May 24, 2016
Why’s he posting a picture of a kangaroo? They don’t have them in New Zealand?!
No they don’t, but we’re going back to Australia. Let me explain…
We’ve been waiting for weather to sail to New Caledonia but it’s mostly looked like this (today’s weather). All those colors are bad!
Our New Zealand visas expire on the 27th of May. “No problem, we’ll just renew them” he naively said.
Cost to renew: application-$165, doctor visit-$250, x-rays-$230, blood tests-$170 for a grand total of $1,630 for the two of us.
That’d give us three more months to leave, but we’re hoping to be out in the next week or ten days. Sixteen hundred bucks is a lot to pay for a few extra days.
It turns out, at least in theory, that if we leave the country and come back, our visas will be renewed for another three months. We can go on “vacation” in Melbourne, Australia, spending four nights in a luxury hotel (thanks wotif!) for about $1,200 total. Needles and doctors or a luxury hotel? You do the math!
And by the way, it’s really time to leave NZ. This was the view this morning from our dock…
Why yes Matilda, that is snow on the mountains! And it’s cold here!
We’ve been so lucky here in Nelson with the weather. We’ve had mostly warm, summer-feeling days with some rain overnight and an occasional grey day. Nelson has a reputation for the best weather in NZ and it’s not a lie. It’s been wonderful. But even in this magical pocket of summerly weather, we can feel the change a commin.’ Time to leave.
And in fact, we were all set to leave. It looked like we might get a good (or good enough) weather window, our bags were packed and we were ready to go, but not only did the weather window evaporate, but this happened while we were sitting in our slip…
The new owner of a boat called Cochise lost control while backing out of the channel. Luckily for him, Legacy was there to stop him. (Not so lucky for us though!)
Our repairs are started and a new paddle for our monitor windvane is due to arrive Monday. The weather window that we would have taken earlier turned into another low and associated front, and it brought in rain to slow down the fiberglass work.
Oh well. Champagne problems compared to our lives back in the real world.
Tiger Bait Again…
Here’s Susanne on Nehaj departing for the tropics this morning, despite the weather (she’s tougher than we’ll ever be). There were a few cruising boats here in Nelson and they’re all gone now, leaving Legacy trailing behind – tiger bait once again. -Rich
