Fluenta and Sea Mercy

We are still in New Zealand eagerly awaiting a weather window to migrate north back to the tropics.   A new feature of this season's sailing will be working with the aid agency Sea Mercy in Fiji.

As with any of these situations, the details of what we will be doing are scarce at this point.  Once we get to Savusavu we will find out what we can do to help; however, the tasking will likely be to bring supplies to the remote islands of the Northern Lau from Savusavu or to conduct Needs Assessments for follow-on resources.

Sea Mercy did great work last year in Vanuatu following Cyclone Pam and we hope we can provide meaningful assistance once we get back to Fiji.

In the meantime, the kids have been raising money to donate to Sea Mercy through their cookie sales (only once have the local authorities shut down their "busking").  People wanting to donate direct to Sea Mercy can do so here.

Raising money near the Viaduct in Auckland.  Security shut them down when they were in the more profitable pedestrian bridge area.

Raising money in Opua in March.

Where is Fluenta - Predictwind and Yachts in Transit

One of the new pieces of kit we have added this year is an Iridium Go purchased through Predictwind.

This give us a few new capabilities such as easier comms through email and the ability to send and receive text messages at sea.  We will continue to use Sailmail for our emails so that we have redundancy (we can use the HF radio, the Go or internet to connect through Sailmail) and as the Iridium Mail app is not user friendly.  For people sending us emails a reminder that we are still operating at 2.4 kb/s or about 1/20th the speed of old 56 k dialup (or 1/800th the speed of broadband).

A new capability is automatic tracking: you can use this link to see where we have been. It works automatically as long as I have the unit turned on.

Various programs work with the Go and one of the ones we are most keen to trial is the Predictwind Offshore app.  More to follow as we gain experience with this tool.

We will continue to use the Yachts in Transit site on an occasional basis as we can add comments and weather data as well as because the authors of the site provide weather advice to the cruising fleet.  David and Patricia provide an amazing service to the fleet with their daily weather discussion.

As in previous years, a reminder that if you notice that the tracking is not working to do not revert to "panic stations".  There are all sorts of technical and operator issues that could cause the systems to not work.  If we do have an actual emergency we will activate the EPIRB or PLB(s), use the SOS buttons on the Go or Iridium Satphone and/or call RCC directly.

A screeenshot of the Predictwind site.  Not a lot of exciting sailing the last few days.

A screenshot of the YIT page

Trickle and the Megayachts

At long last we launched Trickle, the kid's Fatty Knees sailing dingy, for an afternoon on the water.

There is an amazing variety of boats around here as you can see in the pictures.  Victoria and Johnathan did well dealing with the traffic and significant wake.

Leaving our berth at Pier 21.

Tacking up to M5, the largest single masted sailboat in the world.

and then heading behind SY Athos that decided this was a good time to back up.  Athos is the largest privately owned ketch in the world. The last time we saw her was when visiting Halifax three years ago.

Auckland in the distance.

Hard to see but Giacamo, a Volvo 70, is in the background in the yard.  She won a Volvo Ocean Race a few years ago. Victoria and I walked down to the yard to take a look at all her neat features.

Heading home past the massive Westhaven Marina.

Going downtown ! Fluenta goes to Auckland. Visitors, Easter Bunnies, Fish, Goodbyes and Maintenance.

After Great Barrier we went to Auckland to do some kiteboarding lessons and host Liz's parents onboard.

Liz's parents visit

And my cousin Caroline and her husband Jamie came for dinner

The Easter Bunny even found us in Auckland !

Meeting Grammy and Grandpa at the airport.

And Grampy is put straight to work on boat projects here with his able assistant

Off to Waehiki Island for a brief stay at anchor.  I went for a quick spearfish and shot a kawai which did fine for dinner.

Wendall and I replace the liners in the genoa furler but found out that the holes were oversized and the proprietary Profurl setscrews would not fit.  We of course then used the drill like a little lathe and made two of these little setscrews to put everything back together again.

