We had a quite night at Kawau in Bon Accord Harbour. Matt started the diesel heater and we had warm showers all round. At 8 we upped anchor and had another lovely sail back to Westhaven in a moderate South Westerly. 157 boats on the AIS and two mayday calls on channel 16 on the way home. We arrived home about 2pm and quickly packed up a few of the important stuff and of home we went.

There will be quite a bit of fixing and resetting to be done on the boat and level 3 lockdown in Auckland to get used to. Not to sure we are ready for this. I am starting to catch up on my email and its quite daunting.

In reflection. This has been an amazing opportunity to miss out on all the lockdown issues in Auckland. It’s been wonderful to spend all this time with Matt, Jade and Josh and spend over 5 months in their company. Joy and I have really enjoyed that.

Joy and Jade have been amazing- they have both coped really well with the open sea sailing and Jade is showing signs of becoming an intrepid ocean explorer.

We have enjoyed sailing with the Thompson Family and watching them become seasoned sailers as they have completed their very first family offshore adventure. We have met such lovely people in Fiji and have enjoyed our friendships with the crew of Ibis, Rondo and Wiz.

We have been to amazing places and have seen such a variety of sea life and really enjoyed diving and snorkelling in such beautiful places. We have been lucky enough to catch lots of fish and we have Malcolm from Mahia to thank as last minute he dropped of his personal fishing gear and that had made all the difference. The effect of COVID on Fiji was really evident but meant that Fiji was virtually devoid of tourists and we had Fiji in all its beauty of ourselves. The Southern Lau Group must certainly be on everyone’s must do list.

In summary we have done over 4500nm over 5 months and have had some pretty benign sailing conditions for our ocean crossings.

Thank you to my colleagues, friends and children who have supported us in this adventure. Thank you too to Joy, Jade, Matthew and Joshua for making this trip so enjoyable

Charles