Its a small world

17th of February saw us motoring over to Matiatia Bay again to top up the tanks with water before we head for the Barrier. Ferry traffic was pretty intense, so after lunch we scarpered out of there and went around to Owhanake Bay. Owhanake Bay is a lovely anchorage, but very affected with swells from fast moving launches shooting past the entrance to the bay. We stayed on board and enjoyed a quiet night, until some "Jafas" (just another F....in Aucklander) decided to have a party on their launch and throw beer bottles over the side, etc, etc. I do generalise a bit which is bad, they are not all like that, well I hope not.

18th we motored away from Waiheke Island and the hubbub of Auckland, no wind today and none for the next few days, so we decided to motor all the way to the Barrier. 7hours of motoring on fairly calm seas it was pretty cruisy. We arrived at Smokehouse Bay at 1515hours, it was beautiful and the Kaka's were there.

19th We had 3 weeks worth of washing to catch up on, so off to beach at smoke house we rowed. The bay has laundry tubs, the old concrete variety, and wringers mounted on top of them, also there is fresh running water. Yachties paradise.

20th motored over to Kairaara Bay, towed the lure but we did not have any success. Inflated my christmas present, a kayak, and had a play around on it, then went into shore for a feed of cockles and mussels (alive alive oh). I made a clam chowder for dinner, Paul was really impressed, He is not really that keen on shellfish, but really enjoys a chowder.

Now to today, and the reason for the heading. We were sitting in the cockpit this morning having our usual coffee, when the expedition cruise ship "Orion" came in and anchored. Not long after a number of large inflatables left the mother ship and headed for Blairs landing (just around the corner from our anchorage), next thing one of the inflatables comes over to us. On board was Matt Jensen-Young the Chief Mate of the Orion, and a past crewman on Kabuki. Matt sailed with Ross the previous owner of Kabuki, from Seattle to Mexico. As I said what a small world, Matt was blown away to see Kabuki again. So Matt came over later for a coffee and a chat, and to get some photo's. He then asked us if we would like to look on Orion. Well we never miss an opportunity for adventure. So we clambered on board the large inflatable and were whisked away to paradise for a short while.

The Orion is a 5 star adventure cruise ship, it is Australian owned, and does trips to Antartica, the Kimberleys in Aussie, New Zealand, the Islands etc. It carries about 100 passengers and has 75 staff, as you can imagine it was very posh. Matt showed us the ship, he was actually really busy with sheparding the passengers etc. We got to check out the bridge, restaurant, lounge's, I now know what I have been missing all these years. The ship was due to leave at 11am, so we said goodbye and they took us back to Kabuki again. Unfortunately in our excitement we forgot our camera, so no photo's.

After that we walked over to Port Fitzroy, and low and behold the chippy shop was open today, so we had chippies for lunch and and icecream from the shop. Some days are just manna from heaven.