Talking about big projects ...  After many hours of combing Liz managed to remove Johnathan's dreadlocks and he had his first haircut in five years.  

The hair heading to a charity.  Johnathan's on the top.  About 17" stretched out.

Benjamin remains a big help on boat projects. 

The lazerette is a bit tight for just me but it is rather tight with my assistant there too,

We had a bit of a road trip back up to Whangerei to see off our friends on Nirvana who are done cruising.  Victoria, of course, made two cakes.

Victoria, Gigi and Axel at Nirvana's going away party.

This was a neat idea: a slideshow of highights from Nirvana's cruise from a projector on Nirvana to the mizzen sail on Rewa.

It appears mandatory for every New Zealander to own at least one boat.  The massive Westhaven Marina behind us.

We are at the much more reasonable and very friendly Pier 21 Marina instead.

Shiny new Harken spinnaker halyard blocks.  One of the old spin blocks cracked so I have replaced them both.

Opua to Great Barrier - Big Kingfish, Bigger Orcas and a Nice Spinnaker Passage.

Fluenta waited patiently for on her mooring in Russel while we went off on our road trip.  On our return we moved to Opua for a few days to do a bit of maintenance (new alternators and regulator plus our long awaited rain enclosure - very nice).

We had a nice day sail into the Bay of Islands where we anchored in the same spot as over Christmas. This time however we mostly had it to ourselves.  There was some sort of photo shoot with two models on boards (which was pretty funny as they were not very comfortable on the boards) and then we had the place to ourselves.

The next day we had a nice light air sail mostly under spinnaker to meet up with Nirvana and Vareke on Great Barrier Island.  Not only did we have a nice overnight sail but on setting the anchor a pod of orcas came over to welcome us.  Despite being a bit foggy headed from the overnight trip, Gary, Nigel and I headed out soon after the anchor was down to go spearfishing.  A successful trip as all three of us shot fish - two nice kingfish for Gary and I and Nigel got a fish even though it was his first ever spearfishing trip.

The trip was also a great trial for our new rain enclosure especially sailing from Great Barrier to Auckland with the wind in the mid-20kts and rain.

Anchor chain markings ready for another season

Models doing a photo shoot.  I suspected they did not want me paddling over on my board. They had multiple video and still cameras plus the obligatory drone.

The anchorage to ourselves.  A bit different than at Christmas

A lovely spinnaker sail to Great Barrier Island

Dinner on Nirvana at Great Barrier.

My first kingfish. Gary estimated it weighed about 60 pounds.  We ate very well ...  

Orcas welcoming us into the anchorage as I set the snubber.

The Big NZ Road Trip Photos - Pt 10 - North on North Island - One Legged Kiwis, Moreporks and Sand Surfing

The last set of photos from our six week road trip.  After Auckland we dashed to Cape Reinga on the northwest tip  of North Island.

But we had one important stop on the way - a return trip to the amazing Whangerei Native Bird Recovery Centre that Liz and the kids visited last year.  Robert and Robyn do an amazing job there and it was really nice to have Robert give us a personal tour.

Less coffee for the morepork.

This little penguin was brought in while we were there.

Baby Blue Penguin

Spark, the one legged Kiwi.

Benjamin is not so sure about Sparky but about a month later he started talking about how Sparky digs for worms. 

Sparky digs for worm.

The view to the west from Cape Reinga

Mandatory Family Photo

Cape Reinga

A lot of New Zealand to see from here to Bluff.

Zoom

Hard to capture the height in the photos but look at the people below.

Brave mum.

More adventures in extreme nursing

Of course, anyone could do it lying down ...

Tasty sand.

Surfing ...

Never too young to start.

Of course, standing might be too easy too ... 

90 Mile beach and our great little van than has done us so well over two seasons and the length of New Zealand

How does it all fit ...