There wasn't a breathe of wind this morning, clear blue skies and quite warm too. Sufficiently benign for David to don most of his wet suits, perhaps that an exaggeration, a full sleeve thermal top, a full body 1mm skin, a 5mm full suit and his hood, and get into the water to clean the hull. The initial jump in took his breathe away – you know the sharp, shallow breathes when the warm body suddenly plunged into cooler surroundings. After a minute he was able to talk and motioned for the scraper and brush. An hour of scraping and brushing later I helped him back on board. His verdict was 'not bad' for both the condition of the hull and the water temperature. The hull had small barnacles on the sides of the keel and on the rudder and tenacious vegetation on the horizontal surfaces. We think we picked all this up in Opua because it is a slow moving river.
After lunch we sailed, yes for the first time since 7 November when we were a day out of NZ, we had the sails up, the engine off and were able to make forward motion. Our destination was historic Russell, the first capital of NZ, and seaward down the estuary from Opua. We dropped the anchor just outside the mooring buoys and took the dinghy into the small yacht club. It was a beautiful evening for a stroll and only ½ mile into town so we went for a walk. What a pretty town. Wooden houses, white painted fences, a sweet white wooden church with picket fence and flowering trees. The shops small, not a Starbucks or burger bar in sight. A perfect little tourist stop reminiscent of a new England town.
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