Last weekend, on Sunday we took our Son and Daughter-in law sailing for the day. It was a lovely brisk sail out of the inner harbour to Paul's brother's place at Whangarei Heads. The weather was cloudy all day, with a 15-25 knot Nor-easterly. We headed an incoming tide all of the way, but still had a good 5-7 knots on the GPS.
After rowing in for a coffee at Steve's place we had an early dinner back on board before upping anchor to head back up the harbour to home. On raising the anchor Paul and Jason were up at the bow congratulating themselves on a job well done, Tash and I were in the cockpit discussing the finer points of boating when I (yes I admit it) put Kabuki onto the sandbank. Luckily this happened on the incoming tide, but the down side of this was the tide was pushing us further onto the sandbank, so quick action was required.
Paul and I have sailed for many years, but as yet we had not needed or tried kedging out the anchor, so Paul swiftly attached our spare anchor warp to our spare Danforth anchor, Jason and Tash manned/womaned the dinghy and rowed the anchor/warp over to the deeper channel and dropped it. Paul then started to pull the bow of Kabuki around and eventually off the sandbank into the channel. It was a very quick and successful operation, a good practice for us, and a great learning exercise for our, new into sailing, Son and Daughter in law.
We completed the sail back to the mooring without further incident, finishing the wonderful day with a smooth tying up to the poles. It was great to get Kabuki back out on the waves again, it made us more eager for our move back onboard in February. In the mean time, it is back to work for another 4 weeks, except the statutory holidays. Baa Humbug.
I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas, full of family, love and friendship.
And see you next year.
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