Sunday May 5th, Opua    New Zealand  South Pacific Ocean 35:18:884S  174:07.227E 

Today’s Blog by Richard (Time zone GMT+11.00; UTC +11.00)

On Friday, lack of wind forced us to motor from Waiatapaua Bay to Opua, which is the northernmost town where we can clear customs out of New

Zealand. Motoring is never particularly exciting but it was an interesting passage through the Bay of Islands as there

Is a number of hazards to be avoided. As we made good progress, we anchored for lunch in a lovely bay on Roberton Island. Here was our lunchtime view:

On arrival in Opua, David needed all of  his boat handling skills to park in a very narrow berth without hitting either the

pontoon or some large mooring piles. And, for good measure, he did that downtide - he always has to show off. (For non-

yachties, it is normally prudent to moor against the tide, as that helps you slow down).

We went for a hearty dinner at yacht club with two couples from the OCC. It's a busy place with lots of atmosphere and

serves excellent dinners. On return to Serendipity, I could not find my glasses and, by the next morning, concluded I

must have left them in the club and, somehow, found my way back to the boat without them (red wine helps you see

better). David finally admitted that he had taken them to bed with him - only he can explain why.

Saturday saw us being boat-bound as the rain hammered down pretty much all day.

I swear it was the rain, assisted by a slightly leaky hatch, which caused the wet patch on my bed. David fixed the leak

with a hairdryer, as you would expect.

In the evening, we went on a little trip by ferry and taxi to the town of Russell for a pleasant dinner at the Duke of Marlborough.

It is obviously the place to go on a Saturday in Russell, particularly for courting couples. As one couple were

leaving, the lady stopped at our table and, excitedly, showed us the engagement ring she had just been given. (Bless!!). Why she choose a table of three old men out of all the available diners, I have no idea but we did our best to show how

excited we were about her news.

The current weather forecasts mean we could be in Opua for some days waiting for the right weather window to leave for

Fiji. So, today, we decided to rent a car and have a look around Northland. The marina displayed an advert for "Rent-a-

Dent" car rentals. So, I called the guy in charge, Wayne, and said we'd like a car as soon as possible. He asked us to wait

half an hour or so as he wanted to finish walking his dog! Anyway, Wayne was "good as gold, mate" and appeared with

Dug.

Dug's odometer showed a total of  over 200,000 Km but I don't know how often the clock has been wound back. Every time

we went round a right hand curve, the shock absorber gave a loud thunk. We redistributed the ballast in the car by

moving David from nearside to offside and that seemed to do the trick. Anyway, Dug looked after us very well and got us where we wanted to go, and

back. We had a very nice fish and chip lunch at Mangonui's famous Fish Shop.

After that, we stopped at the bottom end of “90 mile beach” (which is probably only 90 Km but who's counting?) and were

disappointed at the low speed limit for driving on this beach.

Unsurprisingly, we didn’t think Dug was quite up to it…………………