As you can see on the pictures we have let Guppy out again. Going to the Hen and Chickens which is a group of islands just off Whangarei. Since I met Bernie last year when he took me flying in his little plane he has wanted to come out sailing on Guppy. So we finally made it happen and together with his 13 year old son, Gared, they made a great crew for the weekend. The sailing weather couldn’t get much better. A great breeze from the beam brought us out to the islands while enjoying a nearly cloudless sky. Ones we arrived at the islands we found a nice spot out of the wind in 10m deep water. The fish must have watched us puzzled, when seeing me dive into the clear blue with my normal clothes on. Daniel taught me a lesson for something I said… what was it again?? 😛 A bit to cold for my likings though. Not like the pancakes for dinner – very much to our liking 🙂 As the night fell, the wind started to turn around and picked up. It kept swinging around – now blowing us further into the bay and the anchor started dragging. While watching the rocks coming closer real fast , Daniel and Bernie very quickly hoisted the anchor and we sailed out of the bay, which by now was ruled by strong winds and a rolling swell. The moon broke through the clouds a couple times and gave us just enough light to carefully maneuver between two island to a safer anchorage. Luckily Daniel and I had sailed Guppy here in daylight before and knew what to look for and where not to go. The second anchorage turned out to be just a little bit more sheltered but at least now we would be blown out to sea in case the anchor should drag. The wind kept picking up, Daniel and I didn’t sleep to well that night. Luckily our guests rather enjoyed the swinging of Guppy and woke up feeling rested. After a quick snorkel we sailed back with the wind on our nose. Guppy being completely in her element performed beautiful, doing a constant 7 knots all the way up the river.

We also enjoyed an awesome festival in Rotorua just before we went for that sail with Bernie and Gared. Raggamuffin gave 1% of it’s ticket sales to YforYouth and all that money went straight to “Heart for Youth” which is a youth organization in New Zealand. So it came that we rocked the grass of Rotoruas International Stadium to the Raggae-sounds of Damian Marley (Bob Marleys Son) with YforYouth printed big on our back. During the weekdays we worked on a big steel boat standing on the hardstand, taking of rust, sanding ,polishing and then in the evenings work on Guppy continued, as right now we are actually very busy preparing Guppy for a trip again. We will do a visa run for Daniel as his visa has almost expired, and we haven’t got all the paperwork ready yet to get him to stay. The trip will lead us to Norfolk island this time, roughly 500 miles north of Whangarei.

Laura

Abalony Shell found on the Hen and Chickens ( Marotere Islands)