036:37.400S 174:47.224E

 

As you can probably tell from the clothing we are wearing in the pictures below we are no longer in sunny Fiji.  We had not a bad trip down although we had to push fairly hard to make it in ahead of a nasty weather front that had popped up during our passage.  David and Patricia from Gulf Harbour Radio, our weather gurus based down here in NZ, warned us early in the trip that our weather window was closing and if at all possible we needed to keep the pace up to avoid a very badly timed arrival at the end of our 1200 mile passage.  I am sorry to say that our carbon footprint for the voyage was a bit larger than one might normally expect from a sailing yacht but it really was worth burning the extra diesel as we made it in to Opua in the Bay of Islands about a hour before the arrival of the front which would have resulted in 30 knots plus of headwind and lots of rain.  How smug and snug we were, securely tied to the customs dock, drinking tea as the wind whistled in our rigging and the rain beat down on the decks.

 

It is great to be back in the "Land of the Long White Cloud" and, after a few days enjoying the bright lights of the big city in Auckland, Bamboozle is now back in her Kiwi home in Gulf Harbour.   We have about 10 ten days to tackle the end of season job list and to put Bamboozle to bed before we jump on a plane back to Europe.  It has been a fantastic year and we have discovered that we are not ready to leave the Pacific behind yet.  It was particularly special to be welcomed back to New Zealand by so many friendly faces a number of whom thought they might finally have got rid of us back in May!