It is a matter of how you see it...

Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Thu 12 Dec 2013 06:16
No blogg yesterday, we were invited to Ellen and George from Winddancer. Had a great evening with inspiration from their neighbor Barbara (an artist, and she does awesome art!).
Good food and just to be in a house is amazing!
Before that we found a Family Store runned by the Salvation Army. The kids went crazy, they could buy bags of toys for 1 dollar and Ellinor found some clothes for them as well. We ended up going there today as well.
They had a lot of good stuff for crazy prices!

Before we left to town center I had a very frustrating morning.

Let me just tell you about a couple we met on Windarra the last night before we left Ophua.
The boats name is One White Tree, Ross and Diana. Ross became an engineer because he loved to construct as a kid. Well after his education he was far from doing the fun work, as he told us, ending up being a project leader on big companies etc.
So when they decided to go sailing he loved the projects he could do himself. Setting up solar panels etc, WOW!
He told us that every technical problem on the boat was like a gift from heaven. Ellinor looked at me and I could see in her eyes that she would like that attitude on Salsa.
Well I tried.
I tried when the outboard stopped working the day after.
I tried when a screw got stuck forever on the outboard.
I tried when the Autopilot failed.
I tried to see the challenge when I was crawling all over the boat to find something that revealed the problem.
I really tried to see that greatness in the radar not working when I fixed the Autopilot.
And believe me I tried to smile when I fixed the radar but then the Autopilot failed to work.
But no one believes me.
Then I tried to call for help from some local experts in Whangarei, they were very nice but told me that they could not take more work before New Years Eve.
So I had to fix it, and I did, but there is something wrong that will show up again.
Look forward to that!!!!!!!

Today we went to a BIG SUPERMARKET and shopped. Wow how much there is to shop!
Like a house of Müessli, a block of Chips, 100 meters of bread, a swimming pool of frozen pizzas, a 45 foot boat of Tomato sauce and a cargo ship of Christmas stuff...

Left the dock at 3 pm after Ellinor visited some artists studios. Went down the river with the tide and we are now anchored by the exit of the river. Tomorrow we plan on leaving by 6am towards Auckland.