Happy New Year!
Aurora_b
Mike and Liz Downing
Mon 2 Jan 2012 23:58
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New Year celebrations were somewhat muted this year -
after a couple of days of dry weather after Christmas, the rains came
back with a vengeance. It was particularly bad on Friday and Saturday,
coming down in torrents as the remnants of tropical cyclone Fina arrived
over New Zealand. A lot of the New Year events were cancelled including firework
displays (notably in the capital, Wellington), but luckily not here in
Tauranga. The rain had eased by midnight and a fireworks display took
place by the Tauranga bridge overlooking the marina, so being high up on
the hard we had a grandstand view.
Our cockpit cover has been a godsend. Didn't
think it would get much use after leaving the UK, but we couldn't have
survived here without it. It zips on to the back of the sprayhood and goes over
a frame at the aft end of the cockpit, so the whole cockpit is covered. It has 3
acrylic windows, the one at the back being very big, and a zipped
entrance on either side. It gives us another room - our conservatory
- and keeps the cockpit dry. At least it did until this weekend.
The rain was so hard it started to ooze through the canvas and we were stemming
leaks most of Saturday. We eventually gave up and covered the top with a small
tarpaulin held down with ties. That worked, but we got very wet doing
it. While working on the boat, all our tools, paints and spares etc
are in the cockpit and we need to keep them dry.
The couple of dry days after Christmas allowed priming of
the rest of the bottom of the boat and one coat of antifouling,
so progress is being made, but it's all so very slow. It's drizzling again
today and showery weather is forecast to the weekend, when they reckon
it's going to pour again! Like 2010, 2011 was another La Nina year. It wasn't as
bad as 2010, but enough it would seem to create all this rain. The
natives all say its unseasonable rain, but it happened last year, so
to us its the norm! With all the rain, it's been an opportunity
to get on with indoor jobs and having fitted a new mixer tap to the aft
heads basin, it was a good time to do the same for the forward heads basin.
Unfortunately that wasn't so easy. It was necessary to heat the hoses to get
them off the tap connectors. The cold water hose then came off easily,
but the tougher hot-water hose needed more heat and this super heated the
water still inside the pipe, so when the hose finally came off,
an amount of scalding water sprayed out, and all over my right hand. Not a
problem as I was wearing industrial leather gloves - I had thought ahead!
However, the leather covering was everywhere except for a strip of cloth
across the back of the hand, which, of course, is where the water
went. Having bathed it in cold water for quite a long time it didn't look
too bad, but it came up the next day and didn't look good. So it was off to
the medics, a tetanus jab and big bandage around the hand, with
instruction not to use it until after they look at it again. Just as well
it's raining, my left-hand painting is
not good!
After all the natural disasters in New Zealand in 2011 there
was great hope that 2012 would be much better. The last thing they wanted
was for Christchurch to get more aftershocks, but it did; in the
last couple of days there's been 23! Luckily very little damage was
caused. (Apparently the collective noun for earthquakes is a
swarm.)
 Dramatic skies above the marina yesterday
evening.
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