Commodore
January 5, 2025

Monday 6 January – visit to Auckland Art gallery

The reason we were back in the marina was to have our generator serviced by the official dealer. We had a leak in the generator not long after we got PolePole, the problem was fixed and the engine cleaned in Tahiti to make sure there was no sea water damage. It was still under warranty, Catana the boat makers persuaded us to take an extended two year warranty rather than the hassle of replacing the engine, which we agreed to. Rowan wanted the dealers to confirm that it was all still looking ok. The guy was here for nearly 4 hours, and thankfully all was good. In the meantime I got some much needed laundry done, it has been way too bouncy with the wind to do any washing while we have been out and about. Rowan had his usual trip to the chandlery which is a bit like going to a sweetie shop for him!

Jake a great friend of Roy and Libby’s son, Simon lives in Auckland, he offered to take me to the Auckland Art Gallery which I was delighted to accept. We met Jake and his partner at Roy and Libby’s over Christmas, Jake’s parents were there too, all part of the great skit night. We had a wonderful time at the very impressive gallery, while Rowan caught up on his afternoon siesta. We went to a special exhibition by Olafur Eliasson, called Your Curious Journey – a fascinating combination of art and science. One of my favourite pieces was a very clever sort of satellite photo of the Pacific, enormous at about 8ms wide, with South and Central America on one side, and Australia on the other side. Obviously it had NZ and all the islands we have visited on our passage. I had just read an article in the paper this morning that the ocean covers 71% of the earth’s surface and this picture really proves that point – being predominantly blue. The article was saying that an American wants to map the whole ocean as it is less mapped than the moon, still huge areas unexplored.

We got back to the boat around 5pm and found visitors on board. Andrew a Scottish guy who was on the World Arc with us on his Oyster boat was there with his new girlfriend. I’m writing this for my sister Widge’s benefit, as she might remember him, he was the monohull tied up to us on our left going through the Panama Canal, his girlfriend at that time was a younger, overly made up bimbo! We bumped into Andrew again in Tahiti with a lovely French lady who was doing a doctor’s locum out there. We had heard he had returned to the UK for a while and has a serious English girlfriend – turns out we knew her! In fact we went to her wedding, where she was the second wife of the Virgin Finance director for Branson. We were actually at Necker Island a couple of times with her. What an amazingly small world, and so long ago, I struggled to remember her. She has her own boat, the two of them are going to sell their boats, join their funds and buy a catamaran. I think it will be a good match, they had been childhood sweethearts!

While we were having drinks the young kiwi couple, Sam and Natalie came by who had dashed to help us in Fiji when we got into a pickle with our anchor, big winds and me unable to steer the boat with just the engines. We have seen them a couple of times with their toddler Richie, they live on the boat back here in NZ. They are a lovely friendly couple who we always enjoy seeing. They joined us for drinks too and Alex, Jake’s partner arrived from work. It was quite a gathering.

Jake had booked a table for the 4 of us to go out for dinner, at a restaurant called Queen’s, at the top of one of the taller buildings on the waterfront. It was a wonderful view and great food too, absolutely heaving on a Monday night, they are definitely doing something right. Jake is a photographer and had done some of the restaurant’s promotional shoots, so everyone knew him…….it would be hard to forget someone that tall! He and Alex are both very warm and friendly, we had a wonderful evening, finished off with visiting the art installation at the old harbour master’s house in the dark, which has a huge sculpture of Captain Cook inside it.

The Art Gallery, sadly the old section on the right was all under wraps

A painting from 1857 of Coralie Bay on Mercury Island where we went with Carol and Tim, the cliffs obviously impressed the artist too

These glass spheres were called the ‘Endlessly Happy Invisible Endings’ – Jake thought I looked equally colourful, just not so much the grey hair! Clint please point out to Xavi his lovely waterproof bag he gave me many, many years ago!