Tuesday and all is well

We planned another car trip up to the very north of the north island. On Sunday night I joked that maybe I'd just send everyone off without me and have a nice quiet and productive time to myself. After sleeping on it, I realized that I hadn't been alone for more than a couple of hours in about 2 years. My time alone on the boat is very few and far between, and just the thought of some solitude, not to mention getting some chores done in peace was too good to pass up. So on Monday morning I sent everyone off and returned to the boat all by myself. In preparation for packing up to come home in December, I needed to go through the whole boat and purge. My idea of garbage and everyone else's is a bit different, so before they got home I had a heaping dinghy full of trash and give aways. The kid's room looks so tidy, I emptied out cupboards, inventoried supplies and thoroughly enjoyed my productive time alone. I'm not totally confident with the dinghy and outboard, and all this week it's been blowing gale force in the anchorage, so I called on Mike from Wyndeavor to help me load all the bags in the dinghy and he even started it for me. My other concern was that my knot wouldn't hold and the dinghy would float away over night and be long gone by morning. I guess I'm getting a bit salty, because I can tie a bowline with the best of them now. Everyone is home now, and the peace is shattered. Pete made the mistake of asking if I missed them. I think they needed to be gone one more day at least for that to happen.

Apparently they had a really nice time and had two productive days of sight seeing. Giant sand dunes, kiwi birds, beaches, and ancient Kauri trees kept everyone entertained. I suppose I'll get the whole thing play by play from the kids.

We've arranged with a cruising friend to deliver our van down to our next destination. We'll spend the next four days exploring the 80 miles of coast south of here with Wyndeavor. That will be the last of our cruising together. We plan to be in Whangarei by Saturday and have a week there. Then we're planning on heading to Auckland to list Imagine with a broker and empty her of our stuff. It's only 3 weeks 'til we're home for the holidays.

Order up some snow for us and we look forward to seeing you all, Kellie