Wow! Where did this month go?
25 June 2020
Bob & Lesley Carlisle
OK, PERHAPS NOT THE PALATIAL SPLENDOUR OF MOON REBEL'S SALOON, BUT WE'LL LEARN TO COPE.
25th June: With the able assistance of Riverside Drive Marina and New Zealand Customs, we've concluded a quick-sale of Moon Rebel, with virtually no effort on our part, in a deal in which we think everybody wins. NZ Customs got some import duty off us - perhaps not as much as they'd have liked, but far more than if we'd eventually sailed Moon Rebel away again. The buyers have got a boat that needs the refit completing, but at an absolute bargain price, the boatyard have someone who's paying their yard fees and will shortly be moving Moon Rebel out to clear space for the next boat needing a refit. For ourselves, whilst the sale price might've been low, if one adds what'd have been the cost of long term storage, flying ourselves back there and subsequently making good all those things that would have deteriorated further if MR had sat on the hard for a year or more, then it's very reasonable. When we bought Moon Rebel back in 2011, we did so with the mindset that she was bought at a price we could comfortably afford to walk away from; our thoughts were more along the lines of if we ever got bored, scared or either ourselves or the boat got badly damaged, rather than a worldwide pandemic, but the principal remains the same, anything over one £, $ or € was going to be a bonus. Our thanks go especially to Karl Roberts, the RDM boatyard's manager and Officer Tolich of New Zealand Customs for making and allowing the sale to happen so easily.
As promised, we've also unearthed the motorbike and that too has gone well: We'd not actually opened the garage door/seen the bike since 2016, so discovering it was still there was a positive start. My younger brother helped me load it into a cattle trailer and move it to my parents place, where the application of a new battery, a gallon of fresh high-octane fuel and a clean-up of the spark plugs saw the engine fire-up and run smoothly at the first press of the button; not bad given that it was last started in late September or early October 2010. It needed a new rear brake master cylinder and and and