Well, this is exciting. :) The process has started for our departure from Fiji. Tim has booked our clearing out time with Andrew from the NZ Immigration office. It’s 1400 hours tomorrow and we need to be on our way within the hour. Tim also booked us into get our pre-departure duty-free fuel today at 1300.
We have been preparing from weeks now, but when you’ve drawn out the waiting period to month, food gets eaten and our needs and desires can change mostly depending on how much space we have in the freezer.
Many meals are frozen into one litre ice cream containers from Antigua where we ate a lot more ice cream than we do now. They stack and fit perfectly into our freezer. The remaining free space is filled with bags of frozen vegetables, quite a lot of walnuts (they are hard to find fresh and, besides baked goods, a lot of vegetarian patties recipes use them) and various bits and pieces like little tablets of garlic and ginger purées. We aren’t allowed to bring fresh fruit and veg into Fiji and peeled and frozen are okay.
We’ll do a final laundry and general stowing and readying ourselves for the off tomorrow.
We won’t be going off with a bang. It will more of a saunter away from the coast in light winds that are expected to gradually fill over night into very respectable way making winds.
We had a productive time up in Whangarei. We booked into the marina for one night. Our plans to dinghy a mile up to the Marina dock didn’t seem as appealing with rain and cold southwesterly winds.
Now for a very Antipodian experience, I introduce you to Possum Man.
I have walked by this shop many times, but it was only on this last trip from Countdown Supermarket back to the marina that I noticed the other advertisement. It took a while to compute, now I can’t even think of Lone Star’s ‘Johnny Cash Stash’ without feeling queasy.
Shopping done and miserable weather passed, we headed back out anchor at McCleod Bay. Tim had planned to walk to Mount Aubury one last time, but opted to give the hull a final wipe with a scratchy pad. He would be very unhappy if he had to wonder for the whole passage if we might well be going a 1/2 knot faster if he had he cleaned the bottom.
The next day the weather started to close in for the next big blow to come through.
The day has over taken the blog and we’re just back in out berth after fuelling up Larus and filling the cans that are lashed on deck.
The laundry room is non-stop and I’d like to wash everything before we leave, so I’ll start early tomorrow morning.
Baking is done as is tonight’s dinner and the curry that will be our first dinner underway.
That is all for now and we’ll let you know when we actually on our way.
Nancy and Tim
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