Land of The Long White Cloud

Greetings from New Zealand, known to the Maoris as Aotearoa, the Land of the Long White Cloud.

We’ve been here a week and are still anchored outside the tiny village of Opua on the northeast coast of North Island. At a latitude of 35º 18’ south, it is the farthest south I’ve been in my life. Even the tip of the Cape of Good Hope is only 34 degrees. However, someone should inform the Kiwis that it is now December, summertime in the southern hemisphere and should, therefore, be warm. But warm it is not. In fact, living on the water is next best thing to freezing. We’re bundled up in every bit of warm clothing we can find and I can’t wait to get somewhere where there are some shops so that I can buy a pair of fluffy slippers.

We’ve actually seen and done very little in the few days we’ve been here. Firstly, it was a case of trying to catch up with some much needed sleep. Then our dinghy was out of commission for four days so that curtailed most explorations. But there’s also the fact that it’s just too damned cold to jump out of bed in the mornings to get up and go. I’m afraid my get-up-and-go, got up and went.

We did, however, time things well when it came to a Meet and Greet day put on by the incredibly cruiser friendly town of Whangerai just south of here. We were picked up by a luxury bus to drive the hour and a half trip through beautiful scenic landscape down to Whangerai where we were met by various people in the yachting industry. We were taken around a few yards and haul-out facilities, shown where all the significant boatie-type services were to be found around town and then treated to a fabulous dinner before briefly stopping off at a supermarket on the return trip to Opua. I’m sure a few of you are thinking, what’s so great about being shown around boat yards etc, but you’d have to be a yachtie cruiser to understand. This was all invaluable information as we will be taking Calypso down there to haul out and we now know what to expect. Strange as it may sound, these days I would rather browse around a chandlery than a dress shop, but a good supermarket still tops this list, followed closely by a bookshop.

In the tropical latitudes where we have been for the past six years, there were always early sunsets and very short twilight hours. There, as we watched the sun go down, if we blinked, oops, it was dark. Now that we are so far south, the days are much longer and twilight goes on forever. I must confess that I rather prefer this as the late evenings are still bright. However, I suppose the negative side would be the short days during the winter months but we won’t be around to experience that.

It looks as though we’ll be sticking around here a little longer than we had originally anticipated as Paul has had to remove the faulty windlass (that thing that picks up the anchor and chain) and the faulty wind charger (the whirly thing that creates our electricity). He’s also got to pull our autopilot apart to see why it gave up on us midstream. Fortunately, there seem to be all the right people around here to look into these so that makes it all fairly simple. And even more wonderful is; they all speak English! (Well, sort of). No more battling with trying to make ourselves understood with a dictionary in tow, incorrectly pronounced words and hand signals.

Now, off to seek out warm slippers.