Janet

We nearly didn’'t get away that day a week ago. Our umbilical chords were firmly fixed to our home pier. Firstly I couldn’'t even unplug the mains power chord, the gales of the last two weeks having thoroughly encrusted the connections with salt. Next we attempted to detach our mooring lines from the jetty and mooring post, to take away with us. After four years in situ the knots were as unmoving as gnarly old arthritic hands. I borrowed a neighbour’'s kayak and attacked them with our largest screwdriver.

Several yachtie friends amassed and hung onto our lines as we attempted to maneuver out of the berth in frequent 30-knot gusts. Ten out of ten to David for getting us clear intact. We motored onto the choppy harbour and rigged a double-reefed main, and there the reefs stayed till we dispensed with the main altogether out in stormy Hawke Bay. We screamed down the harbour at seven to eight knots and around Baring Head with nearly 30 knots of Northerly on our tail.

Four dolphins saw us out of town. The seasickness drugs worked for me right across Palliser Bay, even when I had to go down and rig up my Mac for electronic charts, our new notebook not yet playing the game. Alas the mal de mer set in around Cape Palliser and I spent much of the next 12 hours below, emerging only to do my watch and to regularly regurgitate the morsels I’d persuaded myself to eat.

"“I'’ll cope with a couple of cold southerly days just to get out of here."” I'’d bravely postulated at yet another round of farewell drinks a couple of weeks ago. That week being yet another of Wellington’'s howling best, threatening to see us still in town for Christmas. On our first night at sea I remembered those rash words. It was cold. It was wet at times. The sea joined the party, dumping water into the cockpit from time to time. I was coping with all this while trying to stay awake. I’d been brutally ripped from my sleeping bag an hour before my watch time to help put up a storm sail. We watched for ships, seeing one or two each watch, and for the beacons of lighthouses coming through the gloom, reassuring us our electronic charts were indeed correct. All such a lot to think about when we hadn’t done any coastal sailing for nigh on four years.

The next morning dawned grey and cold. We sailed up past Cape Turnagain and Cape Kidnappers, the sun occasionally shining through. A note about the Wairarapa Coast; It’s one of the most inhospitable coasts around the North Island. There is nowhere to go for 36 hours, no stops between Wellington and Napier, and the weather is often adverse. And of course we have the Coastwatch experience in these waters etched into our psyches. But now we are tied up in sunny Gisborne, being completely looked after by family members. Half a dozen of them descended upon us last night for the first drinks of the trip. One of them came first thing this morning and whisked us away for a tour of Gisborne and its surrounds, venturing as far north as Tolaga Bay, where we walked out to the end of the newly restored wharf. I saw my first brilliant red East Coast Pohutukawa of the season. I took it as a good omen.

Tonight we are to be collected and treated to family BBQ. We are underway and it's all good.