Relocating to the Waikato for a while…

Given that Starlink gives us pretty good and near permanent connectivity and my side project to reverse engineer how Victron broadcasts the status of their kit - I thought it time to have some fun.You’ll notice a new menu item above - Tech Status. This will give a near real-time update on the status of our house bank - both amp-hours consumed and current. Also the output of our solar panels. These are graphs for the last 6 hours at the moment, I’ll try to make these 24hrs soon.So an example

We were having increasing difficulties with the Iridium Pilot system we used mostly for email onboard Duplicat. It was an old system but the aerial was showing signs of failing - and this had happened before. However, last time it was in warranty and Iridium replaced it (despite the claim by Mailasail that the warranty did not apply to us, just to the service provider). This time, Iridium have their new satellites and would prefer you to be on their Certus system. Which means new kit (roughly £

We anchored off Rangiahua Island in the group known as the Broken Islands this morning. We’ll stay here overnight and head south tomorrow. It’s a lovely spot, especially since the sun came out this afternoon. We’re making lots of water, batteries and full and thinking about a bit of Paddleboarding. Its a bit tough to know if we can go ashore here - but its quite rocky, so not ideal for the dinghy.We opted to stay on the boat. I had some work to do, and we have a few boat jobs to do as well

We’ve loved being at Great Barrier. The sheltered harbour of Port Fitzroy has lots of nooks and crannies to explore. We had a great time ashore walking on Kaikoura island, going back a couple of times. Its easy to leave the dinghy attached to the pontoon there whilst doing a 16km lap of the island…Then the story was all about the storm. We had know it was coming, and opted to stay in a little bay just south of Kaikoura. This would give us plenty of shelter from both the wind and the swell. T

As we were leaving the harbour, Nina snapped this picture of the sunrise over the Heads.This morning, its rather greyer with some rain, but we’re hoping it improves soon so we can go hiking.I should also mention that I forgot to say we saw 2 pods of dolphins as we sailed out yesterday. The first pod was of some large dolphins and they stayed with us a while. Didn’t get any pictures or video though. We’ll try harder next time :)

Shortly after 6am, coffee in hand, we pulled up the anchor and motored out of the bay and down the harbour. There were quite a few locals out in small boats, fishing. Typically New Zealand.Once clear of the harbour entrance (about an hour from the anchorage), we had the main up (one reef) and full genoa and we were making good progress. The wind sat between about 12-14knots, just aft of the beam giving us a nice 7-8knots over the ground. We kept the pace up apart from a few lulls, all the way in

We’ve had enough of waiting for NZ Immigration to get their act together, so we’re off sailing. It’s been a while, so we’ll have to see if we can remember what to do!This morning, at high tide, we slide out of our berth, backed down the aisle and turned in the river. The bridge lifted and we headed down the harbour to anchor in Parua Bay for the night. I’ve had a swim, checked the hulls and the remarkable amount of rain we’ve had has been good for the hulls. No growth and no barnacle

Merry Christmas from Whangarei, New Zealand!

So after the delay, 2 guys arrived promptly at 9am and began the clearance process. I must say it was the smoothest, nicest clearance process we've had. We'd got out all the food stuffs we weren't sure about - but all they took was our last eggs (expected), the mung beans (expected) and the popcorn (which I expected, but still don't know why). All our wooden things and shells were fine.About 30 minutes and we were legally in NZ. We didn't stop to set foot on dry land though, the moment they were