Month: April 2014

April 3, 2014

New Zealand makes some great wine and we’ve been doing a lot of tasting.  Most wineries here have a dog (and some have cats).  We’ve been seeing a wonderful book at a lot of the wineries and we finally bought a copy: Wine Dogs of New Zealand.

I think the best part of the book is the “Naughtiest Deads” entry for the dogs. Here are some…

“Eating the stuffing out of the office chair.”

“Stage diving into a 10 tonne pinot ferment.”

“Quietly leaving the tasting room after dropping gas bombs!”

Hey, that last one sounds like me! Hardly my naughtiest dead though. -Rich

March 31, 2014

We found something wonderful when we were looking for the rental car dropoff at the Tauranga Airport: An incredible flying museum!  See for yourself…

Many, if not most, of the planes are in flying condition and are used regularly.

Here’s a link to their the Classic Flyers of New Zealand website. -Rich

April 2, 2014

I ran across Dan’s really clever idea for a fuse holder while at Steve’s Marine.

He just took a terminal strip (Euro strip) and a couple of crimp fittings and inserted an automotive type fuse.  Brilliant.  I bought parts to do this myself.

He used a slightly different crimp connector and cut the plastic insulator off the wire end.

Here’s our previous post about Steve’s Marine. -Rich

Update:

This happened in an expensive, marine, fuse holder and not this improvised one (which may have been better). I think the important take-away from this is to make sure the fuse contacts are completely free of corrosion and oxidation. My fuses had been sitting on the boat for a few years. They didn’t look bad but the subtle oxidation that was there increased the contact resistance to the point that the fuse melted. See this post.

April 2, 2014

Fred, from our marina, brought us a significantly sized bag of fruit a couple of weeks ago and along with the fruit, imparted us with the knowledge necessary to consume said fruit. The fruit: Feijoes. (Incidentally, I don’t know why I’m writing like this – perhaps feijoes tend to make a person erudite?)

The center is pretty soft.  Scoop it out with a spoon and enjoy.

He didn’t tell us until after we’d eaten a bunch about the “loosening” effect they tend to have, cautioning us to only eat a couple at a time.  Too late Fred!

Today, Cyndi found another interesting fruit at the market: the Kiwi Berry.

Here’s what this soft, kind of grape-like fruits look like inside.

They are great.  They are in the same family as Kiwi fruit. If a Kiwi fruit and a grape had a baby…

Here are wikipedia links:
Feijoa
Kiwi Berry

-Rich

March 31, 2014

We just got back from another great road trip.  We drove from Tauranga to Wellington and stopped at Greytown and Napier on the way home.  A wonderful trip with one little (or not so little) hiccup: Our Audi died!

About an hour and a half from Wellington, we heard a thump.  That was the transmission self-distructing.  We limped to Wellington with third gear only and no reverse.  Since the quoted $16,000 for a new transmission was not in the cards, we took the scrap man’s $300 for the car and grabbed a rental for the remainder of the trip.  Back in Tauranga, we now have a $26/day rent-a-dent type car.  It’ll get us by until we leave for Fiji.

Here’s our route…

And here’s what we saw…

If you go to our gallery page on Google+ (here), there are captions for the photos.

Now, it’s back to boat work as we’re hoping to leave for the tropics in early May.  OK, maybe one more road trip to Gisborne first. -Rich