Over the last weekend we sailed Kabuki down the Hatea River to the Whangarei Harbour, we had a lovely if wet sail on Saturday, with heavy showers coming over. I managed to stay quite dry down below, but Paul manfully handled Kabuki on his own in the wet (my hero). Luckily the weather cleared up after that and Sunday was beautiful, if a bit blustery in the afternoon. We had a great sail inside the harbour, sailing right down to Marsden Point Oil Refinery and back to Parua Bay. We spotted Dolphins feeding in the harbour and back at the Nook we had a visit from a New Zealand Fur Seal.
We are reasonably impressed with our new mainsail, it handled well and took reefs very well. We had wind up to 25 knots at times, and Kabuki sailed like a dream. The sail went back to the maker 3 times before he had it right, and even then it is a bit short in the foot. But time will tell.
Unfortunately Paul will need to re-jig our reefing system as the blocks are in the wrong places now, but that was to be expected. Below is a picture of our new Wind generator/ Solar Panel arch, this has cost us an arm and a leg to have made, but hopefully it will prove invaluable. We have yet to install the wind generator ( an Aerogen 4) and have the solar panel connected, but that will be done while Kabuki spends extended time on the hard.
We sailed back to Whangarei on Tuesday evening and anchored out from Norsand the boatyard we are hauled at, coming out on Wednesday morning bright and early. This year we are contemplating having an osmosis bottom job done, this will cost between $15- $20,000 a big chunk of money but we have saved for this eventuality. So Kabuki will probably be on the hard for some months to come. But we have lots of projects in mind so I will keep you posted with the details.
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