Picton, Lose a Crew Member, New Friends and Bad Weather

The Adventures of the Good Ship Equinox
Cate and Chris Galloway
Mon 24 Jan 2011 16:53
Hi All,

Position 41.17.292S 174.00.617E

Apologies for the delay in getting the blog up to date, had a bit on with one thing and another, sorry Diedre but thanks for the text.

Friday afternoon we arrived into Picton Harbour in gradually deteriorating weather, it was so cold we thought it was the middle of winter. Cate in particular was fully rugged up, but we all had foul weather gear on and were feeling the chill. Once settled into the Marina we had a quiet night onboard (which included a visit from my old friend Robert Kerr, up from Christchurch), Marie's last after 12 nights with us and a fairly painful coastal passage too boot.

Marie departed for the ferry at 0530 Saturday morning in the pouring rain. We all returned to bed and after farewelling her, and after a leisurely breakfast, turned the hands to at cleaning stations. Robert and Briar joined us about 10ish and we enjoyed a good catch up - we haven't seen them since our visit to Christchurch last July. In the afternoon we went to the Picton Maritime Festival (a bit of PWW) and did our laundry at the Laundromatt (yep, the sign said so).

Late in the afternoon we had a knock on the hull which turned out to be Nicholas and Bill, both former naval officers (RN and RNZN respectively) who saw the RANSA burgee (or what's left of it) flying on the boat, and decided to say hello. At about this time the girls met up with some local kids up from Christchurch on a yacht for the holidays. The kids hit it off so well that they decided to hang with us for a couple of days until departure to Wellington on Tuesday.

Sunday was pretty miserable, but we had a few visitors through the boat for coffee, plently of DVDs, and some quality 40knot winds. It seems to me that wind down in this neck of the woods is thicker, so 40 knots appears to have a lot more oomph (scientific term) to it. Engineers - any ideas?