Oscar is targeting to depart end of March towards Opua, New Zealand with a crew of 2. I will happily miss this trip and will fly to Opua by mid April. The plan is to spend sometime in Bay of Islands and then join a rally to Tonga. We'd like to stay about 2 months around Tonga, then Vanuatu, New Caledonia and back to Queensland. There is no Port to Port rally this year to Bundaberg, so most probably we'll sail back to Brisbane instead. Oh well, that's the plan.
Before the fun starts we have many things to do. Zenitude now is moored at the Multi-hull marina in Rozelle where we have better access to come and go while moving all our staff back from the apartment. It's work, work, work and then more work. We had only one fun day with friends coming on board for a lunch at Castle Rock on a beautiful sunny Sunday.
Among other things we have now a new set of batteries, new led lights all over and the inverter working as it should, no more energy complains. At least for now.
We've set up again our sailmail account, replaced the grounding copper tape where damaged, tested the Pactor and the SSB, received the weather gribs thru the radio. It all seems to be working.
And the list goes on. Shopping and storing it all is one of the last things we are doing, same with re-fueling and storing extra fuel in jugs. It seems that the trip to New Zealand is a mix of strong winds days with no wind at all days, so need to be prepared for a lot of motoring.
As incredible as it feels Zenitude is almost ready to go.
G.
