We are currently in Gulf Harbour Marina. It is across the bay from Auckland and seems quite lovely. We are here because we are meeting a couple of cruising buddies tomorrow. They have sold their boat and wanted to send their EPIRB home to sell so asked us to take it to family in Seattle. We agreed but now it ends up they will be there for a wedding before us so they want it back and it is in our car in Whangarei so we had to engineer a get together so we can give them a car key and they can drive up and get their EPIRB, complications, complications!!
Did I tell you that we met friends from Yellowknife the other day?? I can’t remember if I mentioned it but we knew they were in area, we had been e-mailing back and forth. They were vacationing on the South Island mostly. I had just read all my e-mail after 3 weeks away and there was a couple from them asking where we were and could we get together. Well, I went grocery shopping and lo and behold there they were in the store in Warkworth. It was virtually unbelievable, that we would both be there at the same time. They were just passing through on their way to a cottage for a few days and just think of the odds of us meeting.
Anyway, they came on board, we took they for a lovely sail around Kawau Island and spent a pleasant evening together at anchor. It was great to catch up with them and Barry got his fix of NWT office politics. The next day we headed over to a small set of islands and went exploring ashore there. The anchorage was great and Barry even tried fishing this morning. We headed over to the marina after figuring out how to get a hold of these buddies on the Sat phone. I must have tried every combination of numbers. You have to leave a number out if it is a cell phone, it is quite bizarre and frustrating.
Unfortunately, there will be no more pics for awhile. I have managed to destroy another camera. I can’t believe I keep doing this. This one happened to be in my pocket when I went in the water to rescue one of my fake Crocs after the dinghy flipped over in the wind and the shoe blew out. It is true, every word!! I, of course, forgot about the camera and just waded in and swam after the shoe which was heading for the mainland, (this took place on Arid Island). I have the $8.00 shoe and wrecked the $400.00 camera, good one Ann. You would have really enjoyed the pictures of the penguins swimming around in the Hauraki Gulf as well as the very small hammerhead shark I saw today. Also there are very huge boats in the yard here, I am talking at least 70 foot sailboats up on the hard, huge, even humungous. Anyway every time we see something exciting Barry says, “We should take a picture.” and I fell bad all over again about going swimming with a camera in my pocket. Until next time.......