Wednesday March 13; The boat is in Viaduct Marina, Auckland New  Zealand  South Pacific Ocean 36:46.70S 175:01.00E Simone and David now back  in Hawkley.

Today’s Blog by David (Time zone GMT+13.00; UTC +13.00)

A number of people have contacted us to ask “Why  has it all gone quiet over there?”. Well the answer is: “ RTFB!”   We return to Serendipity towards the end of April  and will set off for Fiji or perhaps Tonga at  the beginning of May – until then………..not a lot is happening around this Blog.  

By way of brief interlude, Simone and I returned to New Zealand to spend five weeks stroking the boat, paying others who have been or will be stroking the boat and  a substantial amount of time touring New Zealand.

Serendipity is berthed at Viaduct Marina, in the middle of downtown Auckland.  It used to be  a fairly rundown area of Auckland but was refurbished  when NZ hosted the Americas Cup  in 2000. Indeed it is still the home of the  kiwi Americas Cup challenge today. Visitors will find this rather scary ‘stealth boat’ is based there:

It is the Kiwi challenge boat for the Americas Cup in San Francisco later this year and it is quite something to behold. Each day, It is lifted in and out of the water day; each night the ‘aerofoil’ (for want of a better word to describe the combined mast/sail arrangement that is formed like an aeroplane wing) is lifted off by the crane  and laid flat on the ground, controlled by lots of men in yellow hard hats.  The crew wear hard hats too – black ones; that is because this boat goes VERY, VERY quickly  (it can outrun its  support boat RIBs , each with 2x 250 HP Yamaha Engines); the crew also have compressed air tanks embedded in their kit in case the thing capsizes with them underneath!

It looks a pretty mean machine – it will be interesting to see how she gets on! 

Anyway, that’s it. Normal service from late April. In the meantime, herewith a few of our holiday snaps: