The lastest goss

The last few weeks have been a bit frustrating, mainly the waiting and not knowing when Jims business sorting will give us the bell to go.I have caught up with a few people in the mean time which has been great. met Pete Worsfold and Bonnie in whangarei 2 weeks ago and had a great catch up,hanging out in the coffee bar.Spent a great day in Auckland hanging out with Kagan all Saturday at the cafes in Kingsland.last weekend had lunch with Perry at the via Duct on Friday. Was great to see him for a couple of hours. Spent Friday night with Julian and Amy at Hillsbrough. It was a great night. Heather and Magan came over for dinner before they left for the farm.It was a nice evening,it took me back a few years to the time when Julian used to come up to Mangawhai with Jiveen and their friends for the holidays. Fond memories.A couple of weeks ago while having breakfast with Perrys girlfriend Tracie on a Sunday morning in Takapuna, We bumped into old friends of Jeans from Hongkong days what a reunion,for Jean.(Gina)Always great to see Tracie,who ran late due to Perry ringing her at early hours of the morning from Joburg.The funniest part of the weekend was stopping off to see Keith and Eileen  at Wellsford. After a cup of tea we stopped at the Wellsford pub with Keith and Eileen to take part in the Duck shooting raffle. Having to guess the amount of ducks in a bag. It was very amusing. Getting the boat organised this week, topping up on food,and stores in general as we want to be ready. Ho Ho.Ready is one thing we should be good at,its the going that we need practise at.Ok guys talk soon.

 

Marina fever

It's real - this marina fever!! But we are not succumbing!! Unfortunately we are still in Whangarei at the Town Basin and making regular trips to Auckland to hopefully finally (soon!) tie up matters arising since the passing of Jim's mother early in June. The fact that we are having to deal with the Guardian Trust who have been administering family estates since 1972 certainly isn't helping. The financial losses due to their incompetent management are such that it is better to try and forget them and just get sailing. For this and all sorts of other reasons we can't wait to leave and get out into the deep blue yonder. But we have to wait until the GT debacle is sorted and this shouldn't be more than 2 weeks now. However, we have mentioned 2 weeks before and here we still are!! 

There has been a bright side though. On our trips to Auckland we have been catching up with Gina's family and have spent some time at Heather and Magan's new rural retreat between Tuakau and Port Waikato south of Auckland. They have recently acquired 14 miniature horses which are very pretty to look at but will require a good deal of looking after. We trimmed the fringe of one of the stallions the other day because the poor old chap couldn't see through his mane!

More good news - Jim's youngest daughter Charlotte is expecting their 2nd. child in December as is her school teacher sister, Rozanne! So, from having one grandchild, there will soon be 3!!! December will be quite a month. We'd better be back.

We have also acquired a new camera so, once we have worked out the technical challenges and complexities of transferring images to the computer, we will post some images to the blogsite. They say pictures speak more than a thousand words! It has underwater ability too so perhaps we will be able to show you some pictures of coral and colourful fish once we're where the butter melts.

We are about to install an electronic device (AIS) which picks up signals from any vessel over 300 tons (now mandatory for them to carry an AIS transmitter) and it tells you the name of the vessel, it's current position, course and speed - so we can work out when they will run us down!! Not really, we should be able to call them up on the radio and alert them to our position and get out of their way if necessary. No point in arguing the right of way when they are much bigger.

Apart from the above there isn't really any news of note - we'll let you know when we are leaving so you can all avidly follow our progress!!

Hope this finds everyone well.

Jim and Jean (Gina)