Well here I am in sunny downtown Auckland - City of Sails. The 13 hour direct flight was actually fine, altho a little lumpy at times, but we all arrived in one piece and checked into our hotel early at about 10am local time. Didn't bother to change my watch as its 3 hours behind Canada time plus a day so I guess that makes it 21 hours ahead?!! Anyway, walked down to the harbour to check onto the Americas Cup Racing boat! Sadly one of the boats was out of commission making it impossible for us all to actually race with the two boats as hoped, but we had a briefing on the dock and all boarded (about 25 passengers) with the all male, young crew and set off. A few facts about this amazing boat - 78 feet long, 113ft mast with four sets of spreaders, each electric winch costs $60,000, there is a 4 ft keel which weighs about 20 tons - staggering. There were two sets of winches (or grinders as they were called) to operate the main sail and another two forward to operate the jib. Both sets of grinders required two people to grind making a total of eight crew grinding at any one time when coming about to change the sail set! Wind today was a nice SE 25kn and the weather 23degrees and balmy. The waters were green. The buoyage system here is the reverse of Canada ie. porthand markers are red not green and starboard markers are green not red, but they use the same top shapes. So instead of red, right return it is green right return! Actually, it makes way more sense as it is the same as the bow lights of the boat - red for port and green for starboard!
Anyway, we motored out of an impressive marina with the Auckland Tower in the background, and staggeringly large yachts, and an inflatable duck - yes, duck! - sitting in the marina entrance. The decks had ridges across to wedge your feet against and a short rail at the stern - otherwise nowhere to hold onto - certainly not the sheets or you risk being swept into the colossal metal winches and garrotted on the spot! Once the mainsail was raised, and it was huge, the boat just roared, reaching 10 knots easily beating into the wind. I had a turn at helm (one of two wheels) and thats when the adrenalin totally kicked in for me! We were just flying, this massive 78foot beast careering across the ocean, solid, heeled right over so everyone had to sit on one side for fear of falling overboard, powerful beyond belief. Now THAT's awesome! Only downer was my Fuji underwater camera was shooting and videoing off its memory as I'd forgotten to load the disc in all the excitement, so as I don't have the required cable will have to wait to download this when I get back. But, I borrowed my room mate's camera so you should see some fun pics.
2 hours later we returned to lunch in the harbour - 3 jugs of cold beer and I had a fallafel cuz I love them! Auckland is a cool place - lots of young people, very friendly, great weather, quite casual, lots of parks and restaurants and boats! Lots of boats! Very easy life style.
It's now almost 9pm in Canada so that's 6pm here and I've got 1-1/2 hours left to finish this blog (quite expensive Wi Fi in the hotel - $7.50NZ for 2 hours).
Tomorrow we drive about 3-1/2 hours up to Bay of Islands to pick up the 3 x 42 foot Beneteau and set off on our own adventure. Weather set to be sunny and with fair winds. Will write when I can next get to a Wi Fi connection so may be a few days time. Planning on doing some diving as one of the guys on the trip also a keen diver - he's just joined the group from Thailand and after this is going on to Bora Bora in Tahiti to do some diving. Lucky so and so!
Can't believe I got off a plane this morning and haven't been to bed yet and already spent 2 hours cruising the bay in Auckland on a 78ft racing boat. Got my CYA logbook filled in too which was clever of me! OK then - lookin good!
Alex - shops full of stuff for upcoming Rubgy World Cup here in Sept. You'll have to try and get over here from Aussie?!
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