Tuesday 16 November Wine tasting

On the ferry

Another bonanza day for the cruisers. First we were invited by a local winery to visit the vineyard and taste their wines. The sun was hot today as we took the Russell car ferry across the river from Opua. The Omata vineyard's mini van was on the other side waiting to whisk us up the hill.

Jack, Janice, Jacqui & David

Omata wiinery

The vineyard is in a great location over looking the bay of islands. What better way to spend the afternoon than sipping wine and enjoying the view. Nibbles were provided too – smoked marlin on crackers.
This afternoon's seminar was on cruising the coast of NZ and the highlights. Within the Bay of Islands you can dive for scallops, collect mussels, catch crayfish as big as lobsters and fish for snapper. The diving for scallops may have to wait until the sea temperature gets above 'freeze off your nose' level or our want for scallops is greater than our wimp factor. We came away from the seminar with watering mouths and ready to up anchor to go off and explore the bays.
Our evening treat was pizzas for all provided by the event sponsors. Unsurprisingly everyone turned up for this. A van arrived with a stack of pizza boxes which were delivered to the poor starving cruisers. These were demolished in less than 10 minutes. In came the next van with another stack. Some people were starting to get full and these lasted 20 minutes. Finally, in came the third van with even more food. Guess what? All these were eaten too. There might have been 100 people at the do and the hungry Horaces had wolfed 100 pizzas!
While the Horaces were digesting the brave ones were invited to stand up and do a 'turn' on the mike. Amateur comedy evening with the stress on amateur rather than comedy. Three cute teenage girls sang a funny song and recited a Roald Dahl poem, some good jokes and a comedy skit from the Brits. David was the star turn (in my opinion). He told 10 of his best jokes and told them really well. The audience were laughing loudly. He was even asked if he'd appeared professionally! Perhaps we ought to get him some gigs to supplement our pocket money.