned if I'd allow them to make a second profit for repairing what we still consider they'd damaged in the first place, so declined this kind offer and requested that the broken gearbox be returned.

Even that proved to be a problem: When we wouldn't employ Seapower for the repairs they then advised that we would have to instead pay them for the replacement engine mountings they'd provided to replace the 'too soft' engine mountings which they'd originally fitted. These were now apparently correct and they even sent a specification sheet to prove it, though from 12,000 miles away, we of course couldn't check whether the mountings fitted were actually the same make/type as those for which they'd sent a spec-sheet for? We clearly weren't going to get our gearbox back, so decided to forego those too - I will NOT spend any more money with them! - and advised that they could collect them when they brought the gearbox back. We'd decided to just strip out everything that Seapower had fitted, get the gearbox repaired by A N Other and then install a completely new set of mountings that we can trust; cost aside, we can't afford head back out into the big-blue without being confident that the boat's 'right'.

That plan like everything else subsequently got quashed by the Covid-19 virus, so the gearbox is still with Seapower, who presumably (no replies to our last few emails) are like most NZ businesses, now closed for the duration. For the last week or more before heading back, we'd also been checking the internet a couple of times each day to ensure that our flight was still going and that the borders were open and all looked promising right up until the day of departure; the flight was still scheduled, NZ was accepting visitors and whilst Qatar itself was closed to all but residents, transit passengers could still pass through. These still hadn't changed even when we looked at 07:30 on March 19th, but though the NZ Government website was still saying that we were welcome to return, a New Zealand newspaper's website had an article reporting: "New Zealand's border will be closing to all but nationals/residents from midnight tonight." That was 11:00am UK time and we weren't even due to fly until 14:00.

Whilst not an 'official' statement it didn't bode well, but as we were already at a hotel near Gatwick Airport, we returned the hire car and then went to the Qatar Airlines check-in desk, where it seemed they weren't aware of the news item that we'd seen and were initially happy to have us board the plane; we didn't want to get stranded somewhere enroute and asked them to double-check. They apparently telephoned the Immigration Department at Auckland Airport in New Zealand, who confirmed that the news report was now 'official' and that we couldn't go back there - it could've been worse, the previous day's flight to Auckland had been turned around somewhere over the Indian Ocean and was now returning to Qatar We were disappointed, but not distraught, whilst we wanted to get back to the boat, I suspect that had we managed that, we'd probably have arrived and spent our 14-day quarantine period and beyond wondering whether we might not have been better off staying in the UK with family anyway?

With that door shut we reclaimed our bag, bought ourselves a coach ticket and got ourselves back to Ripon; it, along with Leeds were like ghost towns and even London was eerily quiet as we drove through. We didn't want to return to the aged parents; who knew what we'd picked-up on our travels? Besides which, what were we going to do there if the country was to be 'locked-down' as Italy, Spain and France already were? My brother Ian (the farmer) collected us from Ripon and took us back to his place and the following day I began my refresher-course in dairy farming, I reckon it's more than thirty years since I last milked any cows in serious numbers, but like riding a bicycle it seems to be a skill you don't forget.

So for the next few weeks/months at least, I've stopped being a cruising-yottie and am now an 'Essential Worker' striving to help feed the UK population.