Explore Sailing Voyages in New Zealand 🇳🇿

as the saying goes " sailing is about fixing boats in exotic locations" our freezer is chock full of yummy food and we noted a couple of days ago that instead of being -20 we were down to -12. yesterday up to 0° and that's not good. backing this observation up is the amperage level for battery use is showing less draw. We think the freezer has lost its gas. some late afternoon scrambling on the phone and we managed to get a slot for this morning with North freeze to diagnose and also managed to get a marina berth in what is one of the busiest weeks of their year due to it being the bay of islands sailing week. certainly a lot calmer last night in the marina. today it's raining and there is very poor visibility. a classic day for a yacht race. I wonder if it will go ahead?? we are now in the marina until Friday to wait out this poxy weather system. good news is the closed café at the marina has reopened!

Hectic sail, direct downwind 30kts! ended up dropping all sails except main double reefer. 8.5kts.

another long day but we made the bay of islands. early on we had 9-10 kns of breeze from the SE so decided we should get the new cruising chute out for a spin. still not decided on its new name yet, the girls have mooted "bubbles", we are decidedly Luke warm on that one. we put forward the "Zel" or f.... Putin due to its yellow and blue colour's. we're at an impasse presently on the naming. still, good day to get some miles on it. we had decided to consider dousing it at 16-17 kns before it became unruly. when it got there we decided that was a good call as the boat got over powered twice and became a handful briefly. sail easy enough to douse with the sock and pulley system. wind increased as we approached Cape Brett and we had one gybe to do to get through the gap which is really not that wide. once inside we still had plenty of wind and motor sailed towards the Anchorages. a large number of Anchorage are now off limits due to cualerpa. this compresses a large number of boats into the favorable spots that have good holding for the forecast strong SE then E gales. we've anchored with plenty of room around us and plenty of chain out. the rain was heavy in the night and early this morning the strong winds arrived. it's now pretty sporty here, we've had 42 kn gusts but it's pretty constant over 20. an outside wind buoy has shown a peak of 61kns! time for more coffee, the omelet was delicious. we won't be doing much for the next week