No rest on Sunday

We’re hoping to be out of here by Wednesday. Our ferry to the south island is the following Monday and we’d like to take our time getting down to Wellington. We’ve also had a gracious invitation from some NZers near Napier to stay with them on Friday and Saturday which we’re aiming to make. So. There’s no time to rest. This is going to be one of those project list blogs …..

First order of the day was to remove the sails before the possibility of the wind picking up. The jib is always easy and this we accomplished first. Removing the mainsail requires removing the reefs and the battons, sliding off the sail cars and lowering the lazy bag before heaving the sail off the boom. Both sails had to be folded which is not so hard to do on the foredeck. They’re now bagged up and ready to be collected by the sailmaker today.

Between us (either collectively or separate) for the rest of the day we accomplished the following other items :

• Chased an erroneous bank charge down
• Talked to Tom on Emily Grace about his experiences aggregating items in the US to be sent to NZ
• Learned that our car battery should be here on Monday (today)
• Went to a local store to buy plastic boxes for putting all our loose items in for camping.  Also bought tubing for creating an easy delivery system for topping up house batteries.
• Packed plastic boxes with items for camping
• Partially packed car (including moving car twice)
• Removed oven and inspected interior in anticipation for future improvement
• Installed diversion valve on water maker output line to make filling external vessels simpler
• Installed new hose connections at dock tap to make removal of pressure limiter simpler
• Changed filters on water maker
• Filled 2 x 5 gallon containers of water from dock via water maker making huge supply of very good battery water
• Went to top up house batteries only to discover they don’t need topping up (but was pleased with all the prep work as I intended to do it anyway)
• Fixed burst hose (unplanned)

Along the way we bumped into a few of the cruisers still here: Frank from Tahina, Dan from Division II, Tom & Kim from Emily Grace (already mentioned), Dave from Leu Cat and Steve & Vicky from True Companions.  Each meeting involved a bit of a chat and a catch up so I feel relieved we accomplished as much as we did.

In the evening we received a brief Facebook message from Sam to say they’d arrived safely with no hiccups on the flights. The boat feels quite empty. We keep expecting to see Ben in the corner where he made his home. But he’s not there.

We still have more to do today and tomorrow.  I’ll bore you with the detail on the next blog.