Atrocious Weather

It feels like winter here. Yesterday it was cold, wet and windy all day long. Not very conducive to getting things done but we pressed on.

I fixed my mouse which cheered me some what. I had thought it was doomed but it turned out quite fixable.

I inventoried all our generator spares, spare fuses and electrical parts (crimps and whatnot). Now that the generator is not our primary backup to the sails our dependency on it has reduced considerably. We have a lot of fuel filters for it in case of picking up bad fuel along the way. Those are now surplus to requirements so I created a new ad and put it up in this marina and the one over the other side of the river.

I dropped off a part for our outboard and chatted to the owner of the repair shop. He’d placed the order for the parts to come up from Auckland. They may arrive Friday. We’ll see. The weather is forecast to abate by the weekend so maybe we’ll escape from Whangarei by then.

I spoke to NZ Immigration regarding Sam coming in on a one way ticket. He needs a letter from us proving he has outbound travel. This is no different from most countries these days.

I tested our three hand held VHF radios. Two are fine but one had problems sitting in the charger and making a good connection. I sanded the contacts and now it makes no connection at all. I might have a spare battery for this one somewhere – it is the battery that has the contacts. Can’t remember where though. Two handsets is fine though so this may be deferred to a later date.

We did a shopping trip picking up fuses and crimps that I needed. We also picked up some goodies to give as gifts to villages in Fiji.

I heard from the bank. They have our Vanuatu dollars now. We decided to order them here rather than up in Fiji which can pin one down for a few days. As it was tipping down at the time I decided to defer picking up the cash until today.

I have begun looking at the weather GRIBs between here, Australia and Fiji now. It’s part of the process of familiarizing myself with the weather patterns. I like to stay about two months ahead and know what it’s like ahead of us so now’s the time to do this. Have I mentioned this before – but we’re looking forward to the warm weather up in Fiji.

We also heard from the canvas folks. The parts have arrived for our blinds. Next step is for me to install the rail under our bimini. They could do it but they’ll be expensive and I am up for the work. Only we have 20 knot winds forecast for today. As long as it stops raining I should be ok.