Friday, May 14, 2010

We are down at Marsden Cove, about 3 hours down the river from Whangarei, almost at the mouth of the river. This is where we have to sign out from. We put the sails up on the way down and the furler seems to be working fine and the main went up and down although we did not put in any reefs. The motor purred away, we had some work done on it and the mechanic diagnosed some electrical and lift pump problems so hopefully we will not experience any more heart stopping moments because the fantastic red machine decides not to work at a critical moment.
Well you can tell we are a little rusty. We had a SNAFU leaving the dock in Whangarei with Barry at the helm, it is hard to leave the dock when you still have one line tied up to it!!!!!!(that was my fault) Then when I was at the helm on arrival in Marsden Cove I hit a post and had to back out of a slipway that was too narrow for us, then when I finally made a decent landing on a dock Barry threw the bow line to a lady and she immediately fastened us hard to the dock and the bow plowed into the dock, man you would think we had never docked before. We should have thrown her the midship line and we would have been fine. After we hit the dock Barry threw her the line and she couldn't get it so the boat blew a 180, tied on at the bow, good thing there was enough room. Man, I hope we can remember how to anchor.
The weather looks like it should be good to leave on Monday, we have a few more boat projects to complete before then. I would upload a picture of Barry at the helm but the connection is really slow.