The start of the year has been fantastic in Nelson. The weather has been great with clear blue skies, the baking hot sunshine has been sending everyone to the beach or into the river to cool down.

Nelson transforms in the summer with plenty of tourists passing through. Most weekends there festivals for something or another; last weekend was the buskers festival, before that the “evolve” festival (all dream catchers and crystal gazers) and a few weeks ago we went to the kite festival which was bright and colourful. The same weekend was the Nelson Regatta and the marina was buzzing with visitors from Picton, Waikawa and Wellington. We didn’t participate in the racing but joined in with the bar side activities in the Tasman Bay Cruising Club!

We have been finishing the last chores to get Distant Drummer and ourselves ready for cruising. The Clark pump came back from the States and the watermaker is now churning out 20 litres/hour of clean fresh water, a great relief after all the trials and tribulations! We’ve also been struggling with getting Sailmail working as our most recent laptops are 64 bit which requires a different cable to talk to the modem. It sounds simple enough but trying to sort out what the problem was and get hold of the right FTDI cable has been testing my patience! In the meantime we have dug out the old clunky 32 bit laptop and all is well.

A couple of weeks ago we had the boat out on the hardstand for a new coat of antifoul paint on her hull. We also had to make some adjustments to our new feathering propeller, service all the seacocks, replace the anodes and all the usual jobs. Neil has been re-rigging the storm sails to make sure they are trouble-free to raise in a 50 knot blow and we are familiar with how to do it! I have made a bimini (shade cover) to sit between the new hard dodger and the back arch to give us some shade over the wheel when we’re at the helm.

So finally we’re ready to go! The boat is full of diesel, water and food. Everything that can be is screwed down, strapped down or stowed away! Now we’re just waiting the low pressure to the SE to move on and the high in the Tasman Sea to settle down and deliver us some nice 20 knot southerlies!

See you in New South Wales!

Suzy and Neil