Friday 3 June 2011

Storm warning in force

At the moment we're anchored just south of Matauwhi Bay and have had a fairly uncomfortable night with quite a roll coming round the point; talk about being rocked to sleep! Probably would be better in Matauwhi itself and we'll probably go back there. On one of the weather reports yesterday evening we heard that the maximum wind at Cape Reinga was 81 knots - averaging 68!! We had a few gusts in the high 30's and when one of these hit we were just washing the dinner dishes. It hit us sideways and caused the boat to heel so the whole lot finished up on the galley sole in a clattering heap but was ok because everything is plastic or polycarbonate - no ceramics or glass.
We are going into the marina at Opua on Sunday and Jean is going to Whangarei on the bus from the top of the Opua hill on Monday morning. She has an appointment with a specialist there on Tuesday and hopefully then we might have some idea of plans for the future - both short and medium term.
It's certainly been a wild and woolly few hours and it will be good to get back to some sort of normality when the weather quietens down.
On another note we have not had any joy from Maritime NZ as regards the Cat One nonsense. They still insist that we will need a new certificate when we finally leave again - might be some justification for that if we weren't leaving for a few months but sooner than that?????? We are investigating foreign registration for the boat in order to overcome this bureaucratic nonsense. All this puts us in mind of an expressive Frenchman we had met in the Whangarei marina by the name of Erique. He was very scathing of much that happens in this country and was fond of referring to it as "theeese bullsheeet country"!! Not far wrong, especially given everything that has been going on of late, although his own country is also far from ideal. It seems that wherever there are politicians...............well, don't let us get started on that!!
Now it's time for breakfast and then time to move anchorage. What excitement we have!
Cheers Jim and Jean (Gina)

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