The windlass is in place, the engine aligned. 

Feels terrific.

Life in a marina is unreal, right now it is raining and blowing hard outside. But the boat is in flat water and we have the heating on inside.

Ellinor has borrowed Miss My:s sewing machine and she has fixed a new bag for our dinghy, a bag that is going to hang under the seat for keeping important stuff.

I had school with Andreas, we are training him so he can understand "learning". Well the problem is that he has listened to much on Erikas lessons. For instance I was trying to teach him  addition. That can be done with a special dice that has 10 faces, when you throw it you can get anything from 0 to 9.

You throw 2 of them and add the two numbers, that is your score and you can play an easy game.

Andreas gor 2 and 0. 

"what is that Andreas?"

"zero"

"If you have 2 candies and I give you zero, none, how much do you have then?"

"zero"

"How do you explain that?"

"When Erika does it, it is zero"

Ellinor told me the reason, Erika is learning to multiply...

OK I got it.

Well having school with Andreas means you have to be short, just 10 minutes of math, 10 minutes of Swedish etc. So we took off on  what we call an adventure walk.

Soon Ellinor came to find me, she had knocked the new alternator with the sewing machine. I was a little bit "tired" (do we ever catch up?) when I came to the boat. Thinking I have to take it out and get it to be repaired. But thank god I had put an extra fuse before the one built in (if that one goes they state you have to take it to a facility and have it replaced). It was my fuse that had gone. Change and done.

Erika woke up today not feeling well, some kind of flue. But she is reading a lot in bed and taking it easy.

Landing in NZ is full of fun surprises.

Not only do we have dear friends from IQ (international filmproducers organisation), Ian and Jan. They invited us to spend Christmas with them, they are the advisors for us considering living in Whtianga.

An old friend from work at Santa Barbara Inn (1980), Vanessa lives just 20 minutes outside Whangarei, and she wants to see us and help us if we need any help. She and her partner are very interested on doing the same thing, take off. How did we find each other? Facebook of course! A third person Rhonda who lives in the states was friend with both of us on FB, when she saw we where coming to NZ she connected us!

We have also a couple we met in Manihi, Ellen and George live in Whangarei and have just come home from a very long journey. Winddancer is their boat. They are doctors and offered to help if Ellinor wants to work.

All of you living in the north, it is wonderful to see all the pictures on FB with 1st of Advent and darkness. We have a real hard time to understand it is December here.

We are in time of spring and moving towards the summer in the southern hemisphere. But it is still cold, for us at least.