Saturday morning at 0500 we arrived at the mouth of the Bay of Islands having motorsailed across a glassy sea overnight. The stars were still bright but there was the faint glow of dawn to soon reveal our destination. First light revealed low wooded hills but then we entered a fog bank with visibility down to 50m at times. With a combination of the chartplotter and radar it was easy to follow our course but they didn't show the dozens of small pleasure craft that emerged out of the gloom - most of them out fishing. At 2kts we could could steer around them and even have a chat as we glided close by. The chartplotter was so accurate we could steer along the channel marker posts, keeping a couple of metres to port of the starboard posts as we went, checking our position as each post appeared and as it quickly disappeared again.

Approaching the marina everything brightened from above as the sun broke through and there it was - New Zealand! The customs and immigration formalities were fast and pleasant. We only had to surrender two items - the remnants of our honey that we were saving for breakfast (potential bee diseases, even though our honey was from Niue - the one place you can import honey from with a licence) and two pepper sprays we had bought in the Caribbean. You can own a gun out here but not a pepper spray. They bagged up our rubbish to be incinerated. Annie tried give him our remaining tins of corned beef and spam but no, it was the honey he was after. I thought my old clothes might count as a biohazard but no luck there either. 

Our first impressions of NZ are less Lord of the Rings and more, well, Devon really. We are in a river estuary with wooded slopes down to the water, houses with mown lawns, buildings that could be in any new marina in England. It doesn't feel "different" in the way that most other places have - its almost like coming home. Last night as we met up with Ian, Stephanie, Rick, Amanda, Reto and Angela and we looked out from the clubhouse across the river, felt the chill in the air, contemplated the chandleries that will be open on Sunday we could have been in any number of places in south west Blighty. I'm sure we will get Lord of the Rings as we move away from the marina but before then we have to get Annie on a plane and things arranged for Vega...............