Two At Sea

December 21, 2015

This is how we spent the day. We hope your’s was also wonderful.

This was our forth visit to Man O’ War. We love it. Here are some more details in a previous post.

December 20, 2015

Well, actually, to be more precise, Oneroa walks. We’ve spent a fair bit of time on Waiheke but usually, we’re running and doing and haven’t really explored our Oneroa neighborhood. This time we had a chance.

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Above is a Google map of two incredible walks we took. These fall into the “must do” category, especially the longer one in green.

Here. See for yourselves.

December 18, 2015

“I can’t believe him! He’s walking through absolutely beautiful scenery and he’s looking at his phone?”

That’s because it’s windy. I’m sending a text to our boat to see how it’s doing. The boat will text me back with its distance from the anchor. How’s that for cool?!

Anchor Watch Pro on Android just keeps getting better. Now it not only sends you a text message (SMS) if the alarm goes off, but you can send it a key word of your choosing and it’ll send you back the anchor status. You can send a different key word and to change alarm radius.

This was really nice during the recent winds. We went ashore but were worried about the boat. I appreciated the comforting SMS responses from Anchor Pro. -Rich

December 19, 2015

I’ve always wanted a time plot screen like the one below to show the wind speed over time. I tried a couple different PC programs (which meant getting NMEA 2000 into the computer) and had some success.

Then one day, while I was looking for an answer to a completely unrelated issue in my Simrad NSE8 chartplotter’s manual, I ran across time plots. That was just the ticket. I configured my favorite info screen (on the right above) to share space with the time plot and I love the results. With this screen, we can really see what the wind is doing over time, and not just what it happens to be doing when we happen to glance at the screen. I could have had this all along if I’d just read the manual.

(I  often benefit from re-reading equipment manuals, after I’m familiar with the equipment. On the first read, I get the basics – usually enough to get things working the way I want. The next reading yields the goodies. Re-reading equipment manuals! Wow, I live an exciting life!)

-Rich

December 14, 2015

After a really nice passage, we arrived in Opua, rented a car, and spent nearly two weeks visiting our old favorite spots. It felt great to be back in beautiful New Zealand, one of our favorite places in the world.

As Rich stated before, we’ve had a change of plan and are making a long trip to the south island instead of a short one. This means we’ll spend the next month or so heading down the east coast of the north island.

This has given us a chance to do some things we missed during our first two seasons here, heading to some less mainstream destinations while making our way to Waiheke Island, were we’re sitting out some windy weather before continuing our journey south. Below, a few photos from our trip so far.

Now that we’re here, Rich will take over writing about our current travels, and I’m going to pick up where I left off in the blog and see if I can do some catching up this season. –Cyndi