Fiji->NZ: Day 7

The wind did drop and we ended up motoring the last three hours into Marsden Cove Marina making a total of about 6 hours motoring for the whole trip. Not bad all things considered. After a splash of rain the skies cleared giving us a great view of the Whangarei Heads. The wind was cold but when we were out of it we felt the NZ sun burning through the thin ozone layer above.

After 7 days and 2 hours travel we found our way onto the Q dock at Marsden Cove Marina. We scraped our way onto it as a result of a cross wind and communications between us so a little gelcoat work may need to be done when we’re on the hard. We soon had the quarantine guy aboard who was very pleasant about taking a few items off the boat not allowed in. Next came the customs guy who handled immigration too. We still had a little too much wine/beer aboard but he didn’t mind.

So now we were officially in. The customs guy allowed us to leave the gate open while we checked out our assigned slip at the marina. With the cross wind we needed a good plan to get off the Q dock and into our slip. Having formed our plans, Helen stayed on the dock to untie lines and catch at the slip while Lissa stayed aboard to handle lines there. We sprung off the Q dock and made our way down into the marina to our slip. I didn’t quite like the approach the first time I backed in so I made a second attempt. We managed to get two lines tied, fore and aft, to brace us against the wind without bumping into anything. From then it was all fiddling to add more lines, move them and adjust them until we were happily tied to the slip.

(Note – right now it looks like we’re in a field. Google satellite data is currently older than the marina. Sometime in the future this may not be the case)

Helen had wanted to open a bottle of wine on the Q dock but I hadn’t allowed it saying we had to get onto the slip sober. Now my desire to pop the cork was thwarted by Helen who wanted to clean the boat. So the outside of the boat was cleaned and I fixed the sliding door (Lissa helping each of us). Only then were we all in agreement and the cork was popped of the bubbly that had been placed in the fridge the day before.

It went straight to our heads. We deserved it.

By the time we’d polished off this bottle it was time to go ashore to eat. The meal was very good but it was a shock to get back to NZ prices for eating out. But that was ok, we deserved to get our feet on solid ground and feast it up.

Back on the boat we polished off the second bottle of bubbly while watching a few episodes of Extras which had us in stitches. Then it was time for bed. How nice it was to be able to sleep without being woken up a few hours later for night watch. Bliss.