Monday was forecast to rain all day but luckily it only came late afternoon, after I had managed to do three enormous loads of washing and got them dry. We didn’t didn’t get off the boat today, we had quite a lot of admin to catch up on too. Loads of bookings and finalising our trip to South Africa for Phoebe’s wedding. After Christmas we are joining Roy and Libby, going to a food and wine festival, then flying to the South Island to do a 5 day cycle ride on the wild West Coast and a few other bits and pieces which Clint, Rowan’s brother is joining us for. A few boat chores too, so a busy day.
Lovely beach even if we never got a chance to walk it
The Kiwi on the hillside
Tuesday we returned to the little bay near Whitianga as we had a number of chores to do in town. On the way in on JeldiJeldi we got hauled over by the harbourmaster in his boat, it is law here to be wearing a life jacket on any small boat. As we were foreigners, and all the way into the marina already, he just gave us a warning and was very pleasant about it. Rowan needed to get a hair cut plus a new wardrobe – shoes, underwear and T shirts! I needed to get some prescription medicine (HRT) and even though I had a copy of the prescription on my phone and a covering letter from my doc, the pharmacy could not dispense it without me seeing a doc in NZ. I had to walk over a km to the edge of town to the surgery where I had a 60 minute wait and parted with NZ$210 (£96) to get it approved only to find they don’t have exactly the same dosage here in NZ! That was the morning gone, we went out for lunch and had some tasty fish to eat. The town has surprised us as we were not expecting much, it is a really bustling little town. It is very much a holiday resort town, but not spoilt, with the whole coast lined with Batches (second homes). We had tried to get PolePole into the marina but we are too wide! We managed to get in and out today on JeldiJeldi on a very slack tide so it was easy going into the river mouth, unlike the other day. Not many cruisers about we were the only boat in the anchorage, just a few boats on permanent moorings.
Our lovely anchorage, all those boats are on what looks like permanent moorings
The channel going in and out of the river mouth at Whitianga, looking calm at slack tide, with wonderful natural bush on the other side. There is a little passenger ferry crossing the river, otherwise it is an hours drive around.
Gorgeous twilight with the water like a mirror
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