Life in the Bay

We have been floating around the Bay of Islands for about 4 weeks now, we tend to stay in a particular bay for a day or two, then we move on to a new spot. A bit like Gypsies but on the water instead of in a caravan. In between this we do short hops to Russell or Opua for supplies and water.
 We carry 240 ltrs of water on board, 200 ltrs is in two heavy duty plastic tanks under the saloon floor, the other 40 ltrs we carry in 4 10ltr plastic jerry cans under our saloon settee. The water in the large tanks is for drinking, cooking, handwashing etc, the 200 ltrs is enough to last us 4 weeks, this is accessed via a foot pump at the galley(kitchen) sink, and a hand pump in the head sink. The jerry cans we use for showers, washing and dishes, we use these containers to collect water from creeks/rivers or not so safe water sources. We have a deck catchment system for catching rainwater, that pipes it into our tanks, but unfortunately we haven't had much rain this summer. This means that Paul has to use the above mentioned jerry cans (rinsed out) to ferry clean drinking water over to the boat to fill up the tanks, as you can imagine it can involve quite a lot of work.
  Back to the our tripping around, Paul hurt his back pulling up the anchor about 2 weeks ago, so we have been taking it easy on the moving around front. We were in Opua last week, doing the washing and topping up the tanks, Paul and I went for dinner at the Opua Yacht Club, the night we went John Duder from the R.Tucker.Thomson Trust gave a talk about His resent trip to South Georgia and the Falkland Islands etc. It was a very entertaining evening, and the food was bloody great, best steak salad and chips we have had for a while.
    We then sailed out to Paradise Bay at Urupukapuka island, which was lovely but a bit rolly, so we only stayed for one

                                     Kabuki and Fatima, Cable Bay, Urupukapuka Island.

night, we then went around to Cable Bay on Paul's Birthday, neither of us had been there before. It was beautiful, it has a DOC campsite  with composting toilets and cold showers, we made the most of the showers. We spent a lovely 2 days, but then last night the Easter Weekend campers arrived in their fizz boats, and this morning there was a constant stream of launches racing past the bay setting up big swells, so we decided to high tail it out of there. So here we are at Assassination Cove, with all the other Easter holiday boaties, can't wait till monday when they all bugger off home again